*Movement Artists (In Video): Saroya Corbett, Amanda L. Edwards, Lela Aisha Jones, Peaches Jones, Oiya Lowe
*Movement Artists (for TRM/Twin Cities): Zakiya L. Cornish, Amanda L. Edwards, Lela Aisha Jones, Peaches Jones, Aigner Picou, Deneane Richburg
*Music/Sound/Vocal Artists (In Video): Nasir Dickerson, Keisha Hutchins Hirlinger
*DESCRIPTION OF THE WORK: Native Portals, thus far, is a tetralogy or quadrilogy and a multi-episodic movement performance series that includes Lynching & Love (2012), Release Mourning Clearing (2016), Continuum of Action [The Witness Spectrum] (2016) and Continuum of Action [The Witness] (2017). These works have been renewed and overlaid in many versions through live performance and film. For The Requisite Movers/Twin Cities, a new series of excerpts have been composed as one work to offer an experience that exhibits the progression of the work through its many mediums of dance, theatre, social action, and performance art.
Native Portals was created prior to and during the most recent series of killings of black people that jolted the nation in terrifying ways—smothering hope and evoking anger. The works capture the continual processing of trauma and attempts to get through without washing over the spiritual, physical, and emotional violence that is so vibrantly alive in our U.S. existence today. The first Native Portals work was ironically inspired by the invisibility of lynching in our U.S. history and present society—effervescent and ghostly—felt everyday by black folk—ignored by those with the privilege to do so. Over the years and intentionally woven into the fabric of the work, are tumultuous accounts of events surrounding the Cradock Four (1985 Cradock South Africa), the Greensboro Massacre (1979 North Carolina), and the MOVE Organization Bombing (1978 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) as well as their subsequent Truth and Reconciliation Commissions and/or forums. Native Portals is a homage to lives lost and to those lives dedicated to action. May all the souls of black folk rest in peace and power as black life is tied to all life.
