Choreographing Social Change: Reflections on Dancing in Blackness

Abstract

Abstract This autoethnography explores a dance scholar's previous choreographic trajectory, positioning the author's career within the sixties and seventies Black Arts Movement for social change. I explore several iterations of my dance lecture-demonstration in particular, which was produced over two decades and three continents, demonstrating how temporal and spatial shifts affect the content and context of a choreographic work. Additionally, I explore my shift into arts producing through my national dance initiative that helped define the work of eighties Black choreographers in the postmodern dance movement. The result is a consideration of how being Black, female, and a dancer provides a particular sociohistorical lens.