MIT Museum & Harvard Carpenter Center

Let’s get this party started right. Black dance and music are an exact representation of place: out of the migratory hotspots where it has evolved; in the neighborhoods where it originates, through the architecture where it is performed, and in the psychic spaces of those who use it as expression, healing, and joy.

Using motion capture and photogrammetry as a point of departure, The Chocolate City Dance Map is a cartography of Black somatic choreographic movement made in collaboration with MIT.nano and the MIT Immersion Lab. At the intersection of art, science, technology, and social practice, The Chocolate City Dance Map will come to life through the presentation of the “Make Techno Black Again” immersive experience and the sharing of an open-source digital library of Black dance. 

What is a map besides an abstraction of what the body knows innately? Here I posit dance as a type of map, a territorial formation of labor, race, class that maps itself onto the body through movement. Popularized by George Clinton, “Chocolate Cites” refer to the constellation of towns and cities where Black culture is maintained, created, and defended. Places like Detroit, Chi-town, and Philly. Enclaves like Tremé, Harlem and Holly Springs. Places that articulate their own sound and gesture.

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