This talk puts the pleasure work of dancer Jennifer Harge in conversation with Black feminist theories of erotics, freak technique, and ecstasy to identify contrasts between the “specifically honed craft” and the seemingly pejorative “freak-ish” nature of queer Black vernacular dance (Anna Martine Whitehead 2017). In doing so, the desire to unpack notions of respectability, form, and tradition that surround Black vernacular body movement provides the framework for imagining and considering the sometimes complex and uncomfortable pathways towards essential pleasure in and outside of the visual art lexicon.

Taylor Renee Aldridge is a Detroit-based writer and curator. In 2015 she co-founded ARTS.BLACK, a journal of art criticism from Black perspectives. Taylor is Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the Detroit Institute of Arts. She has worked for the N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Art, the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art, and the National Museum of American History (Smithsonian Institutions) as a Goldman Sachs Junior Fellow. Taylor is the 2016 recipient of the Andy Warhol Foundation Creative Capital Arts Writers Grant for Short Form Writing. She has written for Art21, ARTNews, Contemporary And, Detroit MetroTimes, SFMoMA’s Open Space, and Hyperallergic. Taylor earned an MA from Harvard University with a concentration in museum studies and a BA from Howard University with a concentration in art history.

Reception to follow