Archiving Black Performance, Ohio State University. February 2025

Archiving Black Performance is a multi-year project designed and produced by Associate Professor of Dance Crystal Michelle Perkins, MFA and Professor of Dance Valarie Williams, PhD

Mara Frazier, Dancer and Curator of Lawrence and Lee Theatre Collection invited me to participate in this program. I met Mara through Dance/USA Archiving and Preservation Affinity Group. I was very excited to meet other dance and performance professionals and think about ways to preserve Black performance together.

"The goal of the project is to elevate, via performance, oral history, archival research, workshops, digital preservation and communication methods, and publication, the dances of black women choreographers and performers as represented through black lives and black bodies. We have focused on work choreographed by/for black women early in the creation process."

This year's choreographers were Holly Bass, Marjani Forté-Saunders, Jennifer Harge, Ursula Payne, Crystal Michelle Perkins, and Vershawn Sanders-Ward.

Over the course of 4 days presented a lecture, facilitated a workshop, explored the archives, hung out with performance artists, and hosted a post-show talk-back. I loved every bit of it.

Still thinking about:

• What do we mean when we say "archiving black performance"?

• Is there a difference between choreography we make for our own bodies and the bodies of other people?

• Where is the line between preservation and documentation in performance?

• Is choreography designed to be shared, preserved, passed along?

• Do we want people to dance the choreography we set on our selves?

• What is the best way to preserve our choreography? videorecording? dance notation?

• What about the violence in the archive? How do we avoid subjecting ourselves to the same exploitation that we have experienced in the past?

• Will we ever fill the gaps in the archive?

  
  

Funding and Support:

Archiving Black Performance is funded through the Center and Institutes Grants of the Global Arts and Humanities Discovery Themes, The Office of Diversity and Inclusion Seed Fund for Racial Justice, and Humanities without Walls Seed Grant. The project is made possible through partnerships with the Dance Notation Bureau Extension Center for Education and Research, the African American and African Studies Community Extension Center, Lawrence and Lee Theatre Research Institute, the Frank W. Hale, Jr. Black Cultural Center, Thiossane West African Dance Institute, Paul Taylor Dance Company, Bebe Miller Company, Dancing Legacy, The Lincoln Theatre, and Wexner Center for the Arts.