|
Moving Our Stories
PURPOSE…
Julie B. Johnson’s creative practice, Moving Our Stories (MOS), uses participatory dance and embodied memory mapping to amplify the histories, lived experiences, and bodily knowledge of Black women, and all folx who identify as such, as a strategy towards collective liberation and restoration for all.
PRACTICE…
Through collaborative choreographic practice, creative scholarly research, interactive and site-responsive performance, dance films, and community gatherings and dialogues, we draw on a deep history of embodied storytelling traditions and creative movement practices.
EMBODIED STORYTELLING…
We embrace storytelling as a radical act, a social justice practice. Sharing, documenting, and archiving personal and collective narratives is vital for communities whose histories have been historically (and continue to be) marginalized, skewed, erased. Dance -- a way of being in, thinking about, and creating change in the world -- allows us to claim agency over our stories, starting with our own bodies.
Julie B. Johnson’s creative practice, Moving Our Stories (MOS), uses participatory dance and embodied memory mapping to amplify the histories, lived experiences, and bodily knowledge of Black women, and all folx who identify as such, as a strategy towards collective liberation and restoration for all.
PRACTICE…
Through collaborative choreographic practice, creative scholarly research, interactive and site-responsive performance, dance films, and community gatherings and dialogues, we draw on a deep history of embodied storytelling traditions and creative movement practices.
EMBODIED STORYTELLING…
We embrace storytelling as a radical act, a social justice practice. Sharing, documenting, and archiving personal and collective narratives is vital for communities whose histories have been historically (and continue to be) marginalized, skewed, erased. Dance -- a way of being in, thinking about, and creating change in the world -- allows us to claim agency over our stories, starting with our own bodies.
Photo by Kevin Parker/Cre8tiv Images
Values
Dancing Together: Creating shared or intersecting experiences - even if just for a moment - that bring to light our similarities and differences.
Dance Practice as Inquiry & Research: What can moving our bodies reveal about ourselves, each other, and the world around us? What can it help us discover about our relationships to constructs of identity, to community, and to sociocultural, political, and historical contexts? How can dance help us understand how we uniquely (individually and collectively) navigate through the world?
Centering the Body & Lived Experience: We place our humanity, our personhood, at the center of our inquiry and creative processes - our dance circle. All bodies in the circle are honored. The uniqueness of each person -- their perspectives, embodiment, and daily lived experiences -- gives shape to the circle. We uphold the body as a knowing body, a site of intelligence, cultural production, and discovery.
Radical Sistering: We lift up the concept of sistering as a verb from Toni Cade Bambara and other Black feminist artists, activists, and scholars. We uphold Black women's right to exist in our bodies, in our environments, in our communities, beginning by claiming our space on the dance floor. We witness and celebrate each other.
Social Justice: We engage in dance as a means to analyze oppression -- how we are impacted by and implicated in it. We examine how our dancing bodies can make visible, disrupt, challenge, or dismantle systems powered by racism, patriarchy, and capitalism. We commit to using our creative skills, artistry, and knowledge, towards collective action, and to dreaming, imagining, innovating, and creating new liberated futures.
Photo by Julie B. Johnson, featuring Hawkins and Chrissy McLeod Horn
What Dance Does
Focusing on the transformational nature for all who participate in it (as a mover or witness), we discover what the dance does -- how it changes us at the level of the body and then ripples outward to our communities and beyond. By delving into embodied memory together, we work to recover that which was lost, forgotten, or erased. We map its movements in our bodies, give it shape and sound and breath and sometimes words. Our dance becomes an affirmation, a communal expression of survival, discovery, and joy!
What is Embodied Memory Mapping?
MOS draws on a long lineage of memory workers - artists, scholars, culture keepers - who uphold the idea that our personal and cultural histories are stored in our bodies. Since 2015, MOS has been the mechanism for Julie B. Johnson to develop a practice around memory work that builds on this lineage, and explore it with communities around her, near and far. This work is based on four premises:
What is Participatory Dance?
Dance is for any and every body! Participatory dance strives to remove as many barriers to access as possible. Participants include those who identify as dancers and those who do not. Participants do not need to have any particular kind of previous experience or training. They only need to come to the space open and willing to engage. Each participant’s unique embodiment, perspective, questions, and ideas are what drives the practice forward. Every encounter is different as every participant brings something unique to the experience, each and every time!
What is Embodied Memory Mapping?
MOS draws on a long lineage of memory workers - artists, scholars, culture keepers - who uphold the idea that our personal and cultural histories are stored in our bodies. Since 2015, MOS has been the mechanism for Julie B. Johnson to develop a practice around memory work that builds on this lineage, and explore it with communities around her, near and far. This work is based on four premises:
- Our memories live and move in our bodies;
- Through dancing, observing, writing, and discussing, we can draw on sense perception (what we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and how we move) to locate and access embodied memory;
- By mapping, moving, and sharing our stories, we can more deeply understand ourselves, each other, and the ways in which we operate in the world;
- This understanding creates empathic connections that can effect personal and social change - starting at the level of the body.
What is Participatory Dance?
Dance is for any and every body! Participatory dance strives to remove as many barriers to access as possible. Participants include those who identify as dancers and those who do not. Participants do not need to have any particular kind of previous experience or training. They only need to come to the space open and willing to engage. Each participant’s unique embodiment, perspective, questions, and ideas are what drives the practice forward. Every encounter is different as every participant brings something unique to the experience, each and every time!
Photo by Kevin Parker/Cre8tiv Images
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY / COPYRIGHT All images, text, graphics and html coding appearing in the Julie B. Johnson website are the exclusive intellectual property of Julie B. Johnson and Moving Our Stories, LLC and are protected by United States and international copyright laws. JulieBJohnson.com may not be used, copied, downloaded, reproduced, manipulated, or transmitted by use of computer or other electronic means or any other method or means now or hereafter known, without the written permission of Julie B. Johnson and Moving Our Stories, LLC. © 2024. All Rights Reserved.