One Body In Crisis Means We Are All In Crisis
Black bodies have been in crisis for 400+ years and cannot breathe on a daily basis.
White America it is up to you and me to embody movements toward demolishing the white supremacist, dominant culture and narrative that subtly suppresses and violently extinguishes black and brown humans every day. We have not atoned for the evils of slavery and genocide that have built the structures of our nation, including dance and the arts. Regardless of our differing opinions about HOW to enact reparations, we must EMBODY the process on a daily basis in every small angle and large circle we create in the art of our lives. It is indeed an ART & PRACTICE of MOVEMENT.
Listening to Ta-Nehisi Coates talk about hope today on the Ezra Klein show, I felt the contracting hope in my body over the last days expand a little bit. Like many of you, I sobbed and sobbed last Saturday night for the seemingly never-ending violence, trauma, microaggressions and masterful injustices toward Black Americans. That morning in Seattle began thunderous and dark. It rained heavily throughout the day. And I was grateful to feel the atmosphere crying with us.
I sobbed with my life-partner of twenty-two years. Our marriage began in conversations about removing ourselves from white enclaves; reversing white flight; serving all humans; untangling from the white supremacist heritage he and I carry in our bodies; embodying change-making in our work-places, communities and personal relationships to unsnarl white supremacy; raising and educating our future children in direct opposition to how we had been egregiously raised and educated.
I sobbed for how little impact it feels we can have; for how small this KSD platform is for creating transformative change through dance. But after the grief, I will get up and move and move and move again for justice for black earth bodies. We are one earth. I hope my embodied words inspire other white sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, friends and neighbors to keep doing the work.
An Art & Practice of Movement is to begin from and to return to love over and over again even in the depths of rage, grief, and horrendous injustice to one’s body and spirit and child. An Art & Practice of Movement seeks the BIG LOVE SOURCE for healing and evolution, that has a name and no names––some call this source God. African American humans have been demonstrating this power of moving-love for self, neighbor, earth, a named and unnamed God for centuries; lifting their collective body and spirit up through seemingly never-ending crimes against their humanity.
We, white bodies, collectively have yet to understand the power and truth in their music and dance.
Our hard, rigid, disembodied, unfeeling white bodies continue to use Black music and dance with no embodied-understanding as to its African-American history, meaning and transformational power. Europeans came to this “American” land and did not listen to the Indigenous that lived in relationship with earth for hundreds, maybe thousands of years.
Whether we came here as victims in European lands or perpetrators that came to this North American nation to perpetuate the same violence, WE RESONATE WITH THAT LEGACY IN OUR BODIES TODAY. And that legacy is the root of violence and ongoing trauma for Black Americans.
Whether we descend from the victim or the perpetrator of the slaughter of earth-based, matrilineal, egalitarian, and peaceful European societies; from the violence, dominance and war that continued for centuries throughout European lands; from the religious wars; from the witch burnings; we have a responsibility to heal and transform those evils and mistakes in our own bodies NOW. Although we do not know the stories of our past––many ancestors like mine chose to forget––we carry their graves, their sins and their pain in our bodies. We collectively perpetuate the injustices that our fellow black and brown humans have been suffering since the beginnings of the slave trade in the United States of America.
When White America finally moves embodied-change for all fellow Americans, together, we can begin with a breath of movement to rebuild a nation of healing, justice, equity and human evolution for an earth community. But that will only come with a sensory awareness into the movement patterns of dis-ease that we carry and the good that we are in our white bodies. As a white ally-activist you may need more healing, strength, flexibility and courage; as a PTA leader in your child’s diverse school you may need help with your guilt and fragility; as leader in your organization you may need humility and fearlessness to step out of your role of power. All of this begins in movement practice in the BIG LOVE SOURÇE of movement that has the power to create a beautiful life for all of us.
I have spent all week in prayer and fasting; in listening and reading; in connecting with others in meaningful ways; in being deeply present for my three children (10,12,18 yrs) and my life-partner; in walking my new shelter-in-place, rescued dog; in doing my continued inner work for the outer worldly work of dismantling white supremacy; and in writing for KSD forthcoming and ongoing communication that addresses personal and collective words-moving-change-justice-healing. All of these movements I have made this week are in the hopes that my words and actions will be embodied, effective, change-making.
This has been my Art & Practice of Movement. To begin again and again and again. To seek the BIG LOVE SOURCE of movement in my body to do the work of change for ending white supremacy. To keep moving after surrender to the collective pain and suffering of Black Americans. To surrender to the risk in the mistakes I will make even when moving with the eye of my heart. Moving for the future I believe in. For the vision of a future that gives me hope through this painful, raging, mourning, fighting dance.
I love you Black, Indigenous, People of Color friends, family, colleagues, dancers, collaborators and earth neighbors!
-Karin