NEWS: Zinzi Minott: Black on Black @ BALTIC

Zinzi Minott’s solo dance performance Black On Black offers a space in which narratives of Blackness and Queerness are explored, constructed, moulded and retold through the physical work of movement. Minott’s movements positions the body itself as an archive, where such movements are stored, to be accessed, shared, passed on and remade.

The performance will take place on at BALTIC on Thursday 9^th and Friday 10^th June, and will also be supported by a video installation, running on Saturday 11^th, Sunday 12^th and from Wednesday 15^th–Sunday 19^th June.

The dance is comprised of gestures and movements donated by a network of Black dancers, creating a constellation of shared kinetic memories. Minott’s own body then constructs a narrative from these borrowed pieces, making a work that, in its own ephemerality, threatens to erode itself in exhaustion and repetition, but in so doing passes on narratives of Blackness and Queerness that are its central concern. In so doing, the work acts as another link in that vulnerable, radical chain stretching temporally and spatially. It also calls into question the ostensible permanence of other types of archive, other forms of passing on identity, recognising their inherent frailty, their inherent susceptibility to erasure and change.

Zinzi Minott: Black On Black is performed at BALTIC, Gateshead on Thursday 9^th and Friday 10^th June.