These days I am in the studio working to complete sections of the choreography for the current phase of Migration and Constructed Identities. The project started in 2014 with the collection of narratives of migration from new immigrants to Belgium and the UK. Since 2014, migration politics and the population of vulnerable bodies due to migration have escalated. As a frequent immigrant in several global spaces I have lived betwixt and between cultural, geographical (political), and identity borders since the age of seven. I identify to a global belonging.
In these twenty-first century moments in which several nation-state are lauding erosive and caustic migration rhetoric, being in the dance studio with the personal migration narratives of people from around the world is an amazing experience/experiment. These are layered narratives, keep me coming back to my own migration narratives and those of my grandmother. My grandmother was a healthy, courageous and curious ninety-three year old who took her first – and as it would turn out her last – airline journey from Kingston, Jamaica to New York City to live out the rest of her years in the companionship of my mother.
The daily encounter with the more than thirty migration narratives, from people of varying ethnic, racial, religious and economic background who, by choice or not, find themselves seeking ‘home’ outside the their land of birth is humbling…
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