To our communities:

I acknowledge the many layers of trauma, grief, violence, and inequity facing members of our community of historically marginalized identities. I firmly support the uprisings led by BIPOC and their allies/accomplices, and I condemn all anti-Black violence, police violence, and the lack of community accountability that has led to this moment. I join the urgent call for justice for George Floyd (MN), Breonna Taylor (KY), Ahmaud Arbery (GA), Tony McDade (FL), and thousands of others whose names have echoed in the streets over this decade and long before. I acknowledge that not-so recent murders also follow months of inaction and inequity during the Covid-19 pandemic, leading to disproportionate rates of illness and death in communities of color.

Dance is political. It has the potential to engender new knowledge, communicate symbolically, empower, activate, and set in motion. Dance and embodied action have long been a part of Black protest and uprisings in the U.S. and beyond. Dance can also support existing power structures and uphold white supremacy. We see this in the choreography of Derek Chauvin employing the body as murder weapon, police sending protesters into spaces where they cannot escape and rounding them up for arrest, and embodied states of white apathy and inaction.

White supremacy culture persists in dance pedagogy, and, as a result, through the field at large. It shows up in our classrooms through meritocracy, privileging linear or empirical thinking, perfectionism, and overemphasizing mastery over process. By not identifying and correcting this I reinscribed these patterns, and I am committed to reimagining the ways I teach, make, and relate.

In higher education, we have been slow to dismantle the systems that continue to disenfranchise, marginalize, and exploit Black life and Black lives, thereby upholding the very systems that ultimately resulted in the death of George Floyd, and others before him. While advocating that all of the officers involved in Floyd’s death be brought to justice, I also acknowledge that this violence thrives in a broader climate of racism, inaction, and willful ignorance in which I play a part. In this regard, I promise to do better. I am committed to looking squarely at myself first, and interrogating my curriculum, artistic choices, practices, who gets to dance/study dance, and what dance studies is about. How might our dance classes look and feel different? How might I engage dance practice to dismantle white supremacy? Since dance has the capacity to engender new knowledge, what kind of knowledge can I work to bring forth?

I am committed to:

• Interrogating my syllabi and redesigning my courses in order to amplify BIPOC voices, and calling attention to the impact and influence of black and indigenous knowledge in our forms, including those labeled as western or Eurocentric.
• De-centering whiteness in my/our course requirements.
• Valuing students and colleagues of color, their work, and their voices without tokenizing or utilizing their contributions in place of making needed changes.
• Recognizing the burden that POC face in navigating our white dominant institutions and thinking about how this labor can be made visible and compensated.
• Devoting my teaching to our black and brown students’ growth and well-being, rather than using their likeness to promote events at our institutions.
• Moving resources toward programming and opportunities for students of color to work with one another and guest artists.
• Developing resources and opportunities for white students to work together to address, understand, and dismantle white supremacy.
• Continuing to, with my colleagues to train and learn together, engage with shared readings, and examine bias, white supremacy, and inequity in our respective communities.

Sincerely, Paul Dennis (Associate Professor, UMass Amherst)