White Magnolia is a live dance work that interrogates the myth of white female purity and its role in the racial violence against Black men in the American South. Drawing on the magnolia as a symbol of white womanhood, the work exposes how this constructed ideal has been used to justify lynching and sustain racial hierarchies. Situated within a Southern landscape, the piece confronts the violence embedded in cultural memory and the bodies shaped by it.
White Magnolia is a work currently in development. This work was created for the concert stage, set to music composed by Zao Nelems, and is being restaged for film with music composed and performed by Colin Kemper.
The work was originally set on Eva Graham and Micah Courtland.
Special thanks to the University of Alabama for the rehearsal space and camera equipment, and to Maziyar Derakhshani for capturing these images.
