I am interested in understanding presence, performance, and embodiment in Mas, particularly within Bat, Dragon, Jab, Moko Jumbie, and Blue Devil traditions. My curiosity around these forms revolves around their full-bodied immersion into presence, chaos, unpredictability, and spiritual  transcendence. 

I am particularly drawn to how dark archetypes operate at the edge of presence and possession, play and invocation, improvisation and trance. Within these states, is my exploration around how affect and emotion circulate beyond fixed categories — expanding questions around rasa and how complex, layered emotional states are lived, embodied, and shared through Carnival performance. 

My recent explorations in Carnival performance attempt to reworld Mas archetypes into new expressions and gestures of consciousness that challenge and reshape the present. My research is auto-ethnographic as I ground myself in the lives and experiences of the practitioners I engage. I thoroughly enjoy and advocate for sharing time, energy and labor with communities to understand how co-making carries communal force in contemporary struggle. 

You can find me every Carnival Monday and Tuesday inside the reliquary of Robert Young’s protest band, Vulgar Fraction.