Survivalist Queer Theory
Write an essay that analyzes an autobiographical dance performance solo piece, by Jaylen De’ Angelo Clay. A black, queer, traumatized disabled (sensorineural hearing loss) African American artist. Tell the story of his transformation from life growing up as a “black disabled queer boy” to a life wanting to fit in as a “man” after surviving his childhood. The essay should argue for Clay’s politically charged performance to raise questions about independence and interdependence as well as the individual’s place in a community.
Begin this essay by describing a “solo” performance with an individual interpretive healing choreographic framework to accommodate the needs of people with varying abilities. Though a bit of chaos entered into the picture as I described it, Inadvertently leave the impression of a utopian community of difference, a community that—despite best efforts to convince the audience otherwise—perhaps persists in exemplifying Clay’s “dis-modern utopia” in which disability becomes the generalized, organizing trope of human experience.
Through analyzing this performance, explain how the audience discovers various meanings of resilience within his transformational journey. Clay’s life as an impoverished black man—its endless encounters with unjust authorities, obstructive bureaucracies, and omnipresent surveillance— that trained him to cope with life as a disabled traumatized African American man. In the dance performance, Clay explores the points of intersection where race, class, gender, and disability collide within a single individual; as his identity shifts, so do the communities to which he belongs and the ways in which the outside world views him.
