The Importance of Rest and Compassionate Labor
In a blog entry from Bhumi B. Patel, a member of the Dancing Around Race cohort in the San Francisco Bay Area, she makes the case for intentional rest to refocus the work that needs to be done in this moment in which there's an "opportunity to change the trajectory of a system built and fostered by structures of white supremacy."
Patel says,
If we must rebuild, we must at the very least, rebuild with antiracism at the core. We must center BIPOC, queer, trans, and disabled voices in our foundation. We must teach the histories of forms that were stolen. We must stop saying that “ballet is the foundation of all dance.” We must uplift our Black colleagues. We must re-create our institutions where marginalized folks aren’t just surviving, but instead make systems for us to thrive. If we don’t, it is to our field’s own detriment when the time comes for us to return.
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