What happens when we take off our socks? The bittersweet power of introspection: a response by Aaliyah Christina

SJ Swilley in rehearsal at the Dance Center of Columbia College.

In January/February 2024, dance artist SJ Swilley held a production residency at the Dance Center of Columbia College supported by Chicago Dancemakers Forum. They invited collaborators Mawu Ama Ma'at Gora and Graciella Ye'Tsunami to help shape their work, Aaliyah Christina as an embedded writer, and Jovan Landry as the photographer to document some of the process. A performance in progress of this work will be held April 26 & 27, 2024 as part of the Dance Center’s Chicago Artists Spotlight Festival.

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Run I (31 minutes)

“We’re gonna see what comes up today. Yesterday, I was a different person. I’m a person who lives in the past, present, and future all at the same time. It’s interesting.”

“Do you remember where you were? On March 14, 2020?”

“Let’s go on a journey, but let’s remember: just because you see this doesn’t mean you’re my intended audience.”

They’re up on the catwalk (in the rafters) and they’re speaking in what seems like a stream of consciousness, but it’s clear they’ve thought this through (at least to me). Now, whether they’ve written it down to be a script is up for debate*. They’ve thought it through over and over again. I cannot see them, but that’s only because I’m not sure where they are up there and don’t feel like trying to find them. The sound of their voice in its omniscience will do for now. A playlist of R&B sets a smooth, comfortable vibe for the run. 

“I want you to bear witness to me in-process. I want you to see me. I want you to witness me. I want you to… *deep sigh* Perception is so hard.”

C****** as a conversational voice, out of sight? I don’t know how I feel about it.

Their grounding in Chicago as home is ever present in their movement vocabulary/quality since I last saw them perform, but that was virtual. This is live, in the flesh. Things have shifted with more certainty. Their spine is activated. Their feet are planted. Their head voice is strong.

“Chicago two years ago, born in Charlotte, philly for grad school.” Breath comes through easily. Strength is seen in their profile, a silhouette. 

Ms. D — Columbia campus security — comes in to say hi. She’s met with smiles.

“…*chuckles* oh Asé.”

The improvisation coupled with the spoken text feels like watching the unfolding of my first dancemaking class circa 2013. Unsure about what’s happening next, but definitely eager to feel/see how things unravel. They ruminate about the many mispronunciations of their birth name, referencing their 10th grade gym teacher. Today they have a suitcase with clothes strewn about accompanied with a bottle of prozac, a small flashlight, some body mist/cologne, and a reusable water bottle.

“Grounding, recentering back into the space.”

“I don’t always feel like I’m in body (x2), so my name has to change along with that discomfort, right?” 

Right? Yes, you read that right. They baby crawl across the floor and I wonder who is their “intended audience?” There’s a consistency in laterally carving out space with their arms. I’m not gonna mention anything about **** here unless it explicitly comes up. 

“They say without a test, you cain’t have a testimony, so really my message is tryna grapple with a lot of things…” in an effort to download, understand, recognize…

“I wanna share my story… don’t you have a story? You have something you wanna say?” 

Blood memory… who in their lineage are they experiencing?

“Inside my marrow, my tissue, she/her, Wanda, my grandmother. Happy Black History Month, y’all. She lives in me. She’s still here.”

Wholly open about their internal processes which exist and transcend their outer world. 

With creation collaborators Mawu Ama Ma'at Gora and Graciella Ye'Tsunami

Run II  (27 minutes)

They are not shy with expressing gratitude and disbelief of the blessing that their life has become.

“I want you to think about your process. I want you to remember a time… these last 3, 4, 5, years have been truly indicative of transformation.” 

There’s a neon spotlight on their suitcase and other materials. There is no music today. Only voice. Beautiful chorus? I am?

“Watch how you perceive me. Watch.(x2)” 

I wonder what they’ll wear in April.

“Thank you, K****.”

“It was, it was, and is S**** J**”

“I’m just grateful that I have the art to be able to process it. I want you to see me, but watch how you perceive me.” 

The voice work isn’t just spoken. They sing as well. They don’t sang. They just sing.

“I been at Columbia College Chicago. *chuckles* I been in the now. I been in my car. I been on the internet. Charlotte bred, chicago based. Living, loving, in love, out of love. In it, again and again and again and again.”

The upper spine does most of the work. I wonder what will happen when they take their socks off and release their lower back and let go of the full control of their lower body. It's all so beautiful anyway. I just wonder what happens when they get ugly.

“Selfish, self-indul-gent… self-indulgent (x4) I’m in my selfish era. How’d you get your name? My momma, a lover, me.”

Repetition is the name of the game and the body is just the board piece. Came to chicago in 2021 and auditioned for Red Clay, presenting more femme, but this city changes you. It’s where dogma and indoctrination come to die. Well… maybe not die, but it’s definitely where they come to sink… drown… suffocate. No more head-tail connection. Release it for a bit. Not forever, just temporarily.

“When you know somebody that’s always got a story to tell, you can't always believe it. I get that. *laughter* Going live.”

If you could write a love letter to Baby S****, what would you tell them? What questions do you have for future you? SJ, are you ready to meet them at the crossroad?

“I’d say there’s corruption of the heart. There’s corruption of the mind. I’d say you need to create some… you magical thing you, you’re alright.” 

I’m glad I can see them now. I see them whole here. When will we keep away from people pleasing? Who are the people we want to like us and why? Is an unapologetic and unbothered life un/fathomable? How do you break away from the former and move closer to the latter without letting it corrupt you? How do you make yourself incorruptible? What is ego death and how do we achieve it? A dear friend asked me a few months ago, do you die for yourself every day? Do you die on the page? How does your Death shape you? I wonder… Is this the space to introduce theories on Death and dying? The choice and the murder? To infinity and finity(?) What does it take to see yourself? To know yourself? To downright show up for yourself? How much does it take to own up for your mistakes? How much does it take to honor your triumphs? Do you choose others’ perception of you? Do you choose their treatment of you? When do you choose you?

Spiral and fall. Spiral and rise.

SJ and collaborators in process on stage in front of SJ’s projected onto the scrim

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Aaliyah Christina is a 2024 Embedded Writer selected by SJ Swilley in partnership with Chicago Dancemakers Forum & PRJ.

Radiate: a response by Shireen Hamza

Image captured by Oz Lamont

In November 2023, Maggie Bridger was in-residence working on "Radiate” at Links Hall in order to adapt her dance film from 2021 for the stage. Maggie is the recipient of a 2023 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Production Residency sponsored by Walder Foundation.

This response is from embedded writer, Shireen Hamza, to Maggie Bridger’s production residency at Links Hall.

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A body in pain seeks relief.

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Bodies in constant pain seek relief constantly, until we can’t anymore. Relief is not always achievable, but we search for comfort until our movements become rote, habitual. Sometimes our needs conflict. We roll aching ankles only to be reminded of the pain in our lower backs. We sink into a comfy chair until we can’t sustain it anymore, until something or other propels us back into the search for relief. Sometimes tools help us prolong our fleeting moments of comfort.

Maggie Bridger’s “Radiate” is, for me, a performance about the constant negotiations of a body in pain. A sensitive dancer and choreographer, Maggie attends to her own routines of seeking relief and amplifies them on the stage. On Sunday November 12th, on the final day of her production residency at Links Hall, I attended a showing of the newest development in this project. Upon entrance, I walked straight to a velvety blue cushion large enough to lie down on, that Maggie often brings with her to disability dance events. Sprawled on the cushion, I watched the “white box” studio of Links Hall transform into Maggie’s hallway, office, and kitchen, through the clever use of props, light, sound, and movement. I’ve attended a range of classes, jams, and performances in that room over the last three years, but never had it felt so cozy.

These were staged versions of the home spaces I had seen in Maggie’s first iteration of “Radiate,” a dance film shot in 2021. Therein, with overlapping images of her radiator and her body, Maggie explored how dramatically her life had changed in the pandemic lockdown because she could stay home. Suddenly, she had access to tools like a comfy chair and a heating pad all the time, but that very same heating pad now shaped and limited her movement in new ways. Her Chicago Dancemakers Forum production residency at Links Hall this November enabled Maggie to develop this work into a performance for the stage. The way Maggie took up her residency was characteristic of all of her work: she pulled in a dozen other artists, most of whom are Deaf, sick, and disabled dancers, photographers, and writers.

In her newest iteration of “Radiate,” Maggie displayed, described, and repeated some of her movements–the choreography of her daily life–until they were strange and unfamiliar. Until her home was a stage and the stage was her home. Until the initial shock of intimacy softened and we settled into her living room, welcomed guests, all.

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Today marks two months into the siege on Gaza. In these two months, we have been witnessing atrocity after atrocity, the latest chapter in eight decades of the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes. We have seen war criminal Henry Kissinger eulogized by the powerful, even as people in the Congo, Sudan, Haiti and elsewhere struggle desperately to garner public support for their safety and freedom. We have seen the non-indictment of yet another white police officer, this one instrumental in the murder of Elijah Mcclain. We have met refugees from Venezuela sleeping outside in the cold, all over our city. Maggie and Alison Kopit, the Access Dramaturg of this residency, spent their breaks calling & emailing congresspeople, witnessing the horrors of a genocide continuing –impossibly– for an entire month. Now, as I write, another two months have passed, and the siege continues. It was part of the residency and it is part of this write-up; I am starting to fear, God forbid, that the siege will be ongoing by the time this piece is published.

How can you welcome people into your home, when so many people are being forced from theirs? And what kind of a welcome can include the many people in our cross-impairment disability arts community, making that one “home” accessible to all? Maggie’s thoughtful collaborations with Blind, Deaf, sick, and neurodivergent artists are an important part of how she ensures that “Radiate” will work in different ways for different audiences.

Systems of oppression limit our imaginations of what our futures look like. Living with pain everyday often makes it hard to imagine my own future (more of this, but worse?). But being part of disability dance communities has given me brief glimpses of a future that, together, we can keep dreaming up and fighting for. War, pandemic, incarceration, occupation, environmental racism… there are many ongoing “mass disabling events.” My time in this community prepares me to look upon the future and say: we will all be there, and we will be dancing.

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Image captured by Oz Lamont

Creating collective access in cross-impairment disability spaces is a puzzle Maggie delights in solving. Logistics is love.

By collective access, I mean setting up a space in which we can ensure together that everyone’s access needs are met. We all know enough about each other’s access needs that we can pay attention to whether they are met and rise to meet them if we can. In a disability dance space, if we set up a rule that everyone speaking English introduces themselves before speaking, and uses a mic to speak, that would facilitate participation for folks who are Blind/low-vision and folks who are hard of hearing. It would help live captioners and ASL interpreters hear, as well as those joining on Zoom from their beds. The time it would take to pass the mic would create necessary pauses and time to digest what was said. If someone was not able to move towards the mic, someone else would bring it to them. But no matter how much planning goes into it, access is never complete – and folks still have to interrupt when their access is disrupted due to human oversight or technological malfunction. Then, we troubleshoot, we improve our system, we make it work.

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Bend, bend

Bend, bend

Bend, bend

Blue Maggie

Joán Maggie

Pajama Maggie

Voice Maggie

Shadow Maggie

Dark Brown Cozy Chair Maggie

Video Maggie

Radiator Maggie

Bend, bend

Bend, bend

Bend, bend

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In “Radiate,” Maggie uses media to multiply herself. Sometimes her virtual selves and her in-person presence blurred; I couldn’t tell whether some of her sighs were recorded or live. Her recorded voice fills the room as an audio description of the piece. Captions and a video of Joán Joel interpreting in ASL appear on different parts of the projection depending on where Maggie is. Maggie sometimes appears in the projection itself. With the sound design of Andy Slater spatializing the kitchen, office, and hallway even further and marking the transitions from day to night, the performance will be as rich sonically as it is visually.

Maggie’s work as a dancemaker often gestures at imperfection of access within a performance setting, and at the limitations of our attention as audience members, disabled and non-disabled alike. Many aspects of Maggie’s works remain partially illegible to all audiences. Balancing that fugitive desire with a foundational commitment to access is the puzzle at the heart of Maggie’s work.

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A search for warmth pervades the piece, even beyond the centrality of Maggie’s electric heating pad to its conception. Living with chronic pain and illness in Chicago, Maggie seeks comfort through warmth, physical and social. The sound of the radiator, recorded in her apartment, fills the space intermittently. At the showing, we learned that the repetition of Maggie dipping and circling her knees, accompanied by the words “bend, bend” in the audio description, brings warmth to her knees before she changes positions.

Towards the end of the showing, I felt my body tiring, aching, stiffening. I lay down on the heating pad central to this performance and turned it up to the maximum setting. It was shaped differently from the one I use at home. This constant adjustment of temperature to ease chronic pain is a privilege, relying on steady access to shelter, layers of clothing, and for the cyborgs among us, electricity and batteries. As I watched “Radiate,” I thought of the misery that temperature brings to people forced to leave their homes. From the millions on the move under bombardment in Gaza now to the refugees living outside in tents to the people living in cages at Cook County Jail and Stateville Prison, who I met through teaching in prison education projects and volunteering with a bail fund. I felt this grief well up and overflow when Maggie suddenly slid down the wall - PLUNK - and her heating pad came unplugged.

Sometimes our will to seek comfort runs out.

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My affection for Maggie floods my heart and my fingers with warmth as I write this. When I falter, when I doubt whether making art is worthy of our time and effort, amid so much horror, I remember how the many rooms we have danced in together have changed me. The disability dance community has helped me want to live another day in this body, to learn better how to listen to, embrace, and share its wisdom. A few weeks ago, I attended an outdoor vigil for thousands of people murdered in Gaza. But as the names of martyrs under six months old were read aloud, I was in too much pain to stand. I laid down on the concrete sidewalk and let the tears flow, grateful that dance had made the ground a place of refuge for me.

Sick and disabled people know intimately that we –not the state– keep each other alive. We dream up a world in which the value of our lives is celebrated by society. As Maggie started “Radiate” in the pandemic, she was not sleeping much. She was worried for sick and disabled family members living in rural Missouri, where an under-resourced healthcare system could not keep people safe.

We know the ingenuity it takes to sustain each other. Dancing together means we can resist together – state violence, prisons and policing, eugenics, apartheid (medical and otherwise), here and everywhere. We prepare for the cold, bring warmth into our achy selves and into each other, and move forward.

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Shireen Hamza is a 2024 Embedded Writer selected by Maggie Bridger in partnership with Chicago Dancemakers Forum & PRJ.