FOR ALL YOU’VE DONE FOR ME, 2022

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