Cat Mahari’s _Blk Ark: The Impossible Manifestation_ Readies Us For A Way Forward: a response by J’Sun Howard

Image captured by Ricardo Adame

Blk Ark: The Impossible Manifestation by Cat Mahari, in collaboration with Jarius King & Julius Brüntink

Presented as a part of work around series curated by Kara Brody & Amanda Maraist through Steppenwolf’s LookOut Series,

February 4-5, 2023

Steppenwolf 1700 Theater

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I wanted Black freedom to be the religion. 

–Javon Johnson, “That Last Conversation between Malcolm X and His Daughter,” Ain’t Never Not Been Black  

Knotted ropes hang from the ceiling, geometric patterns of blue painters tape grid the stage floor like constellations, a causal setup for a band, and a looming spectre of darkness welcomes us into the theater. This minimal yet striking set reminds me that the carceral state tries to put its noose on Black people. Yet through our resilience and resistance, we slip out from and invent ways to evade the ever-present, ever-persistent violence. Blk Ark: The Impossible Manifestation is less concerned with the incessant trauma of Black people living in anti-Black cosmos. Instead, the work—what scholar Christina Sharpe calls “wake work”—unfolds the unexpected beauty in playful game-like movement sequences, projections of offbeat montages, pauses of breath loitering, and intercessional wails of song lyrics to show us some of the ways to practice freedom. 

In this work-in-progress, Cat Mahari’s Blk Ark is a multi-disciplinary embodiment of Black grammar or “the reconsideration of futurity through the structures of language [as] a radical gesture that allows one to place oneself in a time that is imminent, urgent, and full of possibility.” Mahari is joined by mover Jarius King and bassist Julius Brüntink. They all wear black T-shirts, black pants, and sneakers—nothing to distract us from their new world building. Brüntink strums his base as to awaken the souls lost on their journey to the side. Ephebic in-between the knotted ropes, Mahari and King patty cake and do their variation of the infamous Kid ‘n Play’s dance scene from House Party (1990). They make the game complicated by counting to four and seeing who can jump the highest over each other’s raised leg. Once the game is over, they torque and twist their bodies as they reach with their hands and feet for the knotted ropes. King climbs one, then swings from it to another one. Finally holding himself up in a crossed-leg sitting position. Can he see the new world from there?

Image captured by Ricardo Adame

As King walks over the table to sit at a mixer, Mahari blows a trumpet as if she is calling us home. In the Bible, the seven trumpets signal for the end and the beginning of the world—we do not know what is next, even if it is the rapture. Mahari proceeds to sing a song. (Later she sings a song with her back to us, which amplifies the image of the back of a FedEx truck and other vehicles in the film projection to indicate a metaphor of departing.) The “ . . . reading rainbow . . . ” lyric is a nod to the other side of the carceral state. Rainbows are not necessarily important to Black culture. Nevertheless, you can relate them to how Harriet Tubman relied on the North Star to guide her along the Underground Railroad. Rainbows are a sign of a new beginning, a reminder of the infinite possibilities that life holds. Here, in Blk Ark, the infinite possibilities to get free. 

While Mahari, King, and Brüntink play a song featuring a rainbow that could be a lullaby coded with a secret language to aid in getting to the other side, a film streams on the back wall. Half of the screen cuts between a shot of Lake Michigan, vehicles driving away from the camera, and a graffitied wall. The other half of the screen shifts between various shots that accumulate with a person with a hat with rabbit ears, a person with a bear headpiece, and one with a fox. The presumption is that those animals are their zodiac signs, which provides a little insight on how they may live their daily lives. From playing basketball to riding the bus to Footworking in a parking lot . . . This, in turn, can also be a reference to the constellation-like grids on the stage floor. Black people are expected to be magical and ten times better than everyone else. Yet the film uplifts that the Black mundane is just as magical and offers another framework for practicing freedom. 

In the last movement scene with Mahari and King, they spiral and whirl back in-between the knotted ropes. For me, it evokes the Iconic Ballroom commentator Kevin JZ Prodigy’s chant, Feels like I’m going in circles / you’re like a maze / I can’t get through / should I go / should I go / should I go left / should I go / should I go / should I go right, demonstrating that getting to the other side may take longer than we hope. Using the momentum of the circular movement, they sink down the floor to repeat rolling and leaping over each other. Exhausted by the end of the display of perseverance, they return to climb the knotted ropes still unable to see or make it to the other side. 

During graduate school at the University of Michigan, my research focused on Black Fugitivity, which represents the ongoing and historical resistance to the systems of oppression Black people face, and the ways in which we have sought to escape or evade those systems in order to preserve our autonomy, dignity, and freedom. Movement ideas such as the hold (of the ship), the embrace of Black people greeting each other as always an arrival and not a goodbye, circularity, the fragmentation of personal narratives, re/memory, and counter-memorial (á la Ralph Lemon) were the tenets to “choreograph” and conceptualize Black Fugitivity. I was excited to see many of the ideas showed up in Blk Ark. I am curious to know what other movement ideas Mahari might consider fugitive.

It was a pleasure to witness the early stages of this world building; we were left in rapt because we know of what this new world holds.

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J’Sun Howard is a Chicago-based dancemaker. He holds an MFA in Dance and a certificate in World Performance Studies from the University of Michigan. He is a 2020 3Arts Awardee, a recipient of their inaugural Esteemed Artist Award from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE), and a 2019 Asian Cultural Council Fellow. A Links Hall Co-MISSION Fellow, a Ragdale Foundation Sybil Shearer Fellow, 2017 3Arts Make A Wave Awardee, and 2014 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist. His works have been presented at Links Hall, Ruth Page Center for the Arts, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Defibrillator Performance Gallery, Patrick’s Cabaret (Minneapolis, MN), Danspace Project (NYC), Center for Performance Research (NYC), Detroit Dance City Festival (Detroit, MI), New Dance Festival (Daejeon, South Korea) where he won Best Dance Choreographer and the World Dance Alliance’s International Young Choreographers’ Project (Kaohsiung, Taiwan), among others. He has been commissioned by Northwestern University, Columbia College Chicago, World Dance Alliance, and The Art Institute of Chicago.