今年，由于持续的大流行，舞蹈任务的起义（ING）Times Festival在网上举办，标题为“ Harriet's Gun：Shapeshifthifforthifthifthifthifthife of the Shapeshiffors to Greadally Reply Sighted Black Future''。当然，哈丽雅特（Harriet）是哈丽雅特·塔布曼（Harriet Tubman），她在救援任务中携带手枪，既可以保护奴隶捕手，又可以防止受惊的逃亡者转身。这是一个充满电的图像，伴随着疼痛，反抗​​和希望转移范式的希望。

As D.I.R.T. festival co-curator Adia Tamara Whitaker explains it, “Harriet’s gun forced you to be free — whether you were free in life or free in death, you were about to be free.”

Whitaker, an Oakland native who now lives in Brooklyn and directs Àse Dance Theatre Collective, recently spoke to The Chronicle between teaching virtual dance classes in New York City. On the video call with her from Oakland was Sarah Crowell, artistic director emeritus of Oakland’s Destiny Arts Center and festival co-curator. The two women have admired each other’s work for decades, and though this is the first time they’ve worked together, their rapport crackled on the screen, Crowell snapping her fingers as Whitaker’s riffs accelerated.

Their collaborative synergy shines in the festival’s programming, which streams live Friday, March 5, and again March 13. Together they’ve chosen two programs featuring soloists and dance companies from across the country, including Miami’s Hattie Mae Williams, New Jersey’s Kamille King, Oakland’s Afro Urban Society, Chicago’s Red Clay Dance Company and Brooklyn’s UFly Mothership.

“These artists we’ve chosen really are the folks doing the reimagining of the world through their work,” Whitaker said. She pointed to San Francisco’s Zaccho Dance Theater in San Francisco, “taking people literally into the air,” and Nicole Klaymoon’s Embodiment Project presenting a dance that uses text from Joy DeGruy’s book, “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.”

虽然表演将预先录制,the D.I.R.T. festival will be hosted live by another eminent participant, Rhodessa Jones, whose Medea Project has produced award-winning theater with incarcerated women for 23 years.

肯定会成为节日的亮点是口语艺术家和戏剧总监Marc Bamcuthi Joseph的作品，他是海湾地区的才华在华盛顿特区，惠特克称他为“将叙事从黑色疼痛身体转移到黑色欢乐身体的强大声音。”

Crowell is also keen to spotlight the intergenerational aspect of the festival, pointing to a short piece called “Seed Language” that she produced in 2016 with Destiny Art Center’s teen company.

“Black Lives Matter was a fairly new movement at the time, and I took the young women to hear the founder Alicia Garza speak,” Crowell recalled. “They use that speech verbatim as the opening of the show, and it’s a speech saying the names of Black folks who have been killed by the state. So you watch the grief, and you also watch the emergence of a voice that has blossomed into an international movement.”

The two say this year’s festival, the seventh annual, has provided a mechanism not only to showcase Black imagination, but also to exchange practical support.

惠特克谈到佛罗里达舞者亚历克斯·琼斯（Alex Jones）的参赛作品时说：“一位年轻艺术家的作品很漂亮，但未经编辑，所以我们说，‘我们将为您提供视频编辑，以帮助您表达这一点。”“这是一个交流。革命期间很难成为黑人。我们没有等待别人给我们赔偿，我们说：“不，我们要修理自己。”

Both Crowell and Whitaker believe this particular moment — despite the distance the COVID-19 pandemic has forced upon many throughout the country — is especially live, and especially open.

“We’re acknowledging that we are living in the break,” Whitaker said. “What happens in jazz, you’ve got a loop going over and over again, and then you get that break, and you don’t know what’s happening because this is the improvisation, this is where you give up the imitations of the past and become something new.”

“Shape-shifting” in this break is a process for everyone, Whitaker added. “A lot of white folks don’t know where to get into this work so that it doesn’t just repeat the cycles that exist in a different way. So we’re all trying to figure out how to be with each other.”

D.I.R.T. festival presents “Harriet’s Gun: Shapeshifting Towards a Radically Imagined Black Future”:下午5点3月5日，星期五和3月13日。$ 10。415-826-4441。dancemissiontheater.org