The throng of commuters pushed me into a stranger’s armpit on the L train during the Friday night rush at Union Square. This stranger became my unlikely duet partner, bending to and fro as we were jostled about the subway car inhaling the damp air: a mix of perspiration and whatever gases spewed out of the MTA’s automatic HVAC system. Despite not making eye contact, we were oddly connected in a symbiotic relationship for the length of our journey. The stranger recognized that I had to lean against him because I could not reach the subway pole, and my presence prevented him from losing his balance. This seemingly trivial interaction became more relevant later that night when I experienced Ian Andrew Askew’s SLAMDANCE garage at the Bushwick Starr. The hour-long concert surveys crowd behavior and the type of collectivity that becomes possible when people gather in close proximity, be it on dance floors, in mosh pits, or at protests.
In this performance, Askew did not let the audience remain quiet. After weaving through the crowd in the way someone might move in a circle pit for several minutes, Askew reached for a handheld mic. “Good evening,” they called. There was silence. “Good evening,” they said again, and a few voices returned the greeting. It was only after their third call that the audience began to catch on, and the room grew louder.
At Askew’s invitation, audience members were tasked to find people they did not know and say something supportive to them. My trio awkwardly fumbled for words. After sharing our names, we timidly shook hands and exchanged superficial compliments. I admired my neighbor’s hat and someone mentioned they thought my vest was cool. Askew’s voice encouragingly called out, “Keep taking care of each other…” Walking behind the impressive mass of wires and cords that descended from the ceiling and coiled around the drum kit, Askew finally began to play. Each beat, loop, and crash radiated energy throughout the theater, and the transfixed crowd started to pulse.
“If I was Black and normal / I’d still get fucked with / so I do what I want / take my chances” howled Askew. Their full-throated voice referenced a quotation by Marlon Whitfield, pulled from the 1982 documentary Another State of Mind. I understood Marlon’s words. If you are marginalized, why not delight in the very things normative society labels as freakish and undesirable? Though I have never gone moshing myself, I came of age in the haze of queer clubs and raves. I was familiar with the spirit that grips your body when you are permitted to exist in a space without being under surveillance and move however you damn well please.
Throughout their performance, Askew’s drumming was intercut by multiple audio recordings of people reflecting on what it means to be punk. These excerpts, edited by sound designer Anthony Sertel Dean, glitched and rippled through the score, defining the mosh pit as a space for transgression. Askew placed a significant level of trust in the audience. They moved throughout the theater with the certainty that the crowd would make space for their body. And the crowd did. Askew rocked, shaked, and quaked, exposing both a vocal and emotional rawness to the audience. They believed that at least one person present would be there to hold or catch them if necessary. And when asked, a stranger did.
Before performing a chilling rendition of “Young, Gifted, and Black,” an iconic song made popular by Nina Simone in 1969 as a tribute to Lorraine Hansberry, Askew shared their personal connection to the mosh pit. The pit offered them an arena where they “could get used to the idea of fighting” and therefore become more comfortable with the physical risks and injuries associated with struggles against oppression. Although Askew accumulated all manner of bruises in the pit, they also importantly learned how to tend to wounds and care for others there. They framed the space as a liberatory training ground where people know “how to get together, how to swarm, how to get hit and get back up.” Askew’s words transformed my impression of mosh pits and made me realize that they could function as sites for necessary social collisions.
After Askew’s electrifying performance, I sat in the theater until my heart rate slowed down, wondering if it would be possible to model the behaviors associated with moshing outside of nightlife. Before exiting, I scanned the SLAMDANCE CONSPIRACY wall, a collage of notes and prints posted outside of the theater’s entrance. I spotted a note scrawled on yellow paper and squinted my eyes to make out the text: “I will not quietly nor politely make house in the depravity of this killing machine.” As advertised, SLAMDANCE garage is neither quiet nor polite. It is theater at its best: a provocation to act and a welcome reminder that we, the audience or public, cannot be subdued or silenced.
On my long journey home, I reconsidered the exercise Askew facilitated at the start of the performance when they invited audiences to speak up and introduce themselves. The activity assumes if we are going to find a way to survive overlapping crises, resist white supremacy, and overthrow fascism in the twilight of the nation, we should, at the very least, be able to say hello to strangers. It’s a start.
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SLAMDANCE garage is running at The Bushwick Starr through March 1st.
