stepping aside

I trained as a dancer in Melbourne in a conservatoire called the Victorian College of the Arts. The studios at the VCA are huge, and a key part of learning to be a dancer in those spaces was how to take up that space, how to consume that space. We were encouraged to ‘dance big’ and to develop the strength in our legs to fill these spaces; perhaps even to ‘own’ the space.

Part of my identity as a dancer is about taking up space.

Part of my role and work as a white person in anti-racist practices is making space, or more accurately giving up space, for people of colour.

Royona sent Arabella and me an article the other day called Why People of Color Need Spaces Without White People. The author, Kelsey Blackwell, writes that “I believe that in most circumstances, doing race work in an integrated setting is harmful.” She demands that “white people step aside to support spaces in which PoC members of the community are invited to feel, to be, and to touch our humanity on our terms, in a way that feels not like colonization but like coming home.”

Stepping aside. It’s a different kind of dancing, but it’s a dance I am practising.

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