The Brutal Joy is a performance that wields the materiality of Black Vernacular line dance and Black sartorial gesture as physical cogitation, reverie, and devotion to Black-living.
The Brutal Joy is a scored improvisational performance for sound, light, and dance performed by Justine A. Chambers, Mauricio Pauly, James Proudfoot. The work is an antiphonal relational collaboration, an activation of The Electric Slide and Black dandyism to invoke the Black imaginary, and activate an embodied counter-archive—a reservoir for gestures, individual affective memories and under documented histories.
Justine A. Chambers is a dancer, artist and educator living on the ancestral and traditional territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, xwməθkwəyə̓ m and səlilwətaɬ Nations. Her movement practice considers choreography as empathic practice rooted in collaborative creation, close observation, and the body as a site of a cumulative embodied archive. Privileging what is felt over what is seen, she works with the social choreographies present in the everyday. Chambers is an Assistant Professor at the School for Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University, and her choreographic projects have been hosted at national and international galleries, theatres and festivals. Chambers is Max Tyler-Hite’s mother.
March 26-27-28, 2025 – 7 P.M.
March 29, 2025 - 4 P.M.
Duration : 45 minutes
29$ | 35$
Meet the artists on March 27, 2025, after the performance
Choreography Justine A. Chambers
Performers Justine A. Chambers, Mauricio Pauly, James Proudfoot
Lighting James Proudfoot
Music Mauricio Pauly
Dramaturgy Vanessa Kwan
Costumes Cassandra Bailey – Old Fashioned Standards
Created in collaboration with Mauricio Pauly, James Proudfoot, Vanessa Kwan
Production and Tour Management Kaia Shukin
Co-production The CanDance Network Creation Fund, Agora de la danse, Toronto Dance Theatre, The Dance Centre
Creative Residencies Agora de la danse, The Dance Centre
This project was made possible with the support of PERICULUM. Foundation for Contemporary Art | Fondation pour l’Art Contemporain
In loving memory of Delores Hutchinson (1929-2024)
With the support
