Always Been This Way Performance

In the Spring of 2024 I invited movements artists Matthew Holliday and Kamari Smalls (Digital Media MFA ‘23) to create a choreographed dance with my piece The Relief Chair. My goal for the collaboration was for Holliday and Smalls to activate the chair by creating prints using the weight of their bodies. Working with African American movement artists was imperative for me so that they could narrate their own visual stories in collaboration with the chair. As African Americans we all have a relationship to displacement and have the experience of knowing the fleet- ing nature of our cultural condition.

Holliday and Smalls created their own choreography to accomplish this task with my guidance in how to best make a print. I taught them how to ink the surface of the chair and best practices in creating relief prints, but the rest of the choreography was their design. They discovered unique movements and strategies to create pressure and weight with their bodies so that the matrix would transfer to their clothing. Additionally, we collaborated with Digital Media artist Catherine Ashley (Digital Media MFA ‘24), to film the process. Ashley skillfully directed Holliday and Smalls in creating powerful tableaus which displayed the prints and the performers’ striking movements. The experiment resulted in a short film, with sound design by Smalls and final editing by Ashley. It felt imperative to have a collaborative aspect of my final thesis work that showcased the potential, necessity, and beauty of community.