black pit (work-in-progress) is a new performance* work in progress conceptually linking the ring shout, mosh pit, and crowdsourced archive to suppose the anarchic potentiality of coming together in spiral time. In other words, black pit is busy with the ways black formations--and formations within formations--occur, and what they might tell us about black sociality within the purview of the state. Beginning with the 2023 Montgomery, AL Boat Dock Brawl whose filming went viral, an ensemble of dancers work through the brawl's gestures as portal-opening technology, and its anarchy, care, violence, and mass serve as framing conventions. Re- and de-contextualizing a panoply of movement phrases arising from drills, martial arts, and performances of sacred spiraling, and using improvisation to set and re-set the Brawl as a series of scores and movement grammars, we consider uprising as form.

This presentation is a work-in-progress for a larger project that will premiere in 2028. The VAT iteration is devised and activated by Rahila Coats, Makini, Jeremy Guyton, keyon gaskin, Solmon Bowser, and Marguerite Hemmings. black pit is conceived and choreographed by Anna Martine Whitehead.