Dance Program
Cyclical Navigations: In the In Between
February 5-March 5, 2022
Rubenstein Arts Center, Studio 129
Gallery hours: 10:00am-5:00pm
This thesis project conceptualizes storytelling as a practice of embodied memory recollection — one that aids in the navigation of cyclical temporalities in the present, or what MFA in Dance candidate Lee Edwards has termed the "In Between." The In Between is the space between and within history and the contemporary. It is the liminal space that exists between an Afropessimist reality and an Afrofuturist practice. This project considers what is possible if Black history and thus Black stories are treated with care through the valuing of Black bodies and voices, both living and deceased. It interrogates what happens when land is viewed as a container that holds the stories of those who are and were, and what happens when we acknowledge what and who was while inscribing what and who is into space. This interdisciplinary installation takes the audience on a nonlinear journey of time through memory, story, movement, and location.
Movement collaborators: Alyah Baker, Jasmine Callis, Ayan Felix, Ama Gora, Juliet Irving, Aigner Picou | Artist's reception: February 5, 5:00-9:00pm with artist talk at 5:30pm and 7:30pm.
Presented by the Duke Dance Program and Lee Edwards in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Dance in the Graduate School at Duke University.