The Brutal Joy unfurls Black vernacular line dance and sartorial gesture as intellectual discourse, reverie, and devotion to Black-living. As a scored improvisation for dance, light, and sound, The Brutal Joy explores these diasporic practices as knowledge reservoirs and outward facing, physically dialogic activations that allow for actualizing oneself at present in a dance of future possibilities. The performers’ attention oscillates between compositional structures of the riff, the vamp, and the break, while attending to the mutually dependent processes of individuation and ritualization. Gesture, gait, gaze, rhythm, textural sound, shadow, and light are the materials for proposing “What if?” and “Now what?” as provisional questions towards imagining otherwise. Centering dance and attire as relational and living counter-archives, the work considers movement and personal style as tools for self-determination and the collective reclamation of Black humanitarian value.

Choreography and performance: Justine A. Chambers
Sound design and performance: Mauricio Pauly
Lighting design and performance: James Proudfoot
Dramaturgy: Vanessa Kwan
Garments by: Old Fashioned Standards

The Brutal Joy has been created with the support of the Periculum Foundation, Canada Council for the Arts, The Can Dance Network, Agora de la Danse, The Dance Centre, The National Arts Centre, and Toronto Dance Theatre.