HOMEBODY: A Ritual Party is an exploration of what home means within my Black body. Through the use of poetry, dance, song, imagery, and ritual, I reexamine what it means to call this body a place of home while observing the obscurity of what home has meant for me as a Black person in the US. I will also explore the relationship of ancestral trauma and recovering from an eating disorder as primary disruptors of feeling at home both internally and externally. The use of ritual has been around since the dawn of humanity, and has carried, healed, and created many cultures. Ritual is heavily tied to various African cultures, as well as many Indigenous cultures, but because America is my home, much of that deep conscious knowledge is lost. Clinically speaking, the word “ritual” is tied to compulsive behaviors, many of which I engaged in while in the throes of an eating disorder. Through dance, movement, and breath I will engage in the act of ritual, turning compulsive behavior into dance, and conjuring spirits, for the sake of healing and remembering what home could have meant for my ancestors and what it means for me now.

Written and performed by Nia Calloway

Produced by Nicholas Cotz/All For One Theater