Black on Black: A performance by Zinzi Minott

Brent Biennial 2022 presents Black on Black, a solo dance performance by artist Zinzi Minott exploring Queerness, Blackness and the body as an archive.

The work interrogates dance as a form of labour and the limits of the body through the exhausting processes of repetition and duration. The 1h solo performance has been created from movement phrases donated to Zinzi by an extended network of Black dancers and artists. “If you could imagine a physical archive of dance”, asked Minott, “what nugget or phrase would you donate?”

In Black on Black, both dance and blackness are archived physically, passed from body to body to form a physical archive of Black and Queer lineage. What if movement, handed on and shared, is the embodied language of Black lives across generations and geolocations? Perhaps the body itself, and a shared physical vocabulary, is the most tangible archive for remembering Black life and histories. Dance’s ephemerality is a tactic of resistance.

As Minott performs her solo, her phrases are altered, eroded by exhaustion, mirroring the ever-changing and always vulnerable existence of the archive. The work makes plain the fallible nature of the body, of the archive, of performance and of blackness, all subject to forces of erasure.

Minott will perform her solo amidst a multi-screen audio-visual installation consisting of archival footage and other accompanying material from Minott’s personal image collection with a newly commissioned score composed by Gaika.

Arrival from 6.30pm. Performance starts at 7pm sharp, and is one hour-long.

A free bus shuttle will be available for pick up from Kilburn Tube Station to/from the venue. If you would like to take this, please ensure that you select a ticket with the bus shuttle option when booking.

Pick up: bus departing at 6.30PM from Kilburn Tube Station.

Drop off: bus departing at 8.30pm back to Kilburn Tube Station.

Black on Black is commissioned by CONTINUOUS, a partnership between BALTIC and Siobhan Davies Studios. With further support from Metroland Cultures. With thanks to our venue partner, Unit 7/Prahlad Bubbar.