"We Dance" Lyrics and Liner Notes (SFA, 2021)

I don't always take the time share my creative process. Sometimes it's me being private. Sometimes it's me being lazy. This time is different. I recently worked with filmmaker Ethan Payne to bring to tell the story of Tanya Wideman-Davis and Thaddeus Davis, two imminently talented professional dancers who, under the banner of Wideman-Davis Dance, "research and make work to understand the social, economic, and political traditions that are historical in nature but current in their practice of casting and holding Black and Brown people near or at the bottom of society."

Watch the full short film here. Here's a short trailer:

Thanks to the folks at the Southern Foodways Alliance, you can also check out the lyrics that helped structure the film, and you even hear a little about may artistic approach. Here's a little of what I say about my approach:

We Dance is a love story, deconstructed. Bridging the genres of ethnopoetry and as-told-to biography, the piece follows Tanya Wideman-Davis and her partner Thaddeus Davis—both professional dancers—as they make a shared life from their love of each other and as they yearn to live it as lively and lightly as they move. The Wideman Davis Dance story is also a food story, as so much of their love was crystallized while searching for, preparing, eating, not liking, loving, turning away from, and remembering this dish or that dessert. A pound cake. A sweet potato pie. A savory dinner with salmon and rice.

Read all of the lyrics and liner notes here.