 Thank you so much, Juliana, for inviting me to do this residency at the library, Virgi, for the introduction. And Mason, thank you so much for the sources that you provided me with. So while in residence in May, I didn't know what I was going to do necessarily, but I knew that I had to write a choreopoam for the National Choir Arts Festival. And so basically, I had a blank page and went into those archives, hoping to find the content, the voice, the something to help me just begin. And so Mason sort of led me to the Black Lesbian newsletter, ONIX, and I just sort of fell in love with it. In it, I found just some incredible voices and that sense of like, just like this self, like radical self-possession, which gave me just inspiration for characters, gave me inspiration for setting. And so I'm just going to go through some of the things that I gathered, and then I'm going to read different excerpts and scenes from the choreopoam, which is called Beautiful Being. So I started not necessarily in this order, but the June-July issue of the Black Lesbian newsletter was really kind of fascinating. I happened upon Yasmin Sayed's response to Audrey Lord's essay, Eye to Eye, Black Women, Hatred and Anger. And in it, she's just really kind of reflecting on her relationship to other Black women, her sisters included. And she says something in it that actually gave me like this really cool idea for an abstract setting. And she said, my younger sister and I set upon a path to learn some things about self-nurturance and unconditional mutual acceptance. We are learning to hone a new mirror image of ourselves. And so from there I was imagining, hmm, what if this choreopoam happened at the intersections of the path of self-nurturance and mutual acceptance? And so that became like the place where the choreopoam takes place. And so then 1983, there is Cheryl Clark, who I so love. And so in this, she's basically talking about new notes on lesbianism and just essentially like, what is the big deal? And why are we so like Black women, Black lesbians, are not willing to embrace this identity? And so in this kind of, I guess, I don't know how to describe it, but basically in this, she's talking about if Black, if lesbianism offends Black folks, then why not call ourselves Black azaleas? Since, you know, Black women like pretty names and everything. So that's a pretty name. So let's call ourselves Black azaleas because essentially it's not necessarily about, you know, women fucking other women, but it's about a politics of women bonding and affirming other women. And so essentially thinking about lesbianism as a political standing, as a way to stand in the world and attend to other women. So I essentially, for one of the characters in the choreopoam, she comes into her beauty through a Black azalea. So, and also Cheryl Clark in this repeats, you know, I call myself lesbian because I call myself lesbian because and so I take that refrain later and use that as a sort of like affirmation. And so I also there's the jewel Gomez papers and what I found really exciting about this and really just being in the archives is being able to see people's handwritings, their edits, the sort of like rawness of things even though this is at a different stage in the editing process. So this is a letter from Jules Publisher for the collection Oral Traditions. And from there I was just like reading through it, reading through the edits and pulling out different lines from poems so that essentially what winds up happening is I'm collaging some of Jules' words for the choreopoam. And then there was the Pat Parker papers and in it very small folder but in it there is this untitled poem from Pat Parker in her handwriting and it was just, I don't know, it's just like that level of intimacy just makes everything so real when people have passed away. And that, you know, in creating this choreopoam I really wanted to create like a black lesbian queer text. I wanted those voices to be woven in and to essentially serve as like the backstory and back body of the work. And so Pat Parker's piece comes at the end of my choreopoam where I take the refrain I have seen your hands. And I'm just going to read this just because it's really beautiful. I have seen your hands old cracked with creation. I have seen you honest, drawn with creation. I have seen you mold life from clay. Why? Why is it so hard to mold yourself? Mold yourself, take your old cracked clay hands and mold or free you. Mold out fears and doubts. Take cracked with clay senses and mold a creation and artistic creation. Mold become a person of art, a free person. So I'm going to begin reading some of the sections from my choreopoam and so this is the description of location for the choreopoam. Where are we? Both in where we are and where we want to be. We are where we want to be, present in the beauty of colors that inspire us, colors that breathe into the range in rainbows of feeling alive and worthy, feeling welcome. Where we let our look linger, the light gives us the pleasure of pie. There is home, there is strange and then familiar. Where textures say welcome and we touch and touch a part of ourselves who haven't been touched in a while. Here is where we stay a while, where we smell a while, listen to our breath coming and going and we are here in the presence of we. Where your back is got front and sides too. Our feet in each of our crowns make a path of self-nurturance above of mutual acceptance below and hone a new mirror image of ourselves. Where when we wake up to our two parts love and one part gratitude a beautiful thing happens. So this is one of the opening scenes where the character Trace is introducing herself. Can you feel it? How breath sensitizes you to the spell of words resilient, evasive, hush and silent words. This body's metrics and grammar accent accents the spirit with symbols to unlock what all of them say. Tender remembrance, activating creative energy, I story tell. I come from the beautiful lips of a black azalea who glided four inches off this earth affirming she-self and other women. Facility for talk, story telling and advice giving. This black azalea corrected what I believed ugly about myself. With she solemn eyes seeing my soul, black azalea said you are beautiful. In my tears salted my food. Each bite altered the revolution of my helixes. This pain was not mine alone. Felt faint drops on my spine and knew my mother's tears. She mother too. Greats, greats, greats, grandmothers they shed water too. To nurture to truth that you are beautiful. Because no one spoke of this before, didn't want to spoil the child with it. Get she hopes high for a ceiling she could not cross. They tossed it over the horizon, kept it as a silent trace. Said if there were to be a child with a brave thirst who found this message deep and she may she carry it well and keep us from running dry. I was born thirsty. Beautiful beings reclaim your right to be. I am a beautiful being. I am a beautiful being and we identify ourselves as such so that if there is another beautiful being in the reach of our voices in the field of our energy we want them to know you are beauty. And so this one is pulling lines from Joel Gomez's oral traditions. The particular poems are Gilda Sings, Dreaming Awake, and Tanya Renzi. I think I'm pronouncing it correctly. Okay so and this sort of the conclusion of the choreo poem is sort of like this moment of kind of being in gratitude and being in love and then being in beauty. I was reading about water and water crystals and I'm forgetting the scientist's name but he would study the crystals and sort of say different words to them like hate and love and whatever like negative things and positive things. And so what he found was that the water crystal for beauty was a combination of both love and gratitude. And so at the closing section of the choreo poem it breaks into a moment of like thinking about gratitude and love and so this poem in particular situates that sentiment of gratitude. Thank you for another day for breath, this beauty I breathe, this body that has gotten me through and here. For this body thank you for getting me here. Thank you for the people who've nurtured me fierce, given me home, let me step from shells into a brand new knowing. Thank you for the shoulders to lean on, to cry on, the backs who've given me bridge and strength to rely on. Thank you for the hands holding and held wala and applauding open and closed octagonal and welcoming. Thank you for your prayers. Thank you guides guardians and ancestors you make my presence belong. Be long my arms who lift the sky for you. Be long the space I make for your remembering. Be long the fire I fan to its fullest degrees. I am a tightly wrapped package of everything we need to know. Thank you black, red, purple songs that insist upon being sung. Be long my breath and gratitude for this dream in my heart for this love that is my true. And so the final closing section of the choreo poem is on the theme of beauty and those are pulling lines from Pat Parker's piece and it's pretty short. I have seen you cracked with creation. I have seen you drawn with creation. I have seen you an artistic creation. What will you do for the beauty of our collective liberation? Thank you.