Her movements evoke struggle and pain: At various points during her

performance, she isolates different limbs, breaking down and slamming her
body onto the floor so only the sound of flesh and bone on hardwood is
audible. Okpokwasili makes it impossible for the audience to look away, even
at the most uncomfortable of moments.

Piecemeal // collaborative

== cross-cultural cross-disciplinary

small shaking / movements + small sighing figures of music / repetition, arms start down

intensifying of music + buildup – arms start to raise

build up with ambient noise (fading of sighing figures) + more shaking

lighting is shifting

people in the foreground are shifting (silhouettes)

monkey noise / cries begin with shaking taming down a bit

at 16:20 – hard electronic sound / rapidfire accompanied with sharp jerky motions to the
rhythm + shaking = space opening // small sphere of motion ++ audience / or people starts to
talk (“ I thought this was a family thing what’s going on “)

starts to move body in more lower kinespheres / full body motion

starts to move forward and backwards in position/space

electronic music drops and she drops back to mere shaking (with the high ambient noise)

completely turns to face audience and pulls shirt / looks fearful and unfocused

starts to do Spanish rolling of arms and less shaking

starts shaking and spasming // struggle

impulses on her / getting pushed around (breathing is very heavy) + steady shaking of the hips
// more fluid motion now – starts to calm / but still has spasm phases
face turns more intense / and small shaking again / hands grab onto body a bit / feels as if stuff
(shivering)

eyes shift in focus and face turns (while the body was locked in motion)

dark rumbling music starts as she leans back with her head cocked / mouth is open and looks
watchful / fearful

string music (very shaky) starts and she looks ahead / alert => music stops very abruptly

continues to dance and gets more and more intense and then suddenly stops and lights black
out

she starts to speak of a note (poetry)

/ => what is an orgasm? / what does it feel like. child to an adult speaking. [on the beach] waves
looks like how an orgasm feel. [[ innocence vs oldness/maturity ]]

// talk of period (maturity/puberty)

// talk of sex / talks of pregnancy (older ‘sister’ is humorous)

// talk of Frisbee – being dirty and people touch it /

// talk of dreams (sexual) … [older] beach – looking for blue / (drops last of papers) and starts
running and crazy … feet on fire / blood // water is red (getting emotional) “bam” .. [younger]
that is so fucked up

starts to sing about broken glass, dust, / picking up paper

starts to poetry again / - sexualizing women

light comes on and fumbling on the ground and knocks on the floor very hard with body

“look at yourself and ask ‘am I awake’”

darken lights .. HELL dream / poetry again

lucid dreaming /

light comes on

more “look at yourself and ask am I awake” “look at your thigh”

slap your face slap your face you’re awake -> starts alphabet like letter/syllable sequence /
covers face + she starts singing about dying => falls / “ready go” => collapses

talks about what she “will” dream about (ambitions) -> transitions to more and more real
realities / dreams – have to do with her socioeconomic / racial position

light fades but paper bag illuminated

holds bag to forehead

more slam poetry – jealousy //

movement knowledge is cultural knowledge

movement knowledge is conceptual and emotional

movement knowledge is intertwined with other kinds of cultural knowledge

one must look past movement to get its meaning

movement is an IMMEDIATE CORPOREAL experience --- empathetic kinesthetic perception

WRITE a two page essay exploring Okpokwasili’s “Bronx Gothic.” What do you imagine her
intention to be? What tactics does she use to manifest her intention? What moved you? What
choices did she make to create the moment or image that moved you? Draw references and
supporting ideas from the readings. If you did any of the optional reading or viewing, feel free
to reference it here.

Okpokwasili’s “Bronx Gothic” grabs the audience from the seat from the very beginning. In it
there is very vivid imagery and movement illustrating raw emotions such as struggle, intensity,
and fear. Her intention is clarified through her juxtaposition of poetry and song amidst patient
sequences of dance, where she creates a humorous interplay between an older and a younger
girl. She discusses various topics of growing up as a black female including sex, periods, etc.,
which she reflects in her movements throughout the work, all slightly tinged with various
cultural knowledge and emotion (as defined by Sklar). We’ll look at what her intentions may
have been and highlight a few of the techniques and choices that she made that are particularly
moving.

Her intention in her dance is unclear from the way she curated the entire set, but I imagine that
she had a goal to express something larger than just her own story. From her explicit topical
mentions and discussions, it’s easy to generalize her entire performance as just an experience
of growing up and the hardships that come with. However, I think her intentions lie somewhere
more delicate and almost more global when you look at the pacing and the way she exposes
herself so vulnerably and openly to the crowd. Sklar tells us we have to look past the
movements to search for the meaning, and though many of her dance sequences seem as if to
dance her to death (as done in Rite of Spring), she creates poetry that hints at what the
movements may really be trying to tell us. There is a vulnerability in how she dances and speaks
that seems to uncover something very pure, as if to be discussing something very deep within –
like the human condition or a desire to be free. She draws up attention to these possibilities by
creating open ended narrative with her motions linking up to more primal human movements
and emotions.

Some of the things I found moving were some of the topical elements such as the loss of
innocence or societal pressure and the extreme intense captivation with the body and she
moved. She juxtaposed periods of time where she moved continuously vigorously and
unrelentingly with periods when she stood frozen. It felt as if she wanted to express her
feelings of being frozen in place at times by the expectation of others or as if she was stuck in
place and had lost the freedom to control her body. At other moments in the piece, she
appears as if to be getting pushed around by impulses around her whilst trying to maintain her
steady motion – as an expression helplessness almost. She combines the feeling of loss of
innocence with the feeling of social pressure almost as if society brings about a certain
ritualistic losing of innocence.

Other impressionable techniques she employed to achieve the more moving parts for me
personally included her remixing of ideas, her minimalist setting, and very sectionalized
choreography. She noticeably employs some use of what Naharin coins “remixing” in the Galili
book as a mechanism to be more dramatic and more personalized (and yet also somehow less
personalized and more general). She generates a lot of her movement on impulse as if she is
doing so on the spot with just a certain idea in mind. The unfolding of the dance seems even
interesting for her – as she does not know what it will be like until the performance comes, and
yet her movements are human – where we can feel empathy towards her movements as a
human cultural awareness. She uses a very minimalist set of background music and noise to
achieve her target moods and emotions. The lighting also changes with minimal effort (mostly
just lamps lying at particular points on the ground), yet impact her statements in very
meaningful ways. Altogether, these effects advance her very distinct sectionality in her set
where she blocks off section to section different ideas and emotions. Each coming section
combines elements that she’s worked with before with new ideas that she generates.