The Future Contemporary

Inquiries into Visual, Performing, and Media Arts

Dancing the Museum Black: Activist Animations of the Social

crossmark logo

Abstract

This chapter considers concepts of activism and Black presence in experiences of dance in museums. Working through concepts of Afropessimism, Afrofuturism, and the theoretical gathering notion of a Black Commons, I will offer four case studies of dance in the museum that render the space towards collective Black possibilities. The choreographic works Dapline! (2016), fastPASTdance (2017), as well as a reconstruction of Instead of Allowing Some Thing to Rise Up to Your Face Dancing Bruce and Dance and Other Things (2000) and the moving-image object APESHIT (2018) offer evidence of a special possibility for Black dance in the museum space; a creation of social space too-often denied to Black people in diaspora.


Open access | Peer reviewed

Submitted: April 15, 2021 | Published Sept. 16, 2021 | Language: en

Keywords Activism • Afrofuturism • Afropessimism • Black dance • Black Commons

Copyright © 2021 Thomas F. DeFrantz. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-534-6/010


read this chapter