After going viral for dancing to 80's music
In 2020, a few months into COVID 19 and social isolation, just after Ahmaud Arbery was killed, and then Breonna Taylor was killed, and then Nina Pop was killed, and the police were tossing, tasing, choking, and shooting Black people all over the U.S. and up and down my screen, I was fighting debilitating feelings in my body from witnessing and holding the anti-Black violence blazing ferociously in the middle of a global pandemic. It was still weeks before the video of George Floyd’s murder was released and I couldn’t stop crying. I was a container that was breaking. My nervous system was in collapse and my spirit was on the floor. I needed to find the strength to be a mother, grandmother, friend, and teacher. I used the tools I had. I prayed, I tapped, I texted friends, I bathed, I attempted to write poems. At one point, I turned on Marvin Gaye and began to dance. He sang, ”make me wanna holler, the way they do my life,” and I struck the air like Shango and swirled like Oya. I moved that energy through me so that I could preserve myself for myself and my family and community. I recorded myself dancing and sent it to my friends. I wrote an essay about it because art and expression are one form of both self-preservation and political action for me.
It is 2024 and we are witnessing “unspeakable violence” (Arundhati Roy) and starvation upon our elders, siblings, and children in Gaza. We are witnessing the same police from 2020, more funded and militarized than ever, tossing, tasing, choking, and punching our college students. We are witnessing our elders, siblings, and children in Congo enslaved, starving, and displaced for resources. And in Sudan, and in Haiti, and in…continue to name....we can see clearly (if we look at all) the horrific violence, inequity, and injustice all around the planet.
A couple of weeks ago, in the midst of this peripheral violence, my daughter asked me to dance to 80’s music. She was doing a “TikTok challenge.” My response was simple; I danced. I was able to dance in that moment because I continue to resist (some days better than others.) the ways in which oppressive violence attempts to debilitate our bodies, minds, and spirits. She asked me to dance, I had the capacity, and I took the opportunity to uplift my body, reup my energy, move in joy.
The TikTok video went viral, and soon I had friends reaching out asking if the video they had seen was me or some doppelgänger. The repeated sentiment was that it brought laughter and joy.
It may seem counter intuitive to dance in the face of genocide. But in fact, it is not. It is ancient technology. To endure, to witness, to speak, to be of service, to work for our collective liberation we must preserve ourselves (Audre Lorde), and rest (Nap Ministry), and create, and “impose beauty” (Lorraine Hansberry), and dance.
Not to veil from the truth but to preserve and strengthen ourselves enough to face it, to “not look away” (Arundhati Roy), and use our personal and collective power for our liberation.
