Afterglow of NYC

The only way to write regularly on this blog, is to just write regularly. Here's hoping this time it sticks.

I just returned to the UK after spending a month in my old home NYC. It was a beautiful, fast-paced exciting month of performing, teaching, rehearsing, meeting and connecting with friends.

And as I sit in Manchester, my current home, I am thinking about race and why it's important and why I can't seem to stop thinking about it, which, if you know me, isn't a surprise at all.

And if you don't know me personally, check my artist statement (for my non-burlesque work, but still completely relevant) which I think explains a bit:

I am an interdisciplinary artist engaging with the practices of movement and words; the writing, choreographing, performance and poetics of dance and text. Central to my existence in this world is the fact that as a person I cannot and will not separate myself from my art, my race and my political beliefs. I create art for life’s sake, breath by breath. I make art out of necessity to communicate truths with the world at large. I am interested in the process and beauty and function and the mess of life, seeing the edges, breaking the fourth wall. I strive to create art that is in dialogue with communities of people, art that shares the aesthetic of blackness in all its unique glory and improvisation, while at the same time celebrates the hybridity of my experience. Art that inspires, spreads understanding and compassion and calls for a deeper look at this society’s crippling isms.

I've been told before that I'm obsessed with race. I wouldn't describe it that way. I would say I'm constantly deeply aware.

Daniel Alexander Jones, a brilliant playwright and professor who I worked with in my 3rd semester of grad school, broke it down:

"I recognize race as a social construct that has no valid basis in science. Because it was created as pseudo-scientific evidence for colonial expansion, genocide and domination of much of the globe, and because it is the linchpin of the maintenance of these colonial systems in a supposedly post-colonial age, it will always carry the violence and cruel blurring of real and unreal that are in its “dna” – it always leaves its colonial residue.

Secondly, racism is a disease. Like alcoholism, or other such addictive illnesses, it is corrosive for those possessed by the disease and destructive for all those around them; and it seduces through its provision of “answers.” Because it is a disease – it defies logic.

Thirdly, the enduring presence of the construct inside concrete social policy, as the continuing core rationale for mass murder globally, and in particular, its peculiar role in the concept of America, in the maintenance of the inequities of the socio-economic system of the country, and in the consciousness of all Americans, means that while it is a false construct, it has, through its functions, been invested with life – it is a real unreal thing."


Burlesque for me is about expressing oneself, much like my relationship and understanding of poetry and it wasn't until I heard poets besides Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson that I realized I too could partake in this art form. That people like me could have a say, share our voice, our experiences, add to the conversation and creation. With burlesque it is the same.

I'm a student of the Black Arts Movement of the mid 1960's to mid 70's in the States and the idea of institution building is at the core of how I move in the world, creating a space for oneself and for others in communities that often don't have access to present and perform their own work. That is where the idea for BGB comes from. And sometimes when I start going on about BGB to some people I can sense that they don't really see why this is so important, but experiences I had over the last two weeks I was in NYC reminded me just how crucial that is.

On Saturday May 15th, Chicava HoneyChild (Creative Producer of BGB) and myself led BGB's second one day intro workshop for our Broad Squad Institute. Wow. It was a beautiful afternoon, filled with inspiring women who are all about exploring their sensuality and creativity. Amidst the sequins and shedded feathers from the boas we shimmed and shared, talking about everything from creating a name that has meaning to you to what it means for a brown woman to take her clothes off in public.

Then the following Wednesday I was up in Harlem. Billie's Black the So Damn Happy Happy Hour with BGB curating the evening. We had a blast. The audience was primarily Black women and many who had never seen BGB before, and some who had never experienced burlesque at all. We were up there expressing ourselves, celebrating brown women's brains, bodies and stories and the feedback that I got after the show was superb. It wasn't just about us being sexy up on stage for the audience, the women in the audience felt sexy and inspired, through us they saw themselves on stage. Their own bodies celebrated. For that hour the American standard of beauty was not bombarding them from magazines and billboards and the television screen.

Till next time,
Miss AuroraBoobRealis