Photo:Tiffany Bessire

MAJOR inspired me to write about how dance helps women to identify with their bodies, how there can be healing in the practice, in the sensuality, and the rigor of movement. Watching the dancers run up the bleachers and the absolute rigor it takes to twerk in the various fashions across the stage really inspired me to visit dance in my own life and how it has acted as a gateway.

Twerk

Inspired by MAJOR

by Elizabeth Upshur 

Inspired by MAJOR


This is My Body & so I

twerk, trance led eyes portal skyward,
twerk, like my older sister taught me
twerk, like my body knows undulations exorcise a body of society's invalidations & with enough shaking you can free your body too, beat out like wind whipped laundry, drying on the line. Don't you want to step back into a body that's all yours? Just limbs & heart & lips that part in raucous laughter? Not meat or prey or asking for it, but self & self & self.

I have just the one mirror in my room—
suppose I lay it sideways & give *mirror-self more space to twerk? Suppose I ball my hand into a fist, or stomp on it in my high heel boots, hang up the fragments like holiday lights, make a chorus of dancing girls out of one little ole me.


About 
Elizabeth Upshur
Elizabeth Upshur is an actress and storyteller raised in Tennessee. She is a contributing editor at The Seventh Wave and local Black owned company Blazon Publishing. She is a Fulbright alumna, Rock’n’Roll marathoner, forever Miss Tennessee Earth 2018, and bachatera. She is the founder of The Matinee Club, a virtual workshop for film buffs, screenwriters, and film writers. In her free time, she sketches and volunteers at the Nashville based food pantry The Store.
Art Wire is an ongoing creative writing fellowship from OZ Arts and The Porch. Each performance season, a cohort of writers is selected via application to attend a variety of OZ Arts presentations and respond to each work through original writing that is personal, playful, and deeply engaged.

Throughout the season, original Art Wire writings will be added to this website, showcasing the inspiration and interpretations captured by this year's cohort.

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