Episode #14: The Open Tent: Sondra Loring on Dance Making, Stewarding Land, and Prison Abolitionism
In this first episode of the spring 2025 season, I talk with dance-artist Sondra Loring about our work together in the ‘90s initiating and running the New York Improvisation Festival, and about Sondra’s work now as a dance maker, a teacher, a prison abolitionist, and a steward of land in the Hudson Valley. We talk about “knowledge” vs. practice in Jewish traditions, the intimacy of knowing a person through movement, Fred Moten’s language, Yoshiko Chuma’s Living Room Projects, prison abolitionists Dean Spade and Ruthie Wilson Gilmore, the anarchist Peter Kropotikin, Sondra’s new dances and her work teaching dance in prisons. What does it mean to be “on the land” in the context of settler colonialism? What is the mutual in mutual aid? How do we find ourselves “at home”?
People, orgs., texts and videos mentioned and discussed
The New York Improvisation Festival (now Movement Research Festival)
Fred Moten, “Refuge, Refuse, Refrain” in The Universal Machine (Duke UP, 2018)
Dean Spade, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During the Crisis (and the Next), (Verso. 2020)
Dean Space and Reina Gossett (video) “Prison Abolition”
Ruth Wilson Gilmore in Geographies of Racial Capitalism, by Kenton Card
Sondra Loring
Sondra Loring is a queer movement artist, writer, and community organizer. Loring's choreography addresses social and political issues through site-specific works and solo performances, creating opportunities for community dialogue and engagement. Sondra founded Satya Yoga Center, Sadhana Center for Yoga and Meditation and MovingPotential in the Hudson Valley, creating welcoming spaces for community wellness. Moving Potential has also been conducting creative writing and dance workshops inside of Greene Correctional Facility as part of Arts In Corrections NYS, a regrant program of NYSCA and Wave Farm, made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor, the New York State Legislature, and the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.
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