Listen, Watch, Move: Embodied Listening as Structured Improvisation in Decolonialist Research

Abstract

Not So Long Ago…Not So Far Away is a performance I created in 2018, and it was first performed at the University of California Riverside in parallel with my academic research into the South African student movements #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall which began in 2015. This research led to my 2020 doctoral dissertation: “Decolonial Moves: Re-Membering Black Women in South African Contemporary Dance.” The performance at the 2019 African Theatre Association conference mobilized notions of decoloniality and artistic practice in a different southern African space, providing opportunities to engage an international audience in thinking through and moving around the challenges and opportunities of embodiment as a decolonial practice.