Ajani Brannum

Entry Point Date: To be announced

Ajani Brannum is an undiscplinary artist based in Los Angeles. He has worked with a range of choreographers and performance-makers, including Miguel Gutierrez, Deborah Hay, Will Rawls, and Elliot Reed. He has shared performances, workshops, and lectures at REDCAT, ODC, Human Resources Los Angeles, Materials & Applications, Highways Performance Space, Los Angeles Performance Practice, in classrooms, on tabletops and screens, and when no one is looking. Born in Anchorage, Alaska, he holds an AB in English and a Certificate in Dance from Princeton University, and a PhD in Culture and Performance from UCLA.

Entry Point: ‘At the end of aspiration’
This choreopoem turns memoir inside-out, as it probes the embodied dimensions of Ajani’s personal and artistic histories. It is a love letter to people, events, and artworks that have fed his will to belong to life. Through a combination of storytelling, poetry, song, and movement, At the end... asks how performance might help us survive a world where visibility impacts our well-being. It repurposes the past as strength for enduring (into) an uncertain future.

“While in residence at Base, I'll be working on my current project, ‘At the end of aspiration’. Like many folks, I wonder how to continue working and living well in a moment where, allegedly, 'we're cooked.' I've been revisiting various folktales, artworks, and personal memories that empower me to endure the moment. I've been responding to them in writing: stories, poems, songs. At Base, I'll build and refine a team of personas inspired by these texts. I'm looking forward to sharing my experiments in my Entry Point showing—and I hope to build relationships with artists and cultural workers who are determined to keep going against all odds.”