Fierce Festival

14 — 18 October

Donate
SCHEDULE:
  • Wheelchair Accessible Visual
  • Wheelchair Accessible Visual

DURATION:

45 mins

VENUE:

Ace Dance and Music
54-57 Floodgate St, Deritend, Birmingham B5 5SL

BUY TICKETS

The Brutal Joy

Justine A. Chambers

(Vancouver)

UK Premiere

Emerging from traces of family gatherings on the South Side of Chicago, The Brutal Joy is a scored improvisation which unfurls Black vernacular line dance alongside sartorial gesture in the lineage of Black dandyism—as intellectual discourse, reverie, and devotion to Black-living. The Brutal Joy is a choreography of movement, sound, and light. As a counter-archival practice, it offers a way “of knowing the past in excess of the fictions of the archive” (Christina Sharpe). It serves as the other citation—a collection of footnotes, physical anecdote as theory, and an otherwise imagining. The Brutal Joy is a reservoir for inherited gesture, individual and collective affective memories, and under-documented histories.

FIERCE SAYS

“Justine is an iconic figure within the Canadian contemporary dance scene and what a treat it is to bring her to the UK for the first time. With dizzyingly hypnotic movement, light, and sound, Justine and her collaborators conjure the lineages of Black vernacular dance and music, making them visceral, undeniable, and monumental.

 

P.S. She’ll also be adapting her seminal work Dinner Party for Fierce Feasts, another not-to-be-missed event.”

Emerging from traces of family gatherings on the South Side of Chicago, The Brutal Joy is a scored improvisation which unfurls Black vernacular line dance alongside sartorial gesture in the lineage of Black dandyism—as intellectual discourse, reverie, and devotion to Black-living. The Brutal Joy is a choreography of movement, sound, and light. As a counter-archival practice, it offers a way “of knowing the past in excess of the fictions of the archive” (Christina Sharpe). It serves as the other citation—a collection of footnotes, physical anecdote as theory, and an otherwise imagining. The Brutal Joy is a reservoir for inherited gesture, individual and collective affective memories, and under-documented histories.

FIERCE SAYS

“Justine is an iconic figure within the Canadian contemporary dance scene and what a treat it is to bring her to the UK for the first time. With dizzyingly hypnotic movement, light, and sound, Justine and her collaborators conjure the lineages of Black vernacular dance and music, making them visceral, undeniable, and monumental.

 

P.S. She’ll also be adapting her seminal work Dinner Party for Fierce Feasts, another not-to-be-missed event.”

artist bio

▶︎

Justine A. Chambers is a dance artist and educator living and working on the unceded Coast Salish territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations in Vancouver, Canada. Her practice is a collaboration with her Black matrilineal heritage, and extends from this continuum and its entanglements with Western contemporary dance and visual arts practices. Her research attends to individual and collective embodied archives, social choreographies of the everyday, and choreography and dance as otherwise ways of being in relation. Chambers’ work has been hosted at galleries, festivals and theatres nationally and internationally including: EMPAC, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Toronto Biennial of Art, Libby Leshgold Gallery, Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery, Contemporary Art Gallery, Sophiensaele (Berlin), National Arts Centre (Canada), Agora de la Danse, Art Museum at University of Toronto, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Artspeak, Vancouver Art Gallery, The Western Front, The Dance Centre, PuSH Festival, Burrard Arts Foundation and the Hong Kong Performing Arts Festival. She is the recipient of the 2025 VIVA Award. She is an Assistant Professor at the School for Contemporary Arts at SFU, and Associate Artist to The Dance Centre. Chambers is August Tyler-Hite’s mother.

CREDITS

▶︎

Concept, Choreography, & Performance: Justine A. Chambers
Lighting Design & Performance: James Proudfoot
Sound Design/Composition & Performance: Mauricio Pauly
Dramaturgy: Vanessa (VK) Kwan
Created in collaboration with: Mauricio Pauly, James Proudfoot, Vanessa Kwan
Costume: Old Fashioned Standards, Cassandra Bailey
Hair: Liam Murley
Administration/Tour Manager: 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. This project was supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.

In loving memory of Delores Hutchinson (1929-2024)

VENUE INFO

The studio is fully accessible for wheelchair users and visitors with limited mobility. The downstairs toilet is fully accessible for disabled visitors with plenty of room to manoeuvre. Find out more here.

access

Visual

CONTENT WARNINGS

Flashing Lights Loud Music Theatrical smoke/haze