Funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), this series of moderated events emerges from a desire to provoke conversations that are themselves movements between disciplines, concepts, scholars, and practitioners, aiming to both generate and destabilize dialogue and reflection on Black performance. The ABC's of DE address commonalities and/or tensions in and between the fields of dance dramaturgy and Black performance studies. Focusing on how the concepts of "Blackness" and "dramaturgy" (productively) rub up against one another, the conversations speak to how theories of Blackness - and its fugitivity, opacity, and expression - challenge performance dramaturgy’s implicit supposition that the performer’s body, and the resulting creative work, is a “neutral canvas” on which the dramaturgical process might unilaterally ascribe meaning.

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Each event highlights a pair of keywords, placed in relation to one another as an invitation to explore the movement they generate across the diverse practices and perspectives of the guests.