Kayla Hamilton

photo by Travis Magee

Grant Recipient

photo by Travis Magee

Location

Bronx, NY

Digital Presence

Artist Website

Project Title

How to Bend Down/How to Pick it Up

Fiscal Year Awarded

2024

Grant or Program

National Dance Project Production Grant

How to Bend Down/How to Pick it Up is an immersive, site specific, multidisciplinary installation and dance performance exploring the growth, use, and medicalization of cotton as a historical thread between Blackness and Disability in the U.S.

The piece utilizes an elaborate multimedia design, multiple Audio Descriptors, a multi vantage-point stage, and a performance structure that can reconfigure every night based on the performers’ changing needs.

Moving through the funhouse mirrored, public gaze that sensationalizes, commodifies, and pathologies Black and Disabled people How to Bend Down/How to Pick it Up offers a spatiotemporal, spiritual, and somatic archiving and reclamation of the ways Black Disabled folks adapt, assemble, and love one another.

Caretakers of Land/Land Acknowledgement: The land currently known as The Bronx is the native land of Lenapehoking.

Two Black women dance. One wears cream sweats and another has a denim romper and a red plaid button down.

photo by Gary Tone

On a stage, four folks perform; three are lying down and one is standing an stretching her arms.

photo by Gary Tone

In a spotlight, a Black woman, in khaki, spins with her arms up.

photo by Gary Tone

Interested in presenting this work?

Step 1: Contact the Tour Coordinator

Contact the tour coordinator listed below for information on this project’s tour dates, and to discuss joining a project’s NDP tour and receiving a Presentation Grant.

[TBD]