Jonathan González - "Ways to Move: Black Insurgent Grammars" - Anna Martine Whitehead

Jonathan González will discuss Ways to Move: Black Insurgent Grammars. He will be joined in conversation by Anna Martine Whitehead. A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion. About the book: Moving between archival fragments, rehearsal notes, and speculative memory, Ways to Move: Black Insurgent Grammars traces the embodied frequencies and assembled states of Black life. González theorizes Blackness as a grammar, occupying the interstices of white colonial culture; Black movement and expression are both defined by and break down the hegemonic. Through a consideration of land, politics, magic, and movement, this hybrid work performs the perpetually unfinished task of resistance. About the author: Jonathan González is a choreographer, artist, and writer whose interdisciplinary practice engages performance, text, sound, and installation as sites of embodied research. Working across theater, museums, and public space, his work considers how movement generates knowledge, shaping spatial, cultural, and perceptual experience. He is the author of Ways to Move: Black Insurgent Grammars (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2025). González’s work has been presented nationally and internationally, and he is a recipient of the Pew Fellowship and the Herb Alpert Award in Dance. In 2026, he is an artist in both the Whitney Biennial and the Carnegie International, where he has developed new large-scale projects for performance and photography. He is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Hunter College, City University of New York. About the interlocutor: Anna Martine Whitehead does performance from the homelands of the Council of the Three Fires, as well as the Miami, Ho-Chunk, Sauk and Meskwaki; the Kiikaapoi, Peoria, and the Očeti Šakówiŋ (Sioux) Nations. Their solo and collaborative work has been presented by the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art; REDCAT; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art; Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Museum of Modern Art; San José Museum of Art; The Chocolate Factory Theater, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.Martine and her work have been recognized by Ruth Arts, United States Artists, the New England Foundation for the Arts, National Performance Network, the Graham Foundation, Vera List Center for Art and Politics, MAP Fund, Dance/USA, 3Arts, Chicago Dancemakers Forum, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Martine has contributed writing about race, gender, and moving bodies to a range of spaces, and is the author of TREASURE | My Black Rupture (Thread Makes Blanket, 2016). She is assistant professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago.