jumatatu m. poe and Jermone Donte Beacham
This is a Formation is the latest dance performance project in jumatatu m. poe and Jermone Donte Beacham’s Let ‘im Move You series, a collection of performance and visual works centered around the artists’ explorations with the J-Sette form. Formation brings together seven Black dancers, a DJ, and a lighting designer as performers for the work. The audience travels within the performance space with relative freedom, sharing the same spaces as performers. Live captured video design elements will focus on hyper-close-up capture of the performers for display on hanging panels throughout the space.
This is a move. This is a deep spinal curve on top of a high booty. This is a game, and the rhythm is key. This is luminous black and smooth brown and hard yellow skin tones. This is an alien, and that is a fairy. This is a movement; we did not start it. This is a stomp through the floor, and a buck across the universe. This is an invitation for you to amplify the respect, curiosity, and love you find in our shared space. This is exquisitely normal. This is so queer, it’s inside out. This is a show for the family, with nudity and sexual themes. This is rigorous beauty. This is a formation.
Please follow the project on instagram at @_move_you_ for information about related performance events happening in various neighborhoods in Philadelphia.
MORE EVENTS SURROUNDING THIS IS A FORMATION
saNG(k)təˌfī
February 1 at 7pm
Church of the Advocate, 1801 W. Diamond St, Philadelphia, PA 19121
a collaboration between:
Let ‘im Move You and the Black and Brown Workers Cooperative
The Let ‘im Move You squad — with partnered support from the Black and Brown Workers Cooperative (BBWC) — will bring together six Black queer, Black queer affirming, and Black weirdo artists working between worlds of social space performance (ie. clubs, street, outdoor festival) and institutional space art performance (ie. theater, art warehouse, museum, gallery works) rooted in queer performance emerging from the worlds of Black aesthetics for a workshop, to publicly examine the following:
- What is our responsibility to the forms and our practice of them within White supremacist societies?
- How do we promote and invest in sources/institutions/folks that are Black and queer affirming?
- What best practices are currently being utilized by Black artists and cultural producers in creative space?
- What concerns currently occupy the minds of Black Queer, Queer affirming, and Black weirdo artists and cultural producers?
- What challenges do Black Queer, Queer affirming, and Black weirdo artists face?
- What is our responsibility – to ourselves and artistic will to explore and to our chosen forms?
- What disruptive possibilities for social transformation live in Black art and Black cultural production?
This public presentation will take place on Friday, February 1st, at 7pm at Uncle Bobbie’s Coffee & Books.
About the Black and Brown Workers Cooperative
We the Black and Brown Workers Cooperative (BBWC), a direct action labor organizing collective, have come together to combat injustices that manifest both in and out of the non-profit organizational structure and in the broader community of Philadelphia Pennsylvania. Our mission is to actively challenge, resist and dismantle, those colonialist, white supremacist and oppressive systems that impact our lives as Black and Brown workers who live at the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality.
**********************************************************
Big Body: Experimental J-Sette Performance Workshop
February 2nd from 3-5pm
Painted Bride Art Center
In connection with the premiere of their latest project, Let ‘im Move You: This Is a Formation, jumatatu m. poe and Jermone Donte Beacham lead their Big Body workshop together.
J-Sette, also known as Bucking, is a performance style popular in the southern United States, practiced widely among majorettes and drill teams at historically Black colleges and universities, and also among teams of primarily queer men who compete in gay clubs and pride festivals. The workshop focuses on bombastic performance energy, complex relationships to rhythm and music, movement precision, group dynamics, and discovering joy in flesh and community. We will explore how the performance of J-Sette creates expectations around attention and accountability to a community, and how it positions leadership. All bodies are encouraged to participate, regardless of previous training or ability.
************************************************************
Intervention #1
February 6 around 5pm
Location TBA via instagram at @_move_you_
The Interventions are popup performances of This Is a Formation that will happen in various historically and/or predominantly Black neighborhoods in various locations throughout Philadelphia.
************************************************************
Conversation with the artists and their parents
February 7 at 7pm
Painted Bride Art Center
Please join This Is a Formation artists jumatatu m. poe and Jermone Donte Beacham as they engage in conversation about the work with their parents. This pre-premiere conversation will be an opportunity for some insight into the themes of intimacy, sexuality, and belonging generated through this work, as well as an opportunity for the artists to engage with questions from people who have known them longer than anyone else. The conversation will be moderated by Dr. Jasmine Johnson.
Details on moderator coming soon.
****************************************************************
Queer Slow Jam Party
February 8 at 10pm
Painted Bride Art Center
Maybe less of a throwback and more of a reclaiming: we are about to transform those memories of high school dances that many of us didn’t attend – at least not in the way we wanted to. We are going to welcome the slow jam onto the dance floor, and meet it with a close embrace – maybe just of ourselves, 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 give our permission for the proximity that we are feeling. Let’s be queer and normal and strange and open and close… very close… Sweating to the beat of slow motion.
We will be blessed in the space with the sage musical curations of DJ Zen Jefferson. Even as we may challenge, tempt, and transgress it, we will honor that slow pulse, the space in it, the complex syncopations, the polyrhythmicity. Choreographers jumatatu m. poe and Donte Beacham will start off the night with a short instruction of some of the close dancing they have been experimenting with in rehearsal, related to the hip swing of the J-Sette march, and the importance of pelvic movement in African-descended dance forms. Throughout the night, the dancers of This Is a Formation will perform brief slow choreographies.
****************************************************************
Intervention #2
February 9 around 12pm
Location TBA via instagram at @_move_you_
The Interventions are popup performances of This Is a Formation that will happen in various historically and/or predominantly Black neighborhoods in various locations throughout Philadelphia.
FUNDING CREDITS
The creation of Let ‘im Move You: This is a Formation was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage; The MAP Fund, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; National Performance Network/Visual Artists Network (NPN/VAN) Creation & Development Fund co-commissioned by Painted Bride Art Center in partnership with Bates Dance Festival, Arthur Aviles Typical Theatre DBA BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, Abrons Arts Center/Henry Street Settlement, Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Dance Place, PICA (Portland Institute for Contemporary Art), and NPN/VAN; Independence Foundation; and the Sacatar Foundation.
The development of Let ‘im Move You: This is a Formation was made possible, in part, by the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography at Florida State University. Production residency funded by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Additional production support and residency provided by EMPAC / Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY. Additional residency support provided by Duke University by way of Slippage, and South Dallas Cultural Center.
