Artist Statement by dancer-choreographer, Alanna Morris

“Where is the Love?” (attributed to Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway)

"My work seeks to embody the full spectrum of human life with all of its colours.  I engage a rigourous process of self inquiry, disciplined analysis, and emotional recall, that is then embodied.  This praxis is being shaped by my relationship with my Black ancestors and rites of passage through remembrance.  My choreography engages multiple theses around (the nature, function of, qualities, and values of) performance, masquerade, self love,  pleasure, liberation, and others.  Evaluating, then re-constructing the manifestations, I then seek to turn these entities inside out, which becomes a meta narrative on the nature of form itself. The Work engages Black Political Thought and Black Feminist Politic. It is in conversation with traditional African sacred sciences, namely Ifá/Òrìsà practice of the Yorùbá people (and its expressions in the African diaspora), and Vodou, as birthed in The Republic of Benin and Haiti—all as cosmological, political framework and embodied wisdoms.  The philosophical ethos of my work is anti-capitalist. I value the slow and deep and seek to open up space between risk/trust, knowledge/questions, commitment/revolution, rigour/pleasure, respect/autonomy, and softness/force. In this Work (praxis), the product never deviates from the process and the process is maintained integrally in performance. In this way the Work turns over on itself and can clearly be seen from any vantage point.

(updated June 2022)