June, 2021
I, along with so many others, am breathing a little easier every day, thanks to vaccinations and the start of this gorgeous weather. Nourish at LexFarm is about to begin, and I have been hard at work organizing exciting themes to explore as I dance there each week.
Potential inspiring themes to translate into movement include: Roots: A Movement Recipe for Feeling Grounded; Feeling Our Potential: Shoots, & Leaves; Prince Estabrook, an Enslaved Lexington Colonial Soldier and Me; Weeds: Rooting out Self Doubt; Moving Smarter: Endurance, Food Equity & Sustainability; Transformations: The Sun & Photosynthesis; Pawtuckett Farming Practices; Beauty into Fruition: Bees, Blossoms & Berries; Smelling Basil and Memory; Vulnerability: Learning with our NonDominant Hand; Equinox: Greet Your Tipping Point; A Dance: How to Pick a Strawberry/Tomato/Kale Leaves (crop of the week); PreColonial History of a Recipe Using Farm Vegetables; Full Moon: Feeling Gravitational Pull; Improvisation with Visiting Guest Artists; Assessment - Sowing What We’ve Learned @ Harvest…
about nourish @ LexFarm
In April, 2020 I was commissioned to make a new dance by Monkeyhouse for Against The Odds: Quarantine Edition. Eventually, the reality of the pandemic required me to reimagine that project. It has been a challenge to maintain my professional work while protecting my children and parents from Covid. The additional burden I experience as a Black mother amidst our country’s ongoing racial injustices have literally limited my normal breathing and moving. Without COVID-safe access to my regular dance studio in Cambridge, I sought alternative venues to support my creative practice. I have been reconciling how to become re-embodied, and safely claim my existence as a Black artist close to my home by choreographing outdoors.
All of these needs, combined with my need to fulfill my commission, inspired me to imagine myself in embodied connection to Lexington, where my family lives. I find self-reunion and peace where plants are cultivated and people can connect with growing sustenance. Community farmland provides me with the nourishment of food, soil, fresh air, and open space for creativity. In sharing the joy of moving, I want to be seen.
Nourish at LexFarm is a new chapter for me as an artist in community. Emerging from the pandemic is the ideal time to reassess what it means to dance again. What kinds of new dance vocabulary will speak to this space? How will focusing on the history of the land and surrounding area shape our movement? Can a space that has been defined by redlining and gentrification be reclaimed by BIPOC artists? What is my connection to the indigenous and Black peoples who lived in Lexington centuries ago? How can the Black Lives Matter movement manifest itself at the farm? Nourish at LexFarm will embrace this complex inquiry with gentle curiosity.
After this past year of shared tragedy, Nourish arrives at a time that demands change. There is a societal hunger for energizing, interactive engagements, which Nourish provides. Safe, free, user-friendly creative activities for all ages enable people to reach higher consciousness in tangible ways. Nourish asks where and how people can practice living better after COVID restrictions. By filming movement research from this context, Nourish can contribute to a larger public dialogue.
NOURISH at LexFarm is supported in part by grants from the Lexington Cultural Council and Arlington Cultural Council, local agencies which are supported by the Mass Cultural Council; a commission from Monkeyhouse for their Against The Odds performance series, and by Zuri, a small New York/Kenya based clothing company with ethically sourced materials and labor, who donated costuming and props.
why LexFarm?
Nourish will take place at LexFarm, a 5 acre non-profit certified organic farm and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). Originally inhabited by Massachusett and Pawtuckett people, colonialists displaced them in the 1640’s for private farming, likely by enslaved farmworkers. It remained farmland until Lexington purchased it in 2009 (from the Italian Busa family, who grew produce there as Bush Farm since 1909), then leased it to LexFarm in 2013 for reclaimed public enrichment. My family lives here; we eat food off this land. Eat & dance locally!
Gentrification reinforces the belief that Lexington is a ‘safe space’ for ‘everyone’, which minimizes my family’s experiences of racism. Affluence does not protect from the prejudice embedded in our civic and social structures. I feel invisible here.
Redlined Lexington has a current population of 1.5% Black residents. As one of those very few residents, I developed Nourish to freely claim space on my own terms. Lexington celebrates its colonial history over the history of enslavement or its native residents. The Lexington Historical Society and the Association of Black Citizens of Lexington is working to change that, by researching Black residents from colonial times to include in the town’s historic documents. Lexington funders can only reimburse, offering little support for experimental art that highlights racial inequality. The culture here prioritizes ‘high’ art, a cultural product of white supremacy, as a measurable vehicle for youth enrichment and preparation for success. Despite limited local funding, Nourish exists.
Nourish amends BIPOC displacement through “somatic abolitionism.” It asks what does it mean to be seen on this land, where Black and indigenous peoples’ experiences have been stolen, devalued, and erased? Can its public presence counteract these racialized traumas? What movements decolonize dance vocabulary? Will LexFarm visitors embrace this new movement experimentation? What will participants of different races find? Can we experience nourishment - from the land, from reframing our history, with each other?
partnerships
Dance happens in real time, in real space, just like growing food. It strengthens the body, just like good food. I initiated this partnership with the Lexington Community Farm Coalition board because we both value inclusivity. I seek sustainable movement for my maturing body, just as LexFarm seeks equity and sustainable nourishment for people through organic practices, food subsidies, and gleaning. We both share a commitment to hands-on community activity. Like Nourish, LexFarm prioritizes experiential community action. Visitors experience a connection to LexFarm, farming and each other. My Residency offers a creative perspective to visitors’ farming experience. Nourish will bring people’s attention to their own embodiment at LexFarm. They can take that with them.
In standing with the Black Lives Matter movement, LexFarm supported my request to be their first ever Artist in Residence (see attached). Board members were quick to respond with enthusiasm, editing my grant proposals, promoting Nourish in their media channels, writing press articles, offering creative input.
I am the director and lead artist for Nourish. Since last April, I have been developing Nourish and my community leadership skills full time. I generated a Nourish advisory team of 12 BIPOC & female professionals who advise me on best practices. I became fiscally sponsored for Nourish funding.
Olivia Moon is a trusted artistic collaborator. She photographed my solo performance at NACHMO Boston 2020 with the same sensitivity that she brings to her own work in photography, film, and dance. We share a collective vision for liberatory creative practices. A Boston-based, multidisciplinary artist, her work centers around her identity as a queer, female-identifying, Asian-American woman. We share the belief that the art of underrepresented voices is worthy of support. Olivia will videotape and photograph my dance research, then we will co-edit and produce a dance film and a short Nourish documentary.
This summer, I will visit LexFarm twice a week for my solo dance practice. In the open spaces between the crops, I will choreograph movement concepts that pertain to a new theme for each week. This will continue through the end of the growing season, depending on when the last frost occurs, or when it’s too cold for outdoor dancing, likely late October.