The Switching

This workshop is specifically designed for Black people and People of Colour (BPOC)**, creating a safe and supportive environment for exploration and learning.

I like to imagine that this practice in performance improvisation, The Switching, is a strategy in immediate evolution, rapid-fire shifting, sublime learning of and in the moment.

I began this practice while dealing with my curiosities around a question I obsessed over: “Can I change myself?”. Our practice will deal with strategic essentialization – through the immediate re-design of ourselves into other creatures, or other ways of being our innate creatures – and working with immediately identifying the restrictions/limitations that are inescapable. It’s round about, and ideally will come full circle.

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Now, in this moment, it’s circle/curve through my distals, and my distals
are everywhere, and my desire travels in orbits, in cycles, and my vision is a limb.

And now, in this moment, my vision is a limb, and I am comprised of everything
that I can sense that I cannot see, and I am composed of the same
material all throughout my body, and my voice is flat.

And now, in this moment, my voice is flat, and my rhythm is insistently
percussive, and my organs erupt to propel me into movement, and
then they recompose themselves, and I am responsible for all of the sound I can
hear, and I am feeling overwhelmed at all of my responsibility, and my
erotic desire is piercing through my pores.

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For me, there is something deeply spiritual about it, something confusing, something humbling/humiliating about it. I feel like it has theoretical links to code switching, especially as it has to do with my Blackness and queerness, experiences of immediate compartmentalisation/contextualisation as a defense mechanism, as a means of survival.

“It kinda asks the “safe space” academic overuse and misuse to reexamine itself cause not only am I accountable for what I’m choosing to put into the room, but I’m acknowledging that there are things about my makeup/training/culture/privilege/unconscious/blind spots that can also cause a shift in the room or the community or the world for better or for worse or who knows really what the effect will be. Something about this philosophy is great to me because it doesn’t make me feel like I have to fret. It doesn’t make me feel totally paralyzed to choose or move. It does make me hyper-diligent about the messiness of it all, the plurality of it all.“
- Christina Gesualdi

Who is it for?

This workshop is specifically designed for Black people and People of Colour (BPOC)**, creating a safe and supportive environment for exploration and learning.

About the Artist

I am a choreographer, performer, and video artist, based between traditional lands of the Tutelo-Saponi speaking peoples and lands of the Lenape peoples. My early exposure to dance was through African dance and Capoeira performed on California college campuses, where my Pan- Africanist parents studied and worked. My formal training began with Kariamu Wesh’s contemporary African dance technique, Umfundalai in college. And my work continues to be influenced by various sources, my foundations in living rooms and parties, my technical training, and continued study of contemporary dance and performance. Including movement training with dancer and anatomist Irene Dowd alongside both my sociological research and training in J-sette with Jermone Donte Beacham.

Through my work, I strive to engage in and further dialogues with Black queer folks, create lovingly agitating performances that recognizes History as only one option for contextualising the present. In addition to encouraging artists to understand themselves as part of a larger community of workers who imagine pathways to economic ecosystems that prioritise care, interdependence, and delight.

I work collaboratively in many constellations. I co-founded idiosynCrazy productions in 2008, and co-directed it with Shannon Murphy. Since 2011, I have worked with J-Sette artist Jermone Donte Beacham on a series of visual and performance works Let ‘im Move You. And have performed with Marianela Boán, Silvana Cardell, devynn emory, Emmanuelle Hunyh, Tania Isaac, Kun-Yang Lin, C. Kemal Nance, Ligia Lewis, Marissa Perel, Leah Stein, Keith Thompson, Kate Watson-Wallace, Merián Soto, Reggie Wilson, Jesse Zaritt, and Kariamu Welsh (as a member of Kariamu & Company). From 2009-2018, I was an Assistant Professor of Dance at Swarthmore College.

Awards include Live Arts Brewery Fellowship (Philadelphia) 2010-2011, Pew Center for Arts & Heritage Fellowship (Philadelphia) 2012, NRW Tanzrecherche Fellowship (Germany) 2013, New York Live Arts Studio Series (then, Dance Theater Workshop) residency with Jesse Zaritt (NYC) 2013, Independence Fellowship (Philadelphia) 2016, Sacatar Residency Fellowship (Bahia, Brazil) 2017, MAP Fund award with Jermone Donte Beacham 2017, NEFA National Dance Project Production Grant with Jermone Donte Beacham 2017, MANCC residency 2017, EMPAC residency 2019, Creative Capital Award 2020, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant-to-Artists award 2020, Herb Alpert Award 2023, Guggenheim Fellowship 2023, and three Swarthmore College Cooper Foundation grants for presenting other artists (Swarthmore, PA).

My birth middle name is Mtafuta-Ukweli, which means “one who searches for the truth” in Kiswahili.