Meet our 2024 Kinetic Altar Artists in Residence!
The Kinetic Altar Residency integrates how Black queer, trans and gender expansive communities heal from institutionalized violence and grief. We aim to challenge and confront institutionalized dance/creative spaces that often neglect Black, queer, trans and gender expansive folks.
The Kinetic Altar residency provides artists in residence an opportunity to contribute to a larger body of work, reimagining healing as a sacred practice and creating containers of embodiment.
Before we tend to any other realm, we tend to us first, for we are a living, breathing altar. We may have heard the sentiment “your body is your temple” more than enough times in our lives. So what does it mean to embody yourself as an artist and an inherent vessel to higher power? We are the kinetic altar. In residency, we will build off of altar making in the body, embody all four elements which are needed to lift the veil. Artists in residency will co-devise to bring the four elements to life for Transmute. In this time together, we will see who embodies/resonates with each element! All residents receive a paid stipend and snacks!
Geneva Love Frazier
she/her/hers
Geneva Love Frazier is a twenty-five year old fashion designer from Harlem, New York City. Her hobbies include writing poetry, short stories, and dramatized streams of consciousness. Geneva also loves to engage in community organizing through event curation and DJing. Geneva has been making clothes since 2017, but her love for fashion design began from a young age of ten. During this time she began designing her own croquis figures, and the first line of clothing she ever created was women’s suits. This was inspired by growing up in the black Pentecostal church and seeing how many gorgeous suits were worn every sunday: rows full of sequins, feathers, and silk provided Geneva with her first idea of true luxury. Geneva Love’s work is heavily inspired by this feeling of creating for the sake of breaking generational curses and redefining the meaning of wealth and luxury for her community. Geneva intends to use her talents to reclaim the power of black storytelling for herself and fellow black queer creatives.
What does healing the black body mean to you?
Healing the black body means reclaiming the power of my ancestral roots through the decolonization of my mind, body, and spirit. This means that it is imperative as a black body in America to liberate my bloodline through ancestral reverence, and heal generational curses so that I am able to exist and not simply survive.
What is one thing Black feminism has taught you?
Audre Lorde said that survival consists of Joy, mobility, and effectiveness. This taught me that survival does not mean that I am bound by fear, but I am able to see through my fear by knowing that I have the power to shape the future. Black feminism taught me that there are so many intersections to my existence as a black woman of trans experience, and ultimately it is completely in my power to unearth my story on my own terms, and step into my power in the most natural way to me that is possible.
What does a liberated world look like to you?
A liberated world begins with the liberation of black queer bodies. This is a multi-faceted definition of what that looks like, and there is no one answer to how it can be achieved. For this world to be liberated, black queer artists must continue to use their voice to elevate their experience, and to create frameworks for our children to refer to when in need of their own personal liberation.
What is one thing you love about the Kinetic Altar Residency?
I love that there is no pressure to perform in the typical hierarchical and institutionalized ways. I love that I am supported in my ideas, and that I am given the space to create so freely in an environment that simultaneously contributes to my healing journey. I love being surrounded by other beautiful, black, smart creatives that I can learn from, love on like family, and be in fellowship with.
Jelani Best
they/them/theirs
Jelani Best is a Brooklyn-based movement-artist and choreographer. Their work often centers expanding upon universal experiences and narrative worlds and movement and storytelling as a means of connection and catharsis. They began their dance training as an extension of studying theater and striving to be a well rounded performer. They soon found a realized passion in choreography and dance after attending the University of Nevada, Reno and earning dual Bachelors of Arts in both theater and dance. Whilst there they received mentorship from esteemed artists such as Teena Marie Custer, Robert Moses, former Koresh Dance Company Member Jenifer August, and former Oberlin Dance Company member Margaret Stack. Jelani is continuing to pursue dance and choreography professionally, hoping to lead by example of an passionate working creator who did not come from means.
What does healing the black body mean to you?
Healing the black body means addressing the structural racism our society has designed to impede us from actualization and finding community and power. Then exploring the ways we can divest from State narratives to realize abundance within ourselves and each other, creating deep care and love for ourselves and each other where they may not have been before.
What is one thing Black feminism has taught you?
Black Feminism has taught me that while society attempts to limit our range to consider and experience a nuanced reality, we should always look beyond the surface for the connections within our oppression. It taught me that until we are amplifying the voices of the most vulnerable among us, we will continue to be led astray.
Taj Levi
he/they
Taj Levi is a black transmasculine writer, diviner, and creative. He centers his work and creativity around his passion for creating safe and affirming space for black queer and trans folks. They use their gifts of being a wordsmith and intuitive to create and imagine worlds where people like him are able to thrive. Written word is his most dominant means of spell casting and transmutation, which are mainly executed through poetry and essay.
What does healing the black body mean to you?
Healing the black body to me, means rediscovering the fluidity and connectedness the earth and celestial forces intended us to have access to. It is deeply ancestral to acknowledge and sink into aliveness in a way that is not rooted in survival or trauma. Healing the black body is rejecting colonialism, racism, capitalism, and all that has strived to keep us detached from our core truths and understanding. There is a fullness, and innate brightness to being black, queer, and trans and the healing looks like allowing that to be a resounding truth that permeates throughout mind, body, and spirit.
What is one thing Black feminism has taught you?
Black feminism has and continues to teach me the importance of understanding intersectionality. Feminism has long excluded black, queer, and disabled people — leaving little to no room to make any shift toward change. Black feminism teaches me that in order to acknowledge and uplift the marginalization of women/femmes/trans folks we have to understand how the most marginalized groups are affected, and how those dispositions can be rectified . I am also learning how to include my heart and passion in my black feminist praxis.
What does a liberated world look like to you?
A liberated world to me looks like everyone having their basic needs met, which includes housing, food/nutrition, healthcare, etc. Having access to these things, to me, are the bare minimum of beginning to see liberation at all. Beyond this, liberation looks like safety and equity for marginalized people such as black, trans, disabled, poc, and queer people. A liberated world has no housing insecurity, there is access to gender affirming care, no oppressive legislation on women’s/trans peoples bodies, no industrial prison systems, access to clean water and whole foods, accessible public transportation systems in all places, and overall balance created within our bodily health and the earth.
What is one thing you love about the Kinetic Altar Residency?
It is hard to choose one thing to express love on when it comes to the Kinetic Altar Residency. This space has allowed me to chip away at so many points of rigidity I had been holding onto because of how the world has treated me. This space has affirmed that my black, transsexual body is SACRED and has begun to teach me what that means for me inside and outside of the space. Through community building and softening I genuinely have been able to strengthen hope, and dedication to my aliveness and healing. Recovery and connectedness feels much more possible now.