In the Horizontal Plane : taisha paggett Performance Works

A multivocal exploration of paggett’s Black bodily and spatial practices, teeming with ephemera, photographic documentation and texts, both reprinted and newThis volume challenges conventional modes of writing and archiving dance practices through a group engagement with nearly two decades of American choreographer taisha paggett’s (born 1976) solo and collaborative works. paggett’s practice reconfigures Western choreographic practices through the politics of daily life, interrupting fixed histories of Black and queer living, and intervening in institutional spaces through installation and performance. Here, paggett’s iterative oeuvre is organized into three thematic sections: FIGURE, which coheres around the transhistorical figure of the Black/queer body; CURRICULUM, which propounds a movement toward collective dance training and company formations; and LAND(ING), which explores Black land experiments in fugitivity, grief and possibility. Akin to paggett’s practice, the book has a multivocal team of authors. Performance documentation, ephemera and reprinted texts appear alongside new writing by and conversations with paggett’s past collaborators and curators.