States of Insurrection in Native Girl Syndrome

Authors

  • Stefanie Ellen Miller Brown University

Abstract

NGS (Native Girl Syndrome) is a dance work by Lara Kramer that stages the effects of cultural and physical dispossession. This essay explores how NGS mounts an insurrection at the level of feeling through the practice of inhabiting bodily states. Rather than inviting the audience to feel for the dispossessed, the work asks us to dwell in discomfort, alongside others. By incessantly posing the question of how reality might be remade through bodily states rather than nation-states, NGS generates the potential for decolonial world making within the space of the performance.

Author Biography

Stefanie Ellen Miller, Brown University

Stefanie Miller is a PhD candidate in Theatre and Performance Studies at Brown University. Her dissertation investigates choreographies of protest from the 1960s through the present, attending to how they generate alternatives to dominant, habitual, and institutional ways of feeling. Her research is funded by SSHRC.

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Published

2016-11-24

Issue

Vol. 2 No. 2 (2016)

Section

Forum

License

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