Collen Ndemeh Fitzgerald (performer, researcher), Prof. Dr. Mariama Diagne (dancer, dance scientist), Isabel Raabe (curator, dancer)
In a performative talk we explore the dancing body as a site of resistance, guided by a decolonial alphabet. Each letter of RESISTANCE becomes an embodied concept:
R – Ritual: cyclic return, anchoring the body to meaning
E – Embodiment: knowledge held in the body, beyond language
S – Sensuality: reclaiming bodily power against objectification
I – Improvisation: freedom in spontaneity, ancestral echoes in the present
S – Survival: embodied strategies of persistence under oppression—dancing as a way to stay alive, spiritually, emotionally, culturally
T – Transcendence: movement that carries us beyond trauma, into spirit and imagination
A – Ancestry: honouring lineage and wisdom carried in movement
N – Nurture: care for the self, the community, and cultural continuity
C – Crisis; Crisis is not a state of emergency, but a permanent component of resistance, healing and transformation
E – Entanglement: embracing interconnectedness, the cosmology of resilience
Through this embodied alphabet, we aim to co-create knowledge that resists violant systems of fragmentation. Our talk will blend academic reflection, poetry, gesture, personal memory, and dance to explore how resistance lives and breathes in the moving body.
With this alphabet of lived knowledge, we seek to expand conversations around decoloniality, care, and embodied knowledge, reclaiming dance as a radical, relational, and reparative act.
The lecture performance was developed for the conference Dancing with Decolonisation on 17 and 18 July 2025.
The Dancing Body As A Space Of Restistance
Let’s Spell R-E-S-I-S-T-A-N-C-E Together!
Lecture-Performace
Collen Ndemeh Fitzgerald (performer, researcher), Prof. Dr. Mariama Diagne (dancer, dance scientist), Isabel Raabe (curator, dancer)
In a performative talk we explore the dancing body as a site of resistance, guided by a decolonial alphabet. Each letter of RESISTANCE becomes an embodied concept:
R – Ritual: cyclic return, anchoring the body to meaning
E – Embodiment: knowledge held in the body, beyond language
S – Sensuality: reclaiming bodily power against objectification
I – Improvisation: freedom in spontaneity, ancestral echoes in the present
S – Survival: embodied strategies of persistence under oppression—dancing as a way to stay alive, spiritually, emotionally, culturally
T – Transcendence: movement that carries us beyond trauma, into spirit and imagination
A – Ancestry: honouring lineage and wisdom carried in movement
N – Nurture: care for the self, the community, and cultural continuity
C – Crisis; Crisis is not a state of emergency, but a permanent component of resistance, healing and transformation
E – Entanglement: embracing interconnectedness, the cosmology of resilience
Through this embodied alphabet, we aim to co-create knowledge that resists violant systems of fragmentation. Our talk will blend academic reflection, poetry, gesture, personal memory, and dance to explore how resistance lives and breathes in the moving body.
With this alphabet of lived knowledge, we seek to expand conversations around decoloniality, care, and embodied knowledge, reclaiming dance as a radical, relational, and reparative act.
The lecture performance was developed for the conference Dancing with Decolonisation on 17 and 18 July 2025.