Ways To Move: Reading and Performance Workshop

Event Description

Choreographer and writer Jonathan González presents a performance workshop based on his recently published book Ways to Move: Black Insurgent Grammars (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2025). Beginning at the Cross Street Dance Studio, González will read select passages from his book, offering context to his work and providing participants with a score they will have the chance to engage with somatically in the process of using the body to map a relation to counterhegemonic space and time.

Following the reading, participants will be invited to join González in a walking score that will move outdoors and into the Beman Triangle—the parcel of land purchased by Leverett Beman in 1847, who created a historic free Black community in Middletown, Connecticut, bordered by Knowles Avenue, Cross Street, and Vine Street. As participants move through the Triangle, they will be invited to treat the land itself as a living archive—keying into temporal dissonances, investigating individual curiosities and desires, and utilizing embodied sensations as a guide. The group will then return to the Cross Street Dance Studio to collectively reflect on their experience, bringing in their insights from the text with their observations from the outdoor score.

No prior movement experience is necessary. Participants should come with a curiosity for the way embodied practice can augment, and even disrupt, the historical maps one not only inherits but often abides by—seeking instead an insurgent grammar within the land.

Admission is free, and everyone is welcome.

We encourage you to RSVP to help us with our planning and to get a reminder the day before this event. While RSVPs are not required for entry, they are a big help!

While you’re on campus, we encourage you to visit the Center for the Arts to explore current art exhibitions and other programming.

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