SENDING UP the TIMBER, A dance theatre work by Alexandria Davis In this moment, when the world waits for the next catastrophe, this work examines how Black spiritual practice functions as a technology of survival. The title Sending Up the Timber draws from the Black American Blues and Gospel tradition, where "sending up my timber" refers to constructing a heavenly home through good deeds, faith, and prayer. In conversation with Let's Dance International Frontiers 2026's theme, Reimagining Tomorrow: Afrofuturism, New Work & Technology, Sending Up the Timber asks: What technologies of spiritual communion have supported Black communities throughout history, and how might they influence access and the construction of a collective future when material conditions restrict our access to one another? The Work Interweaving Liturgical, pantomime, and modern dance aesthetics, the work continues the development of Aun'Suh, a character born in a previously choreographed work by Alexandria Davis titled dem chillun kum ba yah attuhw'ile (phonetically: "the children will come by here after a while"). Aun'Suh devotes herself to cultivating spiritual community through unwavering faith, reckoning with a labor-less future while actively constructing a legacy through prayer, protest, and rituals of divine kinship. Sending Up the Timber takes place in a nameless place—neither fully past nor future examining the invisible boundaries of a peacefully united afterlife. Drawing inspiration from Jamea Richmond-Edwards's Ancient Future exhibition and Davis’s unpublished essay "Exploring an Ancient Future Like Us in Retrospect," the work investigates an intracultural connection to a recollected African diaspora unimpacted by the African Imperialism and European Colonization that instigated the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Here, what is right or wrong, fiction, myth, or fact, is not governed by the embodied sophistication or criticisms of negritude. Drawing on the concept of “Come as you are,” this work aims to reimagine the ancient undoing of sin and religion, encouraging its performers to explore the ways they have employed ancestral technologies to support their approach to wholeness and kinship. Where dance and song serve as shared language for spiritual breakthrough. The Process The creative process employs phases 4-6 of Alexandria Davis’s Dancing Back to Self methodology, building upon the foundational work Davis shared with the LDIF community in April of 2023. The devising process for Sending up My Timber progresses through: * Phase 4: Living in the "la" – inhabiting a sustained metaphysical state, allowing the body, voice, and consciousness to amplify in the frequency of devotion * Phase 5: Moving Monologue – a solo embodied narrative where individual memory becomes an articulated gesture. The cast drafts a prayer that will be transformed into a gestural phrase or moving devotion.  * Phase 6: Dancing Dialogue – a metarelational exchange between performers, where movement builds into a collective ritual that informs the performers' approach to effort and the embodiment of concepts and themes onstage. Additionally choreography and staging draw from the character development and imagery unearthed through the creation of dem chillun kum ba yah attuhw'ile, my article "Exploring an Ancient Future Like Us in Retrospect," verses one and two of Charles Wesley's hymn "A Charge to Keep I Have," and intercultural dialogue between the cast and collaborators centering the concept of “sending up timber.” Central to the choreographic language is the practice of lining hymns and the sonic landscape of sanctified worship, using the bass drum, rattle, and tambourine as technologies for knowledge transmission and the construction of a performance architecture based on breath, rhythm, and repetition. In collaboration with dancers Heather Mitchell, Akilah Moore, and Amaya Skeene with creative input from Antonio Disla (co-founder of A2D2 Theatre), Alexandria Davis will devise the work during a two-day dance intensive on November 29 & 30, 2025, in East Lansing, Michigan. During the collaborative process, Davis will work with each dancer using the Dancing Back to Self creative process to catalog the memory and impact of embodied ancestral knowledge as a technology. Through movement, voice, and sacred ritual, Sending Up the Timber explores the juxtaposition of dance, memory, and imagination as tools for interdimensional placemaking using embodied prayer as a form of ancient black technology for healing, resilience, and self-examination.

Dancers: Alexandria Davis, Chadwick Gaspard, Imani Bryant, Tiffany Whitson Choreography: Alexandria Davis Film & Directed by Genevieve Curtis

"Hetaera" - Dance Film Choreographed, filmed, and edited by Alexandria Davis This experimental screendance serves as "an homage to self-determination and feminine liberation," reimagining the hetaera as a powerful, erotic force rather than a judged mythical figure. The blaxploitation-inspired work explores themes connected to the Haitian Loa Erzulie through three distinct personas: the Crying Woman (grief and vulnerability), the Pink Goddess (luxury and sensuality), and the Horse (spiritual possession and transformation). The film opens with diamonds spilling over glass, morphing into close-ups of an afro adorned with rhinestones and glitter tears. The narrative unfolds through carefully choreographed vignettes: the Pink Goddess preparing watermelon cocktails amid crystals and incense, the Horse performing movements inspired by Ivorian Zaouli dance and Dunham technique abstractions, and the Crying Woman processing emotional release. Sampling music by Poppy Ajudha and Herbie Hancock, the work examines how "art is creation" where "we give birth to our thoughts, dreams, and agendas." The three women exist in various dimensions of reality, ultimately converging in a final tableau where the Horse and Pink Goddess support the Crying Woman through healing. The film positions dance as both a manifestation of fear and a path to recovery, demonstrating feminine power through unapologetic sensuality and spiritual transformation.

Choreographed and performed by Alexandria Davis Created in response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, this solo examines the woman's body as a site of reproductive surveillance and control. The work opens with Davis positioned like a debutante awaiting critique, evoking the vulnerability of a pelvic examination. The film features two primary personas: a contemporary Southern Baptist woman malfunctioning as she fights for autonomy within conservative restrictions, and the Sister Suffragette character navigating historical and present-day reproductive rights battles. Davis employs movement vocabulary from Dunham Technique and Vogue, creating dialogue between spiritual possession and ballroom liberation. Sampling Duke Ellington's "Sister Suffragette" and MikeQ's "The Ha Dub Rewerk'd," the work explores "care as technology"—examining how isolation and control impact human development. The fragmented choreography reflects broken narratives of womanhood while proposing embodied resistance. Through solo movement, Davis investigates how women's bodies become battlegrounds for political control, questioning basic human computing when reproductive autonomy is compromised. The work ultimately positions dance as essential technology for maintaining connection and agency when traditional support systems fail. alexandriadavis.org

"Venerable Tenancy" - Dance Film Choreographed and performed by Alexandria Davis A "Moving Monologue" danced by a dystopian nomad wandering between timelines of her consciousness and cultural inheritance. Created using the fifth phase of Davis's "Dancing Back to Self" practice, the film investigates consciousness as electrical currents and fragmented memories transcending space-time. Through improvised movement and stream-of-consciousness narration, the work embodies survival, belonging, and resilience. The work positions dance as spiritual resistance, examining how marginalized bodies create meaning within exploitative systems. the movement shifts as the voice becomes more vulnerable and defiant, embodying contradictions of the divine feminine navigating contemporary oppression while honoring ancestral liberation struggles. Through this Moving Monologue format, Davis explores whether human reactions stem from static, neurosis, or unnamed forces that transcend traditional concepts of good and evil.

Aun' Suh, was praying woman. She was birthed in Gadsden Wharf, just east of the copper river. Her chillun sundered from her bosom acquiesced Aun' Suh to the dedication of her mind and body to the spirit of the Lord. Tethering herself to the backwoods and its church Aun' Suh became no stranger to the holy communion of soul and soil, employing her time and energy to cultivate spaces tilled by a spiritual foundation girded in unwavering faith that dem chillun kum ba yah attuhw'ile. Music: Prologue - Aaron Diehl Kneebone Bend - The McIntosh County Shouters Pharoh's Host Got Lost - The McIntoshcounty Shouters

Choreographed, filmed, and edited by Alexandria Davis (September 2020) This contemporary dance film explores the historical and enduring duality of Black womanhood through movement, examining the circumstances that drove Sojourner Truth's powerful 1851 declaration. The work investigates how women navigate the impossible balance between strength and submission, sexuality and conservatism, maternal instinct and self-preservation. Drawing parallels between Truth's era and 2020, the film confronts how women have been stripped of dreams of partnership and love-centered motherhood, forced instead into survival mode where "my body, my choice" becomes both battle cry and burden. Through choreographed sequences, dancers embody the tension between society's contradictory demands: be strong but not threatening, nurturing but not depleted, respected but not unlikeable. The film's central question echoes Truth's defiant inquiry - when society denies your full humanity, how do you claim your worth? Movement becomes a metaphor for the ongoing struggle between desire, pleasure, and fulfillment as women "chassé through this earth" seeking alignment while battling internalized misogyny and societal expectations. The work ultimately presents womanhood as an act of resistance - transforming from "mindless strutting to the milking parlor" into conscious choreography of dignity, self-determination, and divine feminine fellowship.

"The Difference Between This Place and the Next" - Site-Specific Solo Performance Created and performed by Alexandria Davis (2020) Filmed during COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, this solo work serves as "a call to spatial awareness and the continuity of all things seen, felt, and unnoticed." The performance explores themes of dwelling in "light and love" through Davis's "Dancing Back to Self" methodology, examining dance as "animation of the spirit" and "transformative manifestation of time, space, and energy." Shot in isolation during stay-at-home orders, the work investigates questions of presence, transcendence, and authentic embodiment. Davis films herself dancing in the backyard of her Ann Arbor apartment, exploring the tension between confinement and liberation, asking, "How do you know that you dwell in light and love?" The performance incorporates elements of earth, light(the sun), water, and wind as metaphysical anchors. The solo addresses pandemic-specific themes of separation and spatial restriction while maintaining Davis's commitment to mind-body-spirit integration. Through improvised movement sequences, the work examines "the crossroads of self-preservation and transcendence," inviting viewers into "a movement practice of enlightenment, embodiment, and exploration." The piece ultimately poses the question: "Will you dance through life with me?" positioning dance as both a survival mechanism and a spiritual practice during a global crisis. The Difference Between This Place and The Next is a video by Alexandria Davis exploring spirituality and ritual through the framework of Einstein's Theory of Relativity. To witness the unseen, we must go beyond the mind-body. Naming it will only further define the boxes that impact its infinite possibilities. Alexandria presents the video as an invitation for its audience to explore beyond the physical world and delve into the unknown in the same way we connect with our highest selves. The video contains a sample of the instrumental track 'Mama Saturn' by Tanerélle.