Medium: Burlesque Performance

Performance History:

2020 - B. Burlesque Blossoming and Blazing, Evanston, IL

2024 - Cage Fight Charlies Chicago Bar, Chicago, IL

The veil of darkness dividing [the Black gay and Christian] body from soul in the “place” of the black church is lifted in the darkened “space” of the gay night club - E. Patrick Johnson

This E. Patrick Johnson quote captures the spirit of this piece. For me, this burlesque performance was an exploration of my relationship to the church and my sexuality as a Black queer person.

Performance Documentation through Audio:

Notes and Reflections Grounded in Performance Theory:

In his book, Resistance of the Object: Aunt Hester's Scream, Fred Moten theorizes that performance is not outside the realm of reproduction. I believe that by presenting this performance through the context of the audience’s reaction to the performance, I recreate the performance for you to experience as a new work. This recreation then circulates the connotation and impact of the original performance.

In the case of Moten’s theorizations about reproduction, he discusses the reproduction of harm through performance. Specifically, Moten discusses Saidiya Hartman’s paper, Scenes of subjection: Terror, slavery, and self-making in nineteenth-century America, in which she is recounting a number of subjections of Black folks that reproduce harm. He challenges that even in her referencing subjections without detailing them, she is recapitulating the impact of the harm. I believe in a converse way, this audio documentation has the power to reproduce Black queer joy. This is particularly salient given Saidiya Hartman’s discourse on objectivity and hiding resistance covertly so you can perform it in front of the oppressor. Black joy is a radical act of resistance that challenges systems of oppression by imagining a world where Blackness and queerness are loved and nurtured . Inherently this worldbuilding through joy contradicts the one we live in. This leaves me to wonder about the power and potential of performing and reproducing acts of joy.