Sweat to the Beat of Slow Motion:
Leading and following beyond body/gender expectations
We are going to welcome the slow jam onto the dance floor, and meet it with a close embrace – maybe just of our individual selves, or of a consensual partner… or maybe more than one. Let’s get close; feel our wise hips swing into the same dimly lit spaces, hear inhales and exhales from a mouth hovering near our ear, pumping oxygen for a heart rate that’s pulsing a bit faster than usual… Let’s see what we can get up to way down below 95 bpm. Let’s be people dancing up on other people, when we want to and when we are wanted. Let’s ask for and give our permission for the proximity that we are desiring. Let’s be queer and normal and strange and open and close… very close… Sweating to the beat of slow motion. This is a collective exercise in exploring slow, and experimenting with how to construct a mutually attentive unit with someone else – leading, following, and getting tangled in a consensual gray areas. Within this, we will explore movement related to the hip swing of the J-Sette march, and the importance of pelvic movement in African-descended dance forms. We will disrupt gendered notions about who follows and who leads, slowly discovering the ways we would like to embrace and be embraced on the dance floor.