University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Dance/Abolition: how dance can be used as a form of protest and empowerment

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Dance/Abolition: how dance can be used as a form of protest and empowerment

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Content Copyright 2022 Steven Vargas

DANCE/ABOLITION:
HOW DANCE CAN BE USED AS A FORM OF PROTEST AND EMPOWERMENT

By

Steven Vargas

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ANNENBERG SCHOOL FOR COMMUNICATIONS
AND JOURNALISM
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM (THE ARTS)

May 2022

ii

Table of Contents
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iii
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1
Dance as Action .............................................................................................................................. 4
Dance as Healing ............................................................................................................................ 9
Dance as Liberation ...................................................................................................................... 14
Dance as Joy ................................................................................................................................. 17
Conclusion: A Reflection .............................................................................................................. 21
Bibliography ................................................................................................................................. 24

iii

Abstract
Through interviews with dance makers using movement to create change, this magazine
piece investigates the impact dance can have on social movements. During my undergraduate
career, I focused my theatre pursuits on arts for social change. When I joined a project with
Black Lives Matter LA and Reform LA Jails Coalition, we prepared a devised piece to go up at
the California African American Museum as part of a larger program called Jails and Justice.
Before our performance went up in the community room, Brianna Mims presented the Jail Bed
Drop in the lobby. In between rehearsals in the space, I witnessed her bring the piece together.
Watching her performance on the opening night brought up a whole new set of questions for me
on the impact dance has on social change, in this case, prison abolition.
In preparing for my thesis proposal, I caught up with Mims and began to see this story
take shape. In conversations with other dance artists, they shared how dance can be utilized in
terms of abolition. “Dance/Abolition” shares how dance can be used for direct action, healing,
liberation and joy. The dance artists open up on the extent dance can contribute to abolition
efforts, both internal and external. Abolition involves the breaking of institutional pressures in
everyday life and on the frontlines of protests.

1

Introduction
Grasping onto the gray metal bars of a jungle gym, Brianna Mims pitches her head
forward and digs between her arms. She swings powerfully from one bracket to the next to the
next to the next to the next…
These movements are her voice, shouting for someone to pay attention.
A voice blasted out of speakers and echoed off the high ceilings of the California African
American Museum in April 2019, saying, “This is a spacial violation. This is a human rights
violation.” This was where her interactive installation, Jail Bed Drop (2019), started.
Jail Bed Drop began in 2017 as a series of installations curated by Cecilia Sweet-Coll and
Patrisse Cullors — co-founder of Black Lives Matter — with JusticeLA. Artists used 50 jail beds
to create art that protested L.A. County’s $3.5 billion jail expansion plan that would build two
jails with a total of 6,000 new jail beds.
Mims is part of a growing group of dancers who are using their artistry and life
experience to connect with communities and address the prison industrial complex. These
dancers are challenging preconceived notions about dance to use it as a tool of protest and
liberation, devoting time to deconstructing the racist roots of movement. For some, this looks
like taking to the streets and using dance methods to protest and participate in direct action. For
others, it comes in the form of self-love, embracing how the body moves to decolonize how we
are taught to move, connecting to ancestral movement.
Since the Black Lives Matter protests of Summer 2020, abolition has increasingly
become part of people’s vocabulary. The murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor
displayed the systemic problems present in our nation’s police departments and prison system,
2

calling for the abolition of each entity for the sake of saving Black lives. People took to the
streets to protest chanting “Black Lives Matter.”
By definition, Abolition is “the act or an act of abolishing a system, practice, or
institution.”
Meanwhile, dance is constructed of social and cultural experiences. Movement alone
holds identity. The way someone scratches their head or raises their hand is built from their
identity and life experiences; it is corporeal.
Dance scholar Eva Ayumami Rene further explains in “Dance as Protest” that “dance can
exercise protest by performing identities circumscribed to a larger community, by confronting
ideologies, and by symbolic acts of protest” (Reñé 183).
Dance’s ability to hold symbolic meaning and interpersonal connection pairs with
abolitionist ideologies to push for action, healing and liberation. Dance artists can use movement
in various ways that explore identity and how that identity can both resist and push for action.
Mims’ movement in Jail Bed Drop helped share the stories and lives of incarcerated folk
in collaboration with the space filled with objects from them. Artwork, love letters, and birthday
cards hung on the walls or lay next to a stuffed animal sitting on the bed. Every system,
institution, and structure is connected to the prison industrial complex. It’s just like the jungle
gym. Each small bar intersects at multiple points. Just the same, dance and abolition intersected
that day in April.
The room was filled with warmth and innocence. Then the jungle gym devolved into
chaos until…
“Everything is connected,” the voice echoed one last time (2019). “This is a human rights
violation.”
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The museum was still, and the audience applauded, but it wasn’t the end. The audience
was invited to explore the space and interact with the world of the prison industrial complex.
They were able to look at it, hold it, feel it. Mims’ mission was accomplished in the
conversations that followed.
For Mims, her short installation was not where she wanted her piece to end. She pushes
audiences to think about who the criminal justice system is for and how it disproportionately
affects Black and Latinx communities, even after the performance is over the doors to the
museum close.
Mims became part of the movement after she came across JusticeLA by chance. She was
scrolling through Facebook when she saw a post about an upcoming meeting and decided to
check it out. What followed were countless opportunities to share her passion for prison abolition
and create work that allowed people to question their notions of crime and punishment.
Mims said it is “an amalgamation of things” that brought her to where she is today (Mims
2020).
For many other dance artists and abolitionists, the sentiment is the same. There’s no one
path to pushing for change through movement. It happens over time.

4

Dance as Action
“P-O-W-E-R! We got the power
because we are
the collect ive (Williams 2021)!”

Eight years ago, Ash Williams and his friends gathered at Greensboro, just a few miles
away from Charlotte, North Carolina where Williams lives, to attend a Trans Day of
Remembrance event. When they arrived, Williams noticed a lot of white, cis-gendered people
taking up space at an event dedicated to trans folks.
“This is kind of our thing,” he (2021) said in a recent interview. “And even though it’s
our thing, we should not let it go down like this.”

“P-O-W-E-R! We got the power
because we are
the collect ive (2021)!”

His friend April started chanting and creating a small cipher, slowly bringing more
people into the celebration. It was something Ash and his friends did at similar events where
crowds of people came together. One person got in the center at a time, flowing with the voices
calling out their power, dancing.

“We got the power (2021)!”

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Each person shared their name, proclaiming (2021) “I got the power!”
“And he got the power,” the others chanted (2021). For Ash, it was a fun way for people
to learn people’s names and pronouns while dancing and enjoying themselves. However, as he
and his friends continued to dance and chant, he noticed how people just stood back and
watched.
“We're like five Black, queer and trans folks,” he (2021) said. “We start doing the power
chant and we get people to get in a circle. And we started doing our thing in the circle and asking
them to participate. And they don't. They just look at us and stop.”
April noticed this along with the rest of the group and addressed the crowd of people
standing and watching them.

“We are the collective. The collective is here. This is the revolution,” Williams recalled
April saying. “We are not performing for you. We are not doing this for you. If you're
here, you should be doing what we're doing. And how can you not feel and sense that?
Your whiteness, and your power and all of the things that you're bringing here to
allegedly hold space for trans folks, you're not connected, you're not even paying
attention. Like there are trans people singing in front of you. And you're watching this
thing that's obviously something to participate in (2021).”

Williams, a dancer and organizer who focuses his work on finding the intersection of
action and dance, felt April’s words to his core. In every action he leads, he thinks about the
importance of the collective.
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“I still say that today we're the revolution, we're the collective,” he (2021) said. “The
collective is here. We're not waiting on anyone to tell us to go, to do, to move, to dance.”
He grew up as a dancer, and movement informed everything he did. As he completed his
master’s thesis on corporeality and the Black Lives Matter movement, he investigated how direct
action can be considered dance.
“I want for protesters to understand themselves as dancers, and get something different
than what they're already getting out of being a part of a direct action space,” he (2021) said.
A specific example and dream for him is making a direct blockade out of a dance class.
In a direct blockade, people use their bodies to take up space and block things as part of a
protest. However, the blockade would be made of people learning and participating in direct
action through dance vocabulary.
For example, he thinks about how using vocabulary like “going limp” or “thinking heavy
thoughts” can be used to oppose being lifted during a protest (2021).
“Folks have an inclination to tense their bodies up when people are doing nonconsensual
things,” he (2021) said. “And I've used dance to help people think about if someone is trying to
pick you up, there are ways that we can make it easy like learning how to do lifts. But then there
are ways that we can make it harder for them.”
Making the body heavy and embodying weight is an act of protest; it can assist protest.
When trying to incorporate dance and choreography into direct action, Williams is sometimes
met with reservations because of the nature of the action.
“Sometimes there's not a lot of space for that because we are not dancing,” he (2021)
said. “We are fighting the police and fighting for our lives and trying to stay alive. And I want to
7

say I don't think that's different from dancing. I'm dancing, doing that. Or when I do it, it's a
dance.”
For Williams, we are always dancing in everything that we do. The only time we are not
dancing is when we die.
“My program really taught to dancers who would only dance on the stage. And I
recognized very quickly that that is not the kind of dancer that I'm interested in being,” he (2021)
said. “And so I really found a lot of nurturing and tenderness and other stuff that I really needed
in Black dance forms and with my Black professors of dance who reminded me that once you're
a dancer, you're always a dancer.”
As an organizer, Williams wants people to envision themselves as movers.
“Part of what I'm trying to do is convince or persuade people and have some kind of
space where people who do not know what the fuck is going on can get a sense of themselves as
dancers,” he (2021) said.
It’s a common misconception that dance is meant for the stage or that it involves
constantly moving, but through the lens of abolition, Williams learned to rethink the limits of
dance. More importantly, he learned to pause in both dance and protest.
“In my work with my community, a lot of what I asked my group to do, and others to do
is how to stop calling the cops, or how to do build a mutual aid thing in your community, or how
to do different kinds of support for incarcerated folks, or how to do direct action,” he (2021) said.
That pause is more than just a pause for Williams. It's a time for preparation. In abolition
and dance, that pause for preparation is important. It is a time to prepare for a jump or a time to
prepare for a new action, to change the course of the march, to chant…

8

“P-O-W-E-R! We got the power
because we are
the collect ive (2021)!”

In these actions and chants, Williams, along with many other organizers who do this type
of work, are inviting people to be part of the performance to dance alongside them, contributing
to the collective.
“Do you want to be a part of what's happening, because we're inviting you to be a part of
what's happening,” Williams (2021) recalled thinking in Greensboro. “Please be a part of what's
happening and move your ass.”

9

Dance as Healing
Mims didn’t always love dance and wasn’t that interested in dance classes in the
beginning.
She moved to Jacksonville, Florida, from Augusta, Georgia, when she was nine years old
to be with her stepdad’s family. She enrolled in an arts-based elementary school where students
had to choose a discipline to focus on. There was nothing drawing her to dance, she chose it …
just because. There was no direction until her friend introduced her to the Jacksonville Centre of
the Arts.
Mims walked home from school with her friend, but things got complicated when her
friend wanted to join an after-school dance studio program and they needed to walk home
together. Mims decided to audition as well since she was already tagging along. She got in and
from there, her love for dance grew. She enjoyed the discipline and rigor of learning dance,
especially ballet.
“There’s a part of me that loves like the discipline of movement forms, and the discipline
of the body,” she (Mims 2020) said. “That is something that keeps me really grounded.”
However, that discipline evolved into an unhealthy habit.
“I prioritized ballet more than things that I might have been naturally better at or that just
felt better for me to dance,” she (2020) said. “It was more fulfilling. So, there was a point in time
where it built up to me trying to prove myself to ballet.”
Ballet has an emphasis on lines in the body. Mims lacked flexibility in her ankles. Her
instructors put her in pointe shoes too soon for the ballet Paquita. While rehearsing on pointe,
she noticed that her ankles didn’t go completely over the box of the pointe shoe. She wanted a
10

straight line all the way down her leg, but her feet couldn’t do it. As a result, both she and her
teachers pushed the limits of her anatomy.
“People would sit on my feet,” Mims (2020) said. “I had private lessons specifically for
stretching my feet. I bought all this equipment for foot stretching, there was a time where my
teacher hammered my foot. The teacher said, ‘Oh, maybe if you can get this bone broken, or
maybe you can have the surgery.’ They will have people come in, massage therapists, trying to
massage different parts of my feet to get it to release so the line could be better.”
She got caught up in the superiority complex of ballet. Mims observed an unspoken
hierarchy of dance styles with ballet being at the top. In reality, the ranking of styles perpetuated
the Eurocentric understanding of dance that left other styles, like West African dance, in the
shadows. Ballet contains hidden forms of racism that many dancers like Mims experience, she
said.
“Now thinking back over it, I could have spent so much time focused on styles of dance
that naturally came to my body, that I actually enjoy,” she (2020) said. “But I was spending so
much time trying to prove myself to something that wasn’t even for me.”
Williams had a similar experience with ballet. He enjoyed the dance form for its
discipline but disliked the gendered nature of it. In ballet, classes are separated by men and
women, and specific gender roles are cemented in its choreography. As with Mims, Williams
also noticed how whiteness dominated ballet. It created a disconnect between the form and the
body because of it. He had to explore dance forms and movement to truly find which movement
fit his body the best.
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“I always worked with the lesbian contemporary ballet professor because of what her
work was doing to my body,” Williams (Williams 2021) said. “Her choosing me to be a part of
her piece also validated my body to do the work.”
Despite the struggles of fitting the ballet aesthetic, some dancers found ballet to be an
access point to understanding how dance can heal the body. Tatiana Zamir, a healing arts
coordinator and creator of Heal Her methodology, started ballet at a young age because her
grandmother wanted to help her bad posture (Zamir 2019).
“What's interesting about that is when I went to the Holistic Bodywork school and I was
learning about the connection between the mind and body, I've learned that a lot of people who
do that have that more concave chest is usually a sign of them just physically trying to protect
their heart,” Zamir (Zamir 2020) said.
She realized that her posture was her own way of protecting herself from the trauma of
strict body expectations she experienced at a young age. Ballet’s emphasis on opening the chest
helped her in her healing journey.
“There was this healing that happened for me,” she (2020) said. “I got to heal my heart
and my body through dance, like that was the beginning of me physically and emotionally
changing, having a space where I could access my higher self very easily.”
Zamir continued to explore how bodies connect to specific movement and past
experiences in her piece Noble Am I. The dance piece is inspired by Dr. Joy DeGruy’s research
on Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, which explains that “centuries of slavery followed by
systematic racism and oppression have resulted in multigenerational adaptive behaviors — some
of which have been positive and reflective of resilience and others that are detrimental and
destructive (Degruy).”
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Noble Am I specifically looked at where judgments on Black women come from and how
those judgments affect movement.
“We move in certain ways or there are things that we just think are normal or things that
we've adapted to, but that really come from slavery,” Zamir (Zamir 2020) said. “Like really at
the root of how we all interact in certain situations come from slavery.”
Her observations led her to develop the Heal Her methodology, developing workshops
that connect people to their bodies. The workshops focus on helping women find strength and
confidence through movement, with the intention of awakening their relationship with their
body, no matter what dance experience someone has.
“I feel like dance is for everybody,” Zamir (2020) said. “Everybody should feel like they
have a safe place where they can feel free in their bodies and do that. So, my intention of
creating a class was to create a safe space, and a fun space, where people could just be free.”
The workshops allow people to explore their past traumas and experiences to feel more in
tune with their bodies.
“I will ask people to revisit an experience that they have and know that that experience is
in their memory and in their body and then as they revisit that, we explore different movement
techniques to help release the pain and the trauma that is in their body and then to embody their
healing,” she (2020) said about the workshops.
Our movement is based on the experiences we’ve had in the past. Every bit of trauma
impacts it in particular ways and informs our relationship with it. It’s how we build habits. It
explains why Zamir slouched. More importantly, it shows our history and ancestry.
“I think the body has so much wisdom and so much to offer, there's so much information
there, there's so much to tap into,” Zamir (2020) said. “And by being in our bodies, by giving
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ourselves permission to just be in our bodies more, and exploring different ways to do that, I
think is really important. And so dance is one of those ways.”
Zamir believes she’s unconsciously been using dance as a healing tool, all the way back
to the ballet classes she took as a kid.
“I wasn't thinking as a kid, let me dance and heal myself,” she (2020) said. “But when I
look back, I'm like, oh, I don't know how I would have survived without it.”
From each experience, Zamir observed the importance of looking within to create
change.
“I really believe that whatever we want to see in the world, wherever we wish to see if we
want abolition, if we want equality, if we want justice, if we want liberation, if we want to heal,
if they want to see a more beautiful world that is more in harmony, we must explore that within
ourselves,” she (2020) said.

14

Dance as Liberation
Isis Avalos grew up dancing socially in South Texas, learning styles like Tejano, Cumbia
and Norteño at family functions. Mexican American cultural spaces embrace the various
movements of Latino dances, moving from the hips and jumping with the rhythms of drums and
flowing with the maraca and electric guitar melody. Here is where she first started dancing, and
it wasn’t until middle school that she dedicated more energy to the art form.
“In my middle school, there was no dance team and I started one with a science teacher
that was like, ‘I’ll sponsor you,’” Avalos (Avalos 2020) said. “That's kind of where my own way
of galvanizing and creating community started from.”
By high school, she knew she wanted to pursue a career in dance. However, her
anticipation for what it would look like did not pan out the way she expected.
She moved from Texas to Los Angeles in 2012 to focus her dancing career on
commercial dance, however, her experience in Latin dance styles and house offered an
opportunity in concert dance instead. Rehearsing and performing for the stage and connecting to
her roots in cultural dances, brought her closer to understanding herself and her movement.
“I started reconnecting even more to Cumbia, even more to Norteño, to Tejano, to the
dances that I didn’t use to see as technical dances — trained dances — but that are so rooted in a
practice that you cannot access unless you live it day by day,” Avalos (2020) said.
When she made this connection, she understood how important it was to uphold that
ancestral bond and embrace the dance styles.
“What I embody has been passed down and I'm also moving through the things that I've
experienced,” she (2020) said. “I'm also moving through the social conditions I've experienced
having been an undocumented immigrant for a big part of my life.”
15

Being from South Texas and living on the border has influenced her understanding of her
movement. Connecting back to her history and memories of growing up in the in-between
informs how she moves through a phrase.
“Rooting myself more, learning my own Mexican American history, and also tying in my
own history that already exists in my body, of what my body naturally does, has become a form
of liberation for me,” Avalos (2020) said.
Her conflict in her career was understanding who she was dancing for. While working
and dancing for a non-profit organization, she realized that the work she made only benefited the
people at the top of the company.
“Even though I have my stories come from over half a decade working for one
organization, it is the bigger picture of what does it look like to be a BIPOC dance artist creating
dance inside a structure that still works to continually marginalize us?” she (2020) said.
Although she dedicated her energy to sharing her story as a Mexican American, her story
is no longer hers to own and it can be given to a new dancer in the next week.
“Because we are working and sharing our craft, our creativity inside the system that's
already working to benefit the top, then we’re truly never going to have the access to equity of
dance artists,” Avalos (2020) said. “We continue to share our lived experience, especially as
BIPOC folks, we share our trauma, our experience of being marginalized in this country. And
yet, at the end of the day, there's one brand, one entity, that's really benefiting from that.”
A year ago, she wanted to establish her own non-profit organization dedicated to
representing and serving immigrant families. Now, she said she found liberation in pursuing
community engagement rather than pursuing social justice by starting a non-profit.
16

In 2019, along with Zamir, Avalos became part of the Dancing Diaspora Collective, a
dance community dedicated to “honoring, sharing, and reimagining dance practices of the Latin
and African diasporas in dialogue with local and global histories of cultural resistance (Dancing
Diaspora 2020).”
They focus on building community through dance, allowing people to explore and learn
parts of their culture through dance. One of the biggest ways that they’ve done this is by going to
the root of dance styles and choreography and crediting the people and culture that made it what
it is today.
“Now in my career, I’m actively wanting to have these conversations inside the field,”
she (Avalos 2020) said. “Instead of shifting the lens outwards, dancing for social justice, I’m
doing social justice inside dance.”

17

Dance as Joy
When the pandemic began in the U.S., Suchi Branfman, a choreographer and Scripps
College faculty member, had to alter the course of her five-year choreographic residency with
the California Rehabilitation Center, a medium security men’s prison in Norco, California. Since
2016, she brought her students to the prison to help facilitate workshops and movement creations
with a group of incarcerated people also involved in the class for two hours a week. However,
COVID-19 shuttered the program and forced Branfman to rethink how to create dance.
“We decided that we would not stop the work we were doing so we sent in prompts and
ideas for readings, and ways of continuing our dancing conversations,” she (Vargas et al. 2021)
said in a Match Volume podcast interview. “We invited folks who we were working with to
actually write dances, something we hadn’t been doing. None of us had any idea what that meant
but it was something that we could do and correspond through these dances.”
Every week, she brought an envelope with prompts to the prison where it was distributed
to those inside who were part of her program. In return, she got responses from the previous
week’s prompts. People like Terry Sakamoto Jr. used the invitations to escape the small cell
where incarcerated folks were crammed and limited to a bunk bed.
“In a way, it was a joy to receive my homework,” he (2021) said in the podcast.
From his bunk, he wrote about the ways he found a feeling of escape while being
incarcerated. He wrote about his routine under the California Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation at Pelican Bay State Prison. At 23 years old, he was required to go out into the
yard to exercise. He described the yard as small with concrete walls going all the way up to the
point where very little sunlight made its way in. To help him get through it, he used his
imagination.
18

He described (2021) his workout as a dance. He imagined himself stepping onto a large
theater stage with rows of seats in front of him. Each seat had an empty balloon and as he pushed
through his workout, his body would ache, his bones would creak and the balloons would begin
to inflate until the time ran out.
“I’m still locked up, but there was a point where the balloons filled up and they were
released into the air,” he (2021) said. “So, although my chains were still locked, in my head I felt
like I escaped.”
His piece of writing on this feeling of escaping through the balloons became part of a
dance film Branfman organized called Undanced Dances Through Prison Walls During a
Pandemic. The film brought together various writings from incarcerated people who created
choreography on paper and were embodied by dancers on the outside. Luckily, Sakamoto got out
of the Norco prison and was able to witness his words come to life through dancer Bernard
Brown.
“I was just amazed to think wow those are my writings,” he (2021) said. “It went from a
prison cell to real-life art — dancing. I was just honored to think, these people took the time to
take my writing and integrate it into a film.”
This feeling of joy in seeing creations come to life is exactly what Branfman planned for
the project.
“We wanted to amplify them on the outside,” she (2021) said.
When classes still took place inside the prison, everyone gathered inside of the gym. At
the beginning, there was a lot of apprehension because of the nature of life in prison. It was
segregated and self-expression was limited, Sakamoto (2021) said. As time went on, they
realized it was just them and Branfman’s class. Soon, they broke through their shell.
19

“Once you got in there it was so amazing because all the things that we learned inside:
you’re not allowed to be yourself,” Sakamoto (2021) said. “You see a lot of these guys shed their
Pinto, their gangster and cholo biz.”
He described it as an “escape for two hours” (2021) where people could be themselves
through dance. It didn’t matter what background people had with dance; all dance was welcome.
He said he got to “act a fool” (2021) in those two hours.
“Every time we gather, there’s just continual learning and joy and energy,” Branfman
(2021) said. “It’s a really joyous project.”
The work and environment Branfman created in the prison aligns with the abolitionist
mindset because of its focus on imagination.
“When you are dancing and creating things, you’re constantly imagining,” she (2021)
said.
In prison abolition, people are thinking about what practices can replace the systems that
are currently in place, she (2021) said. As people move and create choreography, they are
thinking about what movements will get them to where they want to be in the piece. They are
imagining what it’ll look like on the body. As they create together, they are using the same
imagination it takes to imagine an alternative to prisons that values community and the well-
being of people.
“We’re imagining how will I write a dance inside, it’s the same tool that says how can I
change this society,” Branfman (2021) said. “How will I make society the way we need it to be
so that we aren’t locking people up— we’re living together, we’re creating together, we’re
building together?”
20

Getting people to move was relatively easy, Branfman (2021) said. Once the music
started playing, there was always that itch to move in the gym. When everyone realized there
was no judgment, they began to move freely. For Sakamoto, it was especially impactful because
of how separated everyone was inside the prison. In an exercise, Branfman instructed everyone
to lift one person at a time — to show support. In that moment, it felt foreign because it was rare
that those in the prison would be interacting with others of a different race and supporting each
other in such a way.
“They lived a separate life outside of that gym for two hours,” Sakamoto (2021) said.
“They had to go back to reality and the reality of it is that there are divisions and racial lines, and
lines that you can’t cross, things that you cannot do that you can do out here.”
The pieces they created were initially presented in April 2021 over Zoom and later
presented in person at Scripps College in November. Each presentation highlighted the feeling of
connection between people. Watching people’s words come to life through movement felt
vulnerable and intimate as viewers were suddenly in conversation with people directly impacted
by the prison industrial complex. As dancers move across the screen or across the lawns of
Scripps College, the storytelling shares a voice imagining what freedom feels like. In that
moment, we see the creators inside the Norco prison, even from miles away.
“It isn’t about any one person, it’s about the community that was made inside,” Branfman
(2021) said.

21

Conclusion: A Reflection
Through West African dance, Mims’ understanding of movement changed.
“Just hearing the djembe, there’s a visceral reaction in my body to hearing the sounds of
those drums,” she (Mims 2020) said. “And that’s something that I have to tap into.”
She took her first classes in West African dance in elementary school. She didn’t
understand the importance of the dance style yet, she just knew she enjoyed it. Sometimes that is
all it requires. She enjoyed the dance, the drums and the community. There was something about
it that felt grounded.
“It feels like, you know, tapping into ancestral memory,” she (2020) said. “It just feels
right. And the communal aspect of it, dancing with people in a certain kind of way.”
She defines “ancestral memory” (2020) as part of her inner exploration of abolition. It
comes with decolonizing movement to connect to how your body wants to move. Like many
somatic practices, it is a reflection of the self.
“You can learn so much about yourself in a somatic way, in a way in which you’re using
your body to problem solve,” she (2020) said. “Dance holds a lot of knowledge that is really
valuable and connects us back to ourselves, which I think is important when we’re talking about
dismantling systems.”
Dancing for the self soon became a large part of her work in abolition.
Her favorite way of doing this internal work is in the club, dancing with others. Before
COVID-19 stay-at-home orders in March 2020, she spent at least one night a month at
Afrolituation, an African Experience party that celebrates African culture. The party created
space for people to exchange their culture with others and find joy and liberation through dance.
22

“Everyone’s body knows how to respond to the music and it’s not because they’re trained
dancers, it’s because we have very similar lived experiences,” she (2020) said. “We all saw our
moms and our aunties and our grandmas bopping in the kitchen to this song.”
Everything is connected…
Avalos experienced the same connection as she transitioned to dancing Latin styles.
“I gravitated more to dances that are from my heritage, and my ancestry and have been
passed down to me through my ancestors,” she (Avalos 2020) said.
As Branfman worked with those inside the prison, she saw as the internal barriers to
expression inflicted by the prison industrial complex broke down. People found joy and freedom
in movement. For Sakamoto, it was like being a kid again.
“Through time they recognized nobody is laughing at nobody; everybody there is just
letting go, free, fancy and happy,” Sakamoto (Vargas et al. 2021) said. “And that right there is
breaking barriers. You can imagine where you can get back to being a kid.”
As Zamir expressed, it all starts by looking within.
“If we want abolition, if we don't, if there are things that we know are unjust and unfair in
our own lives, if there are ways that we are unjust or unfair to our own bodies, we must start
there,” Zamir (Zamir 2020) said. “If we want liberation, we must know what it feels like. We
must know what it feels like not just within our bodies, but within a community.”
When we understand our own movement, Williams echoes the importance of bringing
movers and bodies together into a collective that’ll together shape the revolution.
“We're the revolution,” he (Williams 2021) said. “We're the collective. The collective is
here, we're not waiting on anyone to tell us to go, to do, to move, to dance.”
Everything is connected.
23

“It’s really important to be in community with my people like that, and to drip in joy,”
Mims (Mims 2020) said. “And I think that is something that has to be centered in conversations
of abolition when we’re talking about joy.”
Everyone is connected to the same lived experience. There is a mutual groove that vibes
through the club.
This is abolition.
Everything is connected. Abolition doesn’t just look like protests and difficult
conversations with people of differing beliefs. It is also joyful and in the moment, breaking down
the pressures of institutions through the joy of your authentic movement. Abolition doesn’t just
stare you right in the face or hang from the bars of a jungle gym. It is also in the act of self-love,
embracing your community and yourself as you dance to the music your body knows more than
you do.
“We’re in the same sort of bag like everybody is their own individual sauce,” she (2020)
said. “We know how to respond to the music in a certain sort of way and there’s so much play
that happens. Yeah, it’s just beautiful. It’s really beautiful.”

24

Bibliography
Africa, Amplify. 2019. Afrolituation . Accessed 2021.
https://www.amplifyafrica.org/afrolituation.
Avalos, Isis, interview by Steven Vargas. 2020. Dancer and Activist (November 23).
2021. Undanced Dances Through Prison Walls During a Pandemic. Directed by Suchi
Branfman. Performed by Bernard Brown, Jay Carlon, Irvin Gonzalez, Leo Manzari,
Brianna Mims, Tom Tsai, Susan Bustamante, et al.
Degruy, Joy. 2017. Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and
Healing.
Diaspora, Dancing. 2020. Instagram. August 5. Accessed 2021.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CDhXiN7AZCK/.
Grimes, d. Sabela, interview by Steven Vargas. 2021. Choreographer, Writer, Composer and
Educator (January 30).
Mims, Brianna, interview by Steven Vargas. 2020. Dancer and Activist (September 1).
Mims, Brianna, interview by Steven Vargas. 2020. Dancer and Activist (October 10).
2019. Jail Bed Drop. Performed by Brianna Mims. California African American Museum, Los
Angeles. April 16.
Reñé, Eva Aymamí. “Dance as Protest.” In Protest Cultures: A Companion, edited by Kathrin
Fahlenbrach, Martin Klimke, and Joachim Scharloth, 1st ed., 181–89. Berghahn Books,
2016. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvgs0b1r.23.
25

Vargas, Steven, Elle Davidson, Jeremy Lindenfeld, and Nataly Joseph. 2021. "Undanced dances
with Suchi Branfman and Terry Sakamoto." Match Volume, November 12, 2021.
Podcast, website, MP3 audio, 28:24. Accessed January 2022.
https://www.uscannenbergmedia.com/2021/11/12/undanced-dances-with-suchi-
branfman-and-terry-sakamoto/.
Williams, Ash, interview by Steven Vargas. 2021. Dancer and Organizer (January 30).
Zamir, Tatiana. 2019. "Heal Her: A Yoga, Dance and Healing Retreat." Heal Her. Bali.
Zamir, Tatiana, interview by Steven Vargas. 2020. Dancer, Teacher and Healer (December 7).
2006. Noble Am I. Performed by Tatiana Zamir. WAC SMASH, Los Angeles.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Vargas, Steven (author)

Core Title Dance/Abolition: how dance can be used as a form of protest and empowerment

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Specialized Journalism (The Arts)

Degree Conferral Date 2022-05

Publication Date 01/27/2022

Defense Date 01/26/2022

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag abolition,artivism,Black Lives Matter,Dance,Joy,liberation,OAI-PMH Harvest,performance activism,Protest,Theatre

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Seidenberg, Willa (committee chair), grimes, d. Sabela (committee member), Richardson, Allissa (committee member)

Creator Email stevenv@usc.edu,svargascreative@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC110575737

Unique identifier UC110575737

Legacy Identifier etd-VargasStev-10359

Document Type Thesis

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Vargas, Steven

Type texts

Source 20220128-usctheses-batch-909 (batch), University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

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