week 7
Time-travel & Shape-shifting
Here we follow 3 time-traveling, shape-shifting free and enslaved Gullah Geechee women in South Carolina. Included are reflections from the time-traveling, shape-shifting free Gullah Geechee woman who wrote about them. Through inter-dimensional dialogue, Black people are again affirmed as Afrofutures.
Time-traveling, shape-shifting Black girl in Beaufort, SC c. 1990s.
materials
Channeling prompts
Create a dialogue between your 8-year-old self and your present-self. What lessons do y’all have for each other? What do you wish the other you knew about you? What did the 8-year-old you know without a doubt that present-you has forgotten?
Write about a time you felt the most like yourself.
Is there a form, shape, persona or alter ego you take on to help you get through difficult or scary situations? What abilities does this avatar have that differ from your own? How can you begin to integrate those skills, magic and knowing into your everyday life?
Affirmations
Materials
This performance served as the creative component of Miya Shaquan’s Master of Arts thesis, “Reaching Back, Feeling In, Dancing Forward: The Convergence of African Dance and Somatics for the Negotiation of Black Women’s Embodiment.”
Channeling Prompts
How do you define/describe freedom? What does it look/feel/sound/taste like?
Who reflects your highest self back to you? Who can you rely on to hold and affirm your visions when you are feeling discouraged?
Since our ancestors have been intentionally robbed of rest for generations, how might you start re-framing ideas of rest and relaxation ? Are “laziness” , “productivity” and “earning your rest” more myths from the crooked room?
What is a vision you hold for our collective liberated future? How are you planting seeds for that future right now?
Can you identify any seeds of freedom planted in the past that you are the present fruit of?
Affirmations
Week 8
Manifestations of Freedom: Healing & Wholeness
In the final module, we look at different imaginings and manifestations of freedom. Queer, trans and gender-non-conforming identities are affirmed across time. Rest is reclaimed. We learn through the archive, prose, historical fiction, and dance.
“Going Back Home” - the 2019 artistic ancestral scholarly black girl magic collaboration between Miya Shaquan Fowler and Sara Makeba - was never previously rehearsed together.
Daise Family portrait taken by Freda Funnye