Dancing on Desks

This is the first of our two-part finale to our Season of Pleasure, a season throughout which we have sought to understand our relationship with pleasure while simultaneously witnessing and confronting genocide across our world. With poet and activist June Jordan’s words, “What shall we do, we who did not die?” in our minds and spirits, we hear from Zeina and Fatma, two mothers living in London who organize with Parents for Palestine, a group of parents who organize marches, actions, and teach-ins that include young children calling for the end of the genocide and occupation in Palestine. How do we talk about genocide with our youngest children? How do our personal rest and pleasure principles sustain collective liberation and education as the practice of freedom?  

Share your thoughts with us at [email protected], leave an audio message, or slide into our DMs on IG @dancingondesks.

Transcript Available Aug. 2

INTELLECTUAL INHERITANCE

-Follow Parents for Palestine on Instagram @parentsforpalestine

- Ghassan Kanafani, The Land of Sad Oranges (1962)

-adrienne maree brown, Pleasure Activism (2019)

-Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Abolition Geography: Essays Toward Liberation (2022)

-June Jordan, “Some of Us Did Not Die” (2001)

-The Combahee River Collective Statement (1977)

-”50 Years of Combahee”, Black Women Radicals (2024) — A special thank you to Jaimee Smith, founder and executive director of Black Women Radicals, for allowing us to use an excerpt from her May 22, conversation with Combahee River Collective co-founders Barbara Smith and Demita Frazier. 

-bell hooks, Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope (2003)

-“Lineages of Deviant Caretaking”, Dancing on Desks (2024)

MUSIC

-Our Dancing on Desks Theme Song is composed and arranged by Mara Johnson and Elliott Wilkes

-“Arabic Oud” prod. @aldisjaminii_ 

-“Jamila” prod. @montymusic311

-"I’ll Be Free" prod. @Rhamzandays

-“Joyful & Upbeat Background Nasheed” vocal only prod. Quran Lofi

-"Calming Background Nasheed" vocal only prod. Quran Lofi

-“Soulful Nasheed” without music promoted by @ncnasheeds

-“Small Talk” prod. yogic beats

-“Relaxing & Calming Nasheed” vocals only provided by NoCopyrightNasheeds

-“Haven” prod. rémdolla

-“Stunt” prod. rémdolla

-“Burst” prod. rémdolla
-“Don't Save Me” prod. sadcg

What pleasure becomes possible when we commune with nature, our bodies, and each other? Educator, activist and organizer, researcher, writer, scholar, Zumba dancer, a very reluctant high school sax player and first-chair, only chair vibraphonist shea wesley martin joins us in this episode where they think with us about all things community. shea contemplates how we story community, learn and write in community, and how we find pleasure in community. 

Also, they have another special educator workshop Yours, Truly coming up and would like to welcome you to the space! Find more details by following them on Twitter and on Instagram @sheathescholar. 

Share your thoughts with us at [email protected], leave an audio message, or slide into our DMs on IG @dancingondesks.

Transcript [Available From June 14]

COVER ART

The cover art for this episode’s title card is a collage created by collagist Anna Almore. Anna is also a Dancing on Desks Hivemind member.

CONNECT WITH SHEA & THEIR WORK

Twitter: @sheathescholar

Instagram @sheathescholar

https://www.sheawesleymartin.com/

INTELLECTUAL INHERITANCE

-The Black Interior: Essays, Elizabeth Alexander

The Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyond Resistance in Black Culture, Kevin Quashie

-Punished for Dreaming, Bettina Love 

-Kimberly C. Ransom, “A Conceptual Falsetto: Re-Imagining Black Childhood via One Girl’s Exploration of Prince”, Journal of African American Studies (2017) 

-Zinn Education Project

-Teaching for Change

-Social Justice Books

-Woke Kindergarten

MUSIC

-Our Dancing on Desks Theme Song is composed and arranged by Mara Johnson and Elliott Wilkes

-vibraphone, original music prod. Elliott Wilkes 

-Victoria Monét “On My Mama” (monét clipped wings Remix)

-“Mortal” prod. rémdolla

-"Jazzaddicts" prod. Cosimo Fogg

-Go-go instrumental prod Marci Jay

-Noire #1 prod. Pedro

-“Raio de Sol” prod. Wonderlust Beats

-"Reprise / Those Eyes" prod. yogic beats

-"Marry Me" prod. Fred Irie

-"Seus Olhos" prod. Fred Irie

-"Soul Searcher" prod. yogic beats

We call this episode, lovingly, the auntie auntie auntie episode (or the niece niece nibling episode) shouted at the top of our lungs. We scream their names in the key of care, of reclaiming our bodies, lives, and pleasure(s) for ourselves (and our time). In this episode we talk with Anna Almore and Erica or ET, two friends and educators, about their moments of what Anna calls deviant caretaking, the act of choosing pleasure, accountability to one’s deepest self over what work as teachers, teacher-educators, and students demands of one’s self. Anna and Erica share about lessons learned one night at a strip club and releasing themselves from the disciplining of settler colonialism’s projects of school, capitalism, misogynoir, and respectability—led by a long inheritance of aunties who showed them how to do thee things. And as nieces and aunties themselves, they reflect on what they now teach another generation, finding that the lessons and blessings their nieces and relatives give them to be the most urgent ones of all. Share your thoughts with us at [email protected], leave an audio message, or slide into our DMs on IG @dancingondesks.

Cover art by Anna Almore 

Transcript Finalized May 3

Intellectual Inheritance

- bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress

- Cathy Cohen, “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?” GLQ (1997)

- Cathy Cohen, “Deviance As Resistance: A New Research Agenda for the Study of Black Politics” Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race (2004)

- Hoodrat to Headwrap podcast with Ericka Hart and Ebony Donnley, "Resting My Eyes (with a pistol in my apron): Tricia Hersey's Ministry is About More than Naps"

-Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic As Power”

-Kimberly C. Ransom, “A Conceptual Falsetto: Re-Imagining Black Childhood via One Girl’s Exploration of Prince” Journal of African American Studies (2017) 

- Keffrelyn D. Brown

- Christina Sharpe, Ordinary Notes 

Music

- “Godspeed” prod Jovian 

- “Warm Brandy” prod kitxnx

- "5AM In Ibiza" prod ossy

- “Stagnant” prod rémdolla

- “Levitate” prod Bailey Daniel

- “Another Day” prod Jovian

- “Marigold” prod by Qué Soul

- “Island Girl” prod by JayRewind/@RMLUR

- “Wham” prod by Slappy Boy

In a follow-up to our fourth episode, “Gimme My High School Experience,” we share about our process and the way we make decisions about what we include--and what we don’t--when we’re creating our podcast. We’re boycotting companies that are supporting the US-backed genocide in Palestine by Israel. We share ways that you can join us in calling for a free Palestine and we close with a poem by the indomitable Black feminist poet, writer, and scholar-activist June Jordan. 

Call U.S. Elected Officials

⁠U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights

Fund Palestine Survival 

Islamic Relief USA

Doctors Without Borders

To Learn More

Going Home: A Walk Through Fifty Years of Occupation, by Raja Shehadeh

Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine, by Noura Erakat

The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017, by Rashid Khalidi

Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement, by Angela Y. Davis

Intellectual Inheritance

“Apologies to All the People in Lebanon,” June Jordan, The Poetry Foundation

A Palestinian is killed while with a group waving a white flag. Israel says it will look into it, Associated Press 

Reading at the Kelly Writers House, University of Pennsylvania, PennSound (April 23, 2001)

History of the Question of Palestine, United Nations

Israel-Hamas War, Associated Press

The Walt Disney Company Donates To Support Humanitarian Relief Following Terrorist Attacks In Israel, Walt Disney Company 

U.S. Aid to Israel in Four Charts, Council on Foreign Relations

What’s BDS, the movement to boycott Israel with a new social media following?, The Washington Post

Music

“Tone” prod. by rémdolla 

“Memorial” prod. by rémdolla

Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.

We continue our Season of Pleasure with this conversation with high school students Aleya, Kyree and their college instructors Beylul and Jill, who learn and teach at the Early College Academy Program with Coolidge High School and Trinity University in Washington, D.C. They share about the abundant pleasure that emerges when we learn in community, seek to see ourselves and each other in our teaching, and root ourselves in education as the practice of freedom. If pleasure can happen in the classroom, what does this look and sound like?

We invite you to share your reflections. What can pleasure look and feel like in spaces of education? What is bringing you pleasure and rest this month? Send your thoughts to us at [email protected], leave an audio message, or slide into our DMs on IG @dancingondesks.

Participate in Black Lives Matter Week of Action this Feb. 5-8, 2024. Find out what’s happening in your area at: https://www.blacklivesmatteratschool.com/woa.html

Transcript Finalized March 1, 2024

INTELLECTUAL INHERITANCE

MUSIC

Our third episode in our season of pleasure is a conversation between elementary educators and parents, Cesarina Santana Pierre and Tiffany Green. Cesarina and Tiffany share about the learning and unlearning they’ve engaged in as educators, parents, and people—moving from results-oriented classrooms to those that center rest and relationality. Their relationship with pleasure has been a journey of disrupting their relationship with productivity, a relationship that they inherited from their families but are wary of passing onto their own children and students. 

We invite you to share your reflections. How are you refusing productivity and collusion with capitalism and white supremacy? What is bringing you pleasure and rest this month? Send your thoughts to us at [email protected], leave an audio message, or slide into our DMs on IG @dancingondesks.

Transcript (Finalized January 26, 2024)

INTELLECTUAL INHERITANCE

MUSIC

Find a soft place to land and meditate with Brittney Elyse. She’s prepared a special meditation for you and encourages us all to make space for rest and the pleasure of the pause. 

Meditation by Brittney Elyse, @brittneyelyseyoga 

MUSIC

“Wait For You” prod. by Yogic Beats 

“Tribulations” prod. by Yogic Beats

“Alone” prod. by Rémdolla

“D'angelo X Lauren Hill Type Beat 2023 Free” prod. by Regg13

“Mercy” prod. by Yogic Beats 

“Nectarine” Prod By Yogic Beats 

This episode takes its name from the first pages of Toni Cade Bambara’s novel The Salt Eaters, where healer Minnie Ransom tells activist Velma Henry, “wholeness is no trifling matter.” We join mama, yoga instructor, lover, and Kindergarten teacher Brittney Elyse to talk about what it means to find pleasure in what Bambara calls “the weight of wellness,” when she leaves and then returns as her full(er) self to teaching. Brittney shares her migration story from North Carolina to Massachusetts and back, reflecting on how she began to unlearn unpleasure, uncare, and working to capacity (which Audre Lorde tells us are not the ways of the erotic).

We invite you to share your reflections. What is bringing you pleasure and rest this month? Send your thoughts to us at [email protected], leave an audio message, or slide into our DMs on IG @dancingondesks.

Transcript (Finalized Monday, Dec. 4, 2023)

The clips from the protest at the end of this episode come from an October 28, 2023 protest in London, UK, calling for a ceasefire in Palestine in solidarity with freedom and protection for Palestinians.

BRITTNEY’S SUNDAY SWEETNESS

INTELLECTUAL INHERITANCE

MUSIC

In our third season of Dancing on Desks, we are exploring pleasure. We are guided by two questions: How might our personal rest and pleasure practices sustain our collective liberation? And how are our rest and pleasure connected to education as the practice of freedom? In this first episode, Philadelphia-based writer and creator Nicole Young joins us to share her story of what became possible when she quit her job as the executive director of a school in New Orleans to write full-time and to create fantasy worlds for Black girls in middle grades novels. 

What is bringing you pleasure and rest this month? Send your thoughts to us at [email protected] or slide into our DMs on IG @dancingondesks.

Transcript (Finalized Friday, October 27, 2023)

NICOLE YOUNG’S WRITING

INTELLECTUAL INHERITANCE

MUSIC

For our final episode, we’re joined by prison abolitionists Comrade BIM, from the Vaughn 17, and Fariha and Bee, organizers with DCIWOC, DC Incarcerated Workers Organizing Coalition. BIM is a member of the Vaughn 17, a group of 17 activists charged in the 2017 prison uprising inside the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center. They share about abolitionist ethics of care, showing up as co-conspirators, rupture in community, and moving in accountability. Laquesha Sanders closes our series with her final segment on mental health and student debt, sharing how she freed herself from six-figure debt. Canadian-Ugandan poet and culture worker, Elizabeth Mudenyo, author of the poetry chapbook With Both Hands, shares her poem “Nothing Owed”. We offer you these questions: What are lessons prison abolitionists teach us in school abolition? How do we move beyond allyship and sit in co-conspiracy? What does it mean to center accountability as liberatory praxis? What do we own when we’re called in or out? Send your thoughts to us at [email protected] or slide into our DMs on IG @dancingondesks.

Transcript (Finalized Friday, July 7, 2023)

INTELLECTUAL INHERITANCE

Learn more + be in solidarity with DCIWOC

MUSIC