The cypher is a perpetual exchange between inner and outer—waving bodies on the periphery to a center, channeling those who have and will have come before it.

Born out of underground clubs in the 70s with deep historical roots in communal dance traditions, the improvisational dance circles known as cyphers provided ephemeral spaces for predominantly Black and queer communities to seek sanctuary from systems of oppression and find freedom expressing themselves in the center of these circles. Then as now, the cypher is spiritual catharsis. 

As I dance alongside these communities today, each image begins as a gelatin silver print from a long-exposure negative capturing dancers in my community. Echoing the freestyle exchanges of the cypher, I iteratively perform gestures that “dodge and burn” across the prints and unexposed photopaper, each unpredictable composition calling forth the next.

Moving between communion and solitude, swiftness and stasis, past and present, time itself embeds its cyclic rhythms into waves of light. One flows into many back to one—a center imprinted across memories.