A workshop and performance series of healing,

creating, movement and re-evaluation

to unlearn racism and replace it with

authentic creative relationships

and a celebration of who we are.

WHAT DO WHITE BIRDS SAY

by Hafiz

The earth has disappeared beneath my feet,

If fled from all my ecstasy,

Now like a singing air creature

I feel the Rose

Keep opening.

My heart turned to effulgent wings.

When has love not given freedom?

When has adoration not made one free?

A woman broken in tears and sweat

Stands in a field

Watching the sun and me

Trade jokes.

But never would Hafiz laugh

At your blessed labor

Of finding peace.

What do the dancing white birds say

Looking down upon burnt meadows?

All that you think is rain is not.

Behind the veil Hafiz and angels sometimes weep

Because most eyes are rarely glad

And your divine beauty is still too frightened

To unfurl its thousand swaying arms.

The earth has disappeared beneath my feet,

Illusion fled from all my ecstasy.

Now like a radiant sky creature

God keeps opening,

God keeps opening

Inside of

Me.

WHITE FOLKS SOUL, BY ANY DANCE NECESSARY

An experimental dance company exploring the incompatibility of wholeness and the race construct for white people.

WHITE FOLKS SOUL, BY ANY DANCE NECESSARY currently tours states of consciousness in our Living Room Series. We are making more room in our living experience through performance, facilitated dialogue, and celebrating with good food in someone's living room. We are most interested in creating a deep honest inquiry in our experience as white people involuntarily redeeming institutional privileges on a daily basis. We want to inspire the language, accountability, power analysis, trusting relationships, and deep comunication necessary to unlearn racism as it interrupts a sense of who we are and our relationship to the divine through culture. OUR BLOG

Movement
Undoing racism is a life practice, just like yoga.  Forcing your ankle behind your head, or forcing accountability does not deepen the practice.  I have found deep change often looks subtle.  

Some of the undoing racism communities I have entered focus on the mind and the heart.  We might sit in a chair for hours trying to move mindsets without moving our spines.  I believe the mind/body relationship in our society is akin to the master/slave relationship.  We demand our bodies serve us all the time, and often pay attention to them to the extent they fail us.  Undoing racism from the mind is a product of our mind-dominant society.

The people we celebrate for their minds tend to be white men, and the people we celebrate for their bodies tend to be women, children, and people of color.  We internalize a hierarchy that deep change must focus on our mindset. Whtie Folks Soul, By Any Dance Necessary acknowledges the coherence of the body at seven energy levels based on the chakra system (community, sexuality/emotion, power, heart, expression, intuition/mind, receptivity to divine). 

Violence and peace start in our own bodies and our intimate relationships.  The universe already supports our work.  Giving ourselves time to meditate, to dance, to remember this support, to nourish our vision of the world we want to live in, empowers us as sacred activists.  If we know ourselves as spirit, we are more than our well formed opinions and we can detach from them to listen to every voice.  This is a new approach of undoing racism and replacing it with a celebration of who we are.

Who we are: Alyssa, Alexis, Jesse, Zahava

If you are interested in learning more about our work or scheduling a living room tour with us please email Zahava.

Thank you Eddie Moore Jr. and the 10th anual White Privilege Conference for hosting our workshop:

Re-Educating the BodyMind to Honor the Soul Free from Racism.