Murmurations

Funded by the Social Science and Humanity Research Council, Murmurations is a twelve-month suite of outreach activities centered on the interrelation of the conceptual pillars of 'blackness' and 'dramaturgy.' 'Blackness,' entails the specific processes of embodiment and identification possessed by and imposed upon those of African or Afro-diasporic origin. 'Dramaturgy,' is the process of in-gathering the physical, material and creative elements of a performance work according to a logic that is itself emergent. The overarching goal of the proposed activities is to gather, finalize, activate and share the outcomes of three years of robust research-creation investigation under the name"Dramaturgical Ecologies" (DE), led by PI Willkie.

As PI, I position myself as a black dance artist-scholar and dramaturg of Western concert-dance. My research-creation has focused on the personal dramaturgy of the performer and the ways in which it engages (with) the overall dramaturgy of a dance creation. Through my performance experience and dramaturgical practice, my blackness has risen to the forefront of my interrogations of dance dramaturgy. Any decolonization of the field of contemporary dance cannot be dissociated from the methods of its creation, which are anchored in the origins of Western concert-dance, its Eurocentric aesthetics and the value systems they ensconce.

Dramaturgy, as concept and praxis, has the potential to disrupt habitual modes of practice by placing things differently in relation, proposing other ecologies of creation. The dynamic plurality of dramaturgical possibility and configuration is the field's political potential. Investigating dramaturgies of and through blackness is a means of reflecting, and reflecting upon,

blackness and its multiplicities and the ways in which they might interrogate, inform and generate choreographic processes. This is the context of Murmurations.

The outreach project is supported by collaborator Erin Manning, Concordia Research Chair in Speculative Pragmatism, Art, and Pedagogy, an interdisciplinary team of four Concordia Doctoral students, and three affiliate artist-researcher assistants. It is anchored in LePARC, the Performing Arts Research Cluster of the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology which, with Concordia's 4th Space, will host public events. As an external partner, the 3ecologies project, will host the research-creation residency of the DE research group and facilitate daily dissemination encounters with the 3ecologies' network.