When SLAMDANCE garage’s writer-director-performer Ian Andrew Askew welcomes us into the space, there may be confusion about what we’re here for. Askew’s list of inspirations and co-conspirators for the show include select essays from Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals, archival material from the artist collective Black Rock Coalition, and assorted musings from punks and non-punks alike on mosh pit etiquette. The SLAMDANCE project encapsulates a series of works born out of Askew’s exploration of the formation, appropriation, and re-appropriation of Black identity in punk culture.
But what is SLAMDANCE garage? Is it a punk show? Is it a solo theater piece? Will there be audience interaction? Will there be a mosh pit?
yes. yes. yes. probably not.
At the top of the show, playfully splayed against a wall, Askew reminds the audience:
“If you, like, read a description of the show…
and what it’s supposed to be about…
I just wanna say now, that I didn’t make any promises.”
And off we go into the delicious tension of Askew’s mind. It’s a real treat to be on this 60-minute ride alongside the energetic performer as they bring us into their world with a series of music, movement, and monologue. I feel best equipped to describe Askew’s storytelling through the metaphor of light refraction. In physics, refraction describes the process wherein a ray of light moves from one material to another, causing the ray to bend and change speed. This often distorts the expected visible image. So too does SLAMDANCE garage repeatedly push familiar rhetoric through new mediums to chase new images and understanding. In one song, Ian borrows the casual words of a Black punk and spins them into a visceral anthem. Accompanying themself on a massive drum kit and a custom-made one-stringed bass, they loop impressively guttural vocals to fill the space with the aggression and confrontation that punk allows its lovers. When we later hear the words in the nonchalant voice of their original speaker, the rebellion of Askew’s interpretation lives beneath. The image has changed.
Askew is not alone in this storytelling, however. In the synergy between Cheyanne Williams’ brilliant production design (the show’s stage is cradled by a stunning set piece that Askew perfectly describes as “the cable monster”) and Itohan Edoloyi’s agile blend of concert and theatrical lighting, SLAMDANCE garage finds the perfect nest for its chameleon-like ambitions. Anthony Sertel Dean’s sound design also miraculously accommodates the many disparate asks of the piece. In tandem, the team has birthed a space that’s part concert, part art installation, part theater piece, part lecture, and wholly communicative. With such varying references, one might worry about whiplash. But this team has a thoughtful vision of how to move its audience through this experience — both artistically and logistically. The entire run of the show is open-captioned and mask-mandatory, for example, and though most of the audience is encouraged to enjoy the show from the standing-room-only concert floor, there’s also plentiful seating for those who need it.
I mention this all because the logistical experience of seeing this show mirrored the artistic one. In both cases, I found myself pleasantly surprised by the number of elements that the team brought into harmony with one another.
This is par for the course, as Ian tells me that they use the metaphor of a conspiracy board to talk about many of their projects. There’s a physical one posted in the lobby that gives a sense of just how many different worlds live in the DNA of SLAMDANCE garage. It’s apparent in content as well as form. In this garage, Nina Simone mingles with Damon Wayans; their musings on Black pride and punk voyeurism find a place in the mouths and ears of Bushwick Starr regulars and theater-rookie-concert-veterans alike, whose eyes then hold Ian through a monologue about their father’s relationship with football.
“It’s me trying to synthesize so many different threads,” Ian says of the monologue that’s visited my thoughts again and again since seeing the performance. I’m hesitant to delve too far into how Askew once again connects these seemingly disparate dots of punk and sport and Black masculinity (it’s simply worth seeing for yourself), but this is one of several shining moments where Askew lassos the show’s bigger, societal-level provocations into more intimate and incisive food for thought.
“[SLAMDANCE garage] grew out of research about Afro-punk as this formation of an identity and a lineage, and this kind of making of a lineage after the fact. It’s about this kind of discourse of racial trespassing, like this idea that black kids could be acting white by engaging in punk culture, whereas white kids get this – white people get this total license to appropriate or even just participate earnestly. From the origins of punk in the UK of white kids going to Jamaican clubs to Patti Smith having a whole song being like ‘I want to be a rock and roll nigger.’ These people are on record being like ‘we want to be Black.’ And so, clearly, this idea of Blackness is so important to the formation of a punk identity. But this iteration of the show is maybe the least about that,” they offer. “This iteration of the show has turned out to be way more about rage and silence and physicality.”
Ian gets more specific with me about the questions at work within the SLAMDANCE container, calling on a piece of text that they quote in the show, a paraphrased excerpt from Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals:
“What are the words that you need to say that you do not yet have?
that you try you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own,
until you’re sick in the stomach and dead silent?”
They think of their answers to these questions. “At the core of this show is–I’ve been working on this since 2019. What do I need to say now? And so it’s somewhat of a futile attempt to just say some truth now.”
This pressing question of what ought to be said now feels properly urgent in SLAMDANCE garage. As Askew shoves themselves back and forth between anthropological interrogations of punk pit culture and reflections on navigating this world in their particular body, they are constantly burrowing deeper. To find the words they’re searching for. To answer the question “are we prepared for the fights ahead?”
This is what I’m left mulling over after SLAMDANCE garage, and just as I did during the show, I find something profound in Ian’s meditations on the punk space.
“When I talk about mosh pits, it's like with this kind of anthropological curiosity, but yeah, it's a place where I get some of what I got from sports, you know, this place to be physical with each other, but also ideally it's in this kind of safe controlled environment. But then with these layers of…in the kind of pits I'm in, in Brooklyn, you can be queer, you can be disabled, you can be all these things and still have community, be willing to push you around and take care of you.”
After this hangs for a moment, they mention a current discourse around what’s called “crowd killing”, which is a variation of moshing that includes kicking, punching, or wailing on people who are on the sidelines of a mosh pit.
“I have no value judgment to weigh in on it.” They add, playfully, “at least not on the record.”
“But my question, especially when it’s white boys doing it, is what are you getting out [of it] and what are you rehearsing for?”
What are you rehearsing for? It’s a question I find imperative to ask at the moment and one that pulses through SLAMDANCE garage.
As we all continue to dress up and play pretend
off stage and on it
in our actions and our silence
what are we rehearsing for?
It’s a big question for a small, solo piece about Black people and the spirit they’ve lent to the punk scene. But, as Askew demonstrates throughout the show, that’s not the only conversation we’re here to have.
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SLAMDANCE garage is running at The Bushwick Starr through March 1st.
