Organizing As an Embodied Practice
Courtney’s project puts organizing in motion within her community. It grows out of the format of a house meeting, a tool of organizers that brings a small group of people together around a shared purpose, relying on dance and movement to help raise awareness and motivate, activate and agitate.
In this participatory performance gathering, Courtney shared her approach to organizing as an embodied practice, inviting people to witness movement, to move and reflect and then to take concrete action. Somatic opening, storytelling, productive disorientation, retracing steps and imagining possible futures are central elements of the process. The gathering took place on Zoom given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and encouraged individual and collective listening, questioning, reorienting, and moving.
Presented by the Duke Dance Program and Courtney Crumpler in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Dance in the Graduate School at Duke University.