Dancing Platform Praying Grounds: Blackness, Churches, and Downtown Dance
SOLD OUT/OUT OF PRINT
“Diaspora is not this little thing—speaking historically, choreographically, politically.
I wanted to place my own Diasporas alongside those of the Danspace Project.”
-Reggie Wilson
Paperback: 195 pages
Size: 7 x 10 x 1 in
Published: 2018
Edited by Lydia Bell, Kristin Juarez, and Reggie Wilson
Designed by Raja Feather Kelly
Price: $25 / $20 Danspace Project members (includes shipping)
Since 2010, Danspace Project has published catalogues as part of its series of artist-curated Platforms. Initiated by Danspace Project Executive Director and Chief Curator Judy Hussie-Taylor, the Platforms, “exhibitions that unfold over time,” contextualize contemporary dance and performance practices and histories. For the 12th edition, Dancing Platform Praying Grounds: Blackness, Churches, and Downtown Dance, historical research, personal testimony, original artwork, interviews, and historic photographs uncover the intersecting ways places of worship have shaped religious, African Diasporic, and postmodern dance practices over past centuries. Contributors include Lauren Bakst, Lydia Bell, Thomas F. DeFrantz, Stephen Facey, Keely Garfield, Judy Hussie-Taylor, Darrell Jones, Prathibha Kanakamedala, Kelly Kivland, Cynthia Oliver, Susan Osberg, Carl Paris, Same As Sister (Hilary Brown and Briana Brown-Tipley), Radhika Subramaniam, Kamau Ware, Ni’Ja Whitson, Tara Aisha Willis, Mabel O. Wilson, and Reggie Wilson.
The catalogue, designed by Raja Feather Kelly, and edited by Lydia Bell, Kristin Juarez, and Reggie Wilson, echoes Wilson’s choreographic logic and research methodology that reflect the complexity of time, space, and movement across the African Diaspora.