Overview:
For All You’ve Done For Me (2022) was a private performance held in the Commons Gallery. Seven people were invited to witness a self-choreographed praise dance from The Dancer. The Dancer’s hair is nailed to the wall in a semicircle. The projector light faces The Dancer, obscuring her vision from the audience. The video projected is of The Dancer in her backyard. Sound from the video comes from mimicking her Mother singing, Thank You Lord (for all you’ve done for me, by Walter Hawkins. The Dancer is wearing a long-sleeved white praise dance dress and Black socks she forgot to take off.
What it felt like:
The cold of the cement greets my hands but not my feet
I forgot to take my socks off
The audio has already begun
The camera, recording in front
And I am nailed to the wall by the ends of my hair
For all you’ve done for me
Staring into the projection light, blinding myself from the gaze of the small audience around me
I begin to dance
For all you’ve done for me
Practiced movements
Praise dance self-taught
No longer in my bedroom now
I miss the carpet
Of the church I learned to dance in
The royal blue carpet that broke my fall as I fumbled the steps of my mother’s dance
For all you’ve done for me
My mother’s voice
echoing against the gallery’s white walls and cold cement
Soprano singing the chorus of her favorite gospel song
Hiting the pitch perfectly
I follow her
An imitation, exercising the similarities we both share and disagree with
For all you’ve done for me
The hair
tugs, pulls, stretches and sometimes
snaps
As I dance pinned to the wall
The time is now
The unpracticed part
This, the rehearsal for the years that follow
Turning, for the first time
Facing the wall of hair behind me
Grabbing as much as I can hold
I tugged, I pulled, stretched and snapped
I ripped the hair from the wall
Nails flying towards the audience, pitter-pattering against the cold cement floor
Nails constellationed on the wall
Nails embedded in the locks of hair that now fall to my side, envelope my body, cover my eyes and sway as I pull again, again, and again
The wall, the nails, the hair
Suspending my body above the cold cement as I forcefully try to remove it as my system of support
For all you’ve done for me
The final braid falls to the floor
And as do I
In exhausted, maniacal, fervent laughter
Shrouded in hair
*VIDEO EMBEDDED IS DOCUMENTATION OF THE BEFORE AND AFTER. NOT THE ACTUAL PERFORMANCE