Broken Automatons and Barbed Ecologies in Ligia Lewis's Choreographic Imaginary

Abstract

This article considers choreographer Ligia Lewis's hour-long ensemble performance Water Will (in Melody) to theorize on the relationship between ecological fugitivity and black fugitive movement. It explores how Lewis's choreography disrupts the colonial space-times of colonialism and slavery by offering portals into other space-times. In Water Will (in Melody), racialized assemblages break down from overuse and from glaring surveillance in the form of illumination. The last few minutes of the piece evoke an ambivalent postapocalyptic space-time where darkness becomes textured with what seems to be moonlight peeking into a wet cave. This ending evokes the ecological of histories of fugitivity and the earthiness of Édouard Glissant's concept of opacity, both frequently overlooked in discussions of black fugitivity. The final section traces Lewis's fugitive choreography into what the article calls the barbed ecologies of the hills of the Dominican Republic and Haiti, sites of black and indigenous marronage and symbiosis.