The Brutal Joy

Emerging from traces of family gatherings on the South Side of Chicago, The Brutal Joy is a scored improvisation which unfurls Black vernacular line dance alongside sartorial gesture in the lineage of Black dandyism—as intellectual discourse, reverie, and devotion to Black-living. The Brutal Joy is a choreography of movement, sound, and light. As a counter-archival practice, it offers a way “of knowing the past in excess of the fictions of the archive” (Christina Sharpe). It serves as the other citation—a collection of footnotes, physical anecdote as theory, and an otherwise imagining. The Brutal Joy is a reservoir for inherited gesture, individual and collective affective memories, and under-documented histories.

Venue Info

The studio is fully accessible for wheelchair users and visitors with limited mobility. The downstairs toilet is fully accessible for disabled visitors with plenty of room to manoeuvre.

Additional Fierce access information can be found here.