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Our White Friend is a performance project by Colin, Simon and I. It premièred at Independent Dance London on 21 May 2016.
Original trailer:
Five minute edit:
Tim Wise is an American authority on white racism. Through public lectures and books he educates white audiences to recognise and be responsible for their race-based privileges. We are interested in Wise’s craft in public speaking, his authority on race, and what might happen if we were to imagine that he is an artist. How might this proposition enable us to test the limits of Wise’s practice as public speaker and white ambassador? Whose voices count in this debate, and whose faces are acceptable?
Full performance:
Password: babyman
Choreography and Direction: Colin Poole
Performance: Simon Ellis
Guests: Paul Hughes, Hamish MacPherson, Josh Gill and Rob Vesty
Music: Sam Coslow and Arthur Johnston, Dorothy Love Coates, 2Pac, and Henry Purcell
Images: Stephen Wright Photography
The development of Our White Friend was supported by C-DaRE (Centre for Dance Research) at Coventry University
Main image: Shawn Calhoun (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic, changes made)