In search of our aunts’ gardens: Choreographic reconstruction, race and bodily transfer in Black Lōkəs

Abstract

Abstract This article is an analysis of a Practice as Research (PaR) project titled Black Lōkəs. Black Lōkəs (2017) is an experimental reconstruction of Trisha Brown’s Locus (1975). This article investigates the possibility of race being used as a creative lens for dance reconstruction, a lens that does not privilege accuracy or fidelity in a traditional sense but seeks to mine the possibility of dance reconstruction as a generative act that moves beyond preservation politics. This article is composed of three connected but distinct sections, including a brief overview of performance studies’ and critical dance studies’ use of the ‘archive’ in performance; a review of Black Lōkəs (2017) by a dance practitioner who also works with the body as archive; and the methodological process and theoretical underpinnings of the creation of Black Lōkəs (2017). This article consults both critical race theorists and dance theorists who, in concert, suggest novel possibilities for and through dance reconstruction and the politics that surround the archival fever in dance making.