Maybe less of a throwback and more of a reclaiming: we are about to transform those memories of high school dances that many of us didn’t attend – at least not in the way we wanted to.  Let’s get close and see what we can get up to way down below 95 bpm. Let’s be people dancing up on other people, when we want to and when we are wanted. Let’s give our permission for the proximity that we are feeling. Let’s be queer and normal and strange and open and close… very close… Sweating to the beat of slow motion.

Choreographers jumatatu m. poe and Donte Beacham will start off the night with a short instruction of some of the close dancing they have been experimenting with in rehearsal, related to the hip swing of the J-Sette march, and the importance of pelvic movement in African-descended dance forms.  Throughout the night, the dancers of This Is a Formation will perform brief slow choreographies.