Mourner’s Bench, 2022, 01:23 minutes, digital video, color, sound
Public transit is altogether social performance, political education, and land reverence. Mourner’s Bench is a short dance film, in collaboration with dance artist and choreographer Celia Benvenutti and documentarian and cinematographer Devin Drake. Inspired by and titled after Talley Beatty’s 1947 solo, this work looks at the inextricable relationship between hope and grief, waiting as spiritual practice, and how small, mundane impressions shape power. These everyday imprints on timespace–specifically at the intersection of public transit, Black vernacular gesture, and improvisation–forge collective, liberatory pathways.