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Brittany Williams: Swamp Body – Recollections of the Salt Water Railroad
September 25, 2021
By Jordan Levin
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Activism is in Brittany Williams’ blood. So is street dance. So is the legacy of her Bahamian ancestors and the struggle of Black people in Florida. She brings them to moving life in Swamp Body – Recollections of the Salt Water Railroad: embodied ritual, celebration, protest, struggle.
“We still have that history in our bodies,” Williams says. “How do you access that information? It has to be through movement.”
Born and raised in Homestead, Williams, 32, grew up with street dance, but was mentored in contemporary dance and much more by Michelle Grant Murray “my second mom,” the dance coordinator at Miami Dade College Kendall Campus who has guided so many young Black and Brown dancers. (Williams leads her own Obika Dance Theatre and Dancing for Justice, a community art and protest group.) Her great aunt, a community organizer, and her Bahamian grandfather inspire her. Her Bahamian heritage led her to research the saltwater railroad, by which enslaved African people fled to the Bahamas from South Florida beaches, often Key Biscayne, in the 1800’s.
“Activism chose me,” Williams says. “I cannot see art without it being in community, or creating something that is not meaningful.”
They start in the street. There’s an invocation. They wield machetes, recalling warriors and workers clearing land. The journey continues inside. “Everyone in the space is implicated,” Williams says. “We all have a role in community, in society. That’s how I look at performances.”
Author
Jordan Levin
Jordan Levin has been writing about Miami since the early ’90s, including 18 years at the Miami Herald. As a freelancer, she has written for the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Latina, Billboard, and Ocean Drive magazines, among others. Before turning to journalism, she was a dancer/performer in New York City and an arts presenter in Miami.
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