In J ((( ))) Y Sessions dance occurs from the body re-organizing itself through activating circuitry and “undoing” into configurations of spacious affect. This “trans-embodiment” leads to “trans-being”, a name Whittle uses to identify a momentary destination where inherent pleasure, joy, expanse and embodied truth are arrived at- from dancing relationally with a continually shifting status of what one is in relationship with or how relationship shifts to the in-between where boundaries blur.
In J ((( ))) Y Sessions she also draws from her body of work on instant composition with an ever establishing lexicon of genre-bending dance involving the perception and co-ordination of threads and forces between the hands, body-field and ground.
During her Project Space Residency she aims to expand on J ((( ))) Y Sessions through creation of an immersive space to explore materiality in dance as a relational, tactile interrogation of form, and for combining dance with video of Trans-Being and Joy Embodiment shot in environments typically housing competitive work-outs and in a liberating setting on her own desert land.
She’ll also delve into writings on Marcuse’s aesthetics of liberation, Barbara Erehnreich’s Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy and documentation on pre-gentrification community dance rituals in San Francisco- to elucidate more about collective joy and the marriage of art and politics as a cultural movement from 1969 (the year of her own inception in San Francisco) onward, as well as it’s transmutation. She’s interested to contrast larger cohesive political movements where art is integral with current trends where art, community, ritual and activism are explored in small cultural-de-sacs or replaced with virtual “community” where political issues are massaged then forgotten.
She wonders how embodiment rituals to liberate or decolonize the body/mind inform a larger collective political movement and aid in art as agency for the movement.