Artist Statement of Mother Mother Binahkaye Joy

I dance a life inside pockets of possibility and create expansive, movement laboratories out of everyday spaces that are soft, vast, and fluid enough for my reality as a multitudinous mothering entity. My work explores the movements, stories and futures born of my body, a mother’s body, a birthing body, that is (nearly) always attached to or in close proximity to my children. As a descendant of Africans who were once enslaved on the same soil where I miraculously came into existence, I dance the dreams and freedom songs of my foremothers. My elemental movements reimagine the elasticity and capacity of mothering labors, and, step by step, mend the aching hearts and generational fractures of the mothers in my bloodline who were forcibly separated from their children. I dance at home and out in the world, surrounded by my children who are freely moving in their own joys and rhythms. My movements are a celebration and a testament to the abundance inherent in each breath, and a radical commitment to making something beautiful with my dancing body however tiny, chaotic or impractical the moment might seem to be. My fertility sources all of movements, and I dance the ringshout to sustain and amplify the ever-evolving dimensions of my divine creation intelligence.