Powdered Footwork: D-cyphering

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Play, download and edit the free video Powdered Footwork: D-cyphering Detroit Jit.

“Powdered Footwork: “D”-cyphering Detroit Jit” presents vibrant vignettes from my ethnographic engagement with Detroit’s little-known street dance form Jit, which emerged in the 1970s when Detroit’s automobile industry was beginning to decline. This film is situated at weekly cypher sessions in Detroit, most commonly known as “the spot.” As a researcher/participant/observer, the embodied knowledge gained from learning how to Jit at the cypher brought me closer to understanding the complexity of Jit: as a culture, as a history, as a bodily practice, as an identity, as geography, as a corporeal language, as a philosophy, as a way of life, and as a simulacrum of industrial Detroit’s preoccupation of efficient production, at lightning-fast speed. Jit culture is visual, performative, and dynamic. Presenting snapshots of the Jit on film provides a sensorial means to get closer to the essence of this underground—mechanized—abstruse—raw—Detroit—feeling: a corporeal embodiment of the streets.

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