Publications
Freedom Time: Dancing Through Prison Walls
Sming Sming Books
Proceeds from this book go to support Dancing Through Prison Walls's Freedom Fund, which supports members of our community coming out of prison.
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SBN 978-1-953189-20-2
July 2025, English, 5 x 7 in, 158 pages, b&w, softcover
Design: Sming Sming Books
Edited by Suchi Branfman
Freedom Time is a bold and moving collection of written choreography from inside and through prison walls. It brings together dances created in confinement in California, Puerto Rico, Palestine, and beyond, with voices from formerly incarcerated and “free world” dancers, choreographers, visual artists, and performers. Using movement and storytelling as acts of resistance and survival, Freedom Time is call for a world without cages.
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Proceeds from this book go to sustain Dancing Through Prison Walls’ ongoing Freedom Fund, which supports members of our community coming out of prison. Whatever form that may take, the funds are there for our system-impacted brothers, sisters, and siblings to decide what they need and when they need it.
Dancing Through Prison Walls is a California-based dance and performance project whose mission is to dance with, choreograph with, and tell stories within embodied carceral landscapes and beyond, amplifying voices of incarcerated people and addressing mass incarceration. Begun in 2016, the work embraces a porous community of incarcerated, formerly incarcerated, and “free world” dancers, choreographers, visual artists, and performers. The resulting hours of dance, dance making, performance, film creation, writing, and community conversations comprise a body of work that is at its essence a critical dialogue about freedom, confinement, and ways for surviving restriction, limitations, and denial of liberty through the act of dancing. Moving towards our North Star goal of decarceration and abolition, we dance through prison walls.
Dancing Through Solitary
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During the spring of 2024, we began receiving requests for dancing support from folks in solitary throughout the US. This was in response to a contribution we had made to a Critical Resistance zine offering resources inside solitary. We quickly reached out to our Dancing Through Prison Walls community and received the following dance/movement prompts. Edited together, we created them into a zine which has been sent inside to people in solitary throughout the United States, from Florida to Washington state. The requests continue, now more than a year since we began. We continue sending the zine inside, as we fight on the outside to end solitary confinement.
This is the introduction to the zine that we continue sending in to solitary:
Dancing Through Prison Walls is a California-based dance and performance project whose mission is to dance with, choreograph with, and tell stories within embodied carceral landscapes and beyond, amplifying voices of incarcerated folks, and addressing mass incarceration.
We at Dancing Through Prison Walls believe that dance can be a way to thrive and grow through solitary’s walls. Dance can be a social, private, or performance experience; it’s up to you. The movements and experiences of dance can also be disciplines that provide a gratifying practice of relief and joy that we may give ourselves every day/week/month. As your dancing grows, the body can respond by releasing more endorphins, which can set you free to move even more!
In the following pages you will find prompts or directions for dance practices we are hopeful you can do in solitary. Pick and choose which ones are of interest to you. You can do all of them and then repeat them or choose one or two that you like and repeat them as often as you like. Repetition is a powerful element of the dance practice, and we invite you to discover every prompt anew every time you do it. There are no right or wrong ways to do these dance prompts. However, you interpret them will be perfect!
In solidarity and community,
Dancing Through Prison Walls
And at the end of the zine:
We invite you to send your dance to Dancing Through Prison Walls! Our gift to you, to use as you’d like, are two stamped envelopes enclosed here. If you wish to share a dance with us, then please use one of these envelopes to send us your dance. You can reach out to Dancing Through Prison Walls at 2720 Neilson Way, Floor 1 #5550, Santa Monica, CA 90409. We will archive it at https://www.dancingthroughprisonwalls.org for all the world to see!
Undanced Dances Through Prison Walls During a Pandemic (2nd Edition)
Sming Sming Books
Proceeds from this book go to the choreographers and to support the work of Critical Resistance and California Coalition for Women Prisoners.
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Second Edition: August 2021, English, 6 x 9 in (envelope), 5.25 x 8.125 in (book), 40 pages + insert, b&w, softcover with envelope
First Edition: December 2020, English, 6 x 9 in (envelope), 5.25 x 8.125 in (book), 36 pages + insert, b&w, risograph, softcover with envelope
Design: Sming Sming Books
Edited by Suchi Branfman
Choreographers: Brandon Alexander, Yusef Lamont Pierce, Richie Martinez, Landon Reynolds, Carlos Rivas, Terry Sakamoto Jr., Angel Valen, Clinton
With letter by Raymond Springs III
The United States has the largest prison population in the world. As of the publication of this book, Covid-19 positive cases amongst incarcerated people nationally are 192,423 resulting in 1,305 deaths. The California state prison system has experienced 17,459 cases and 82 deaths. The pandemic has ravaged prisons, shining the light on mass incarceration at its worst.
In 2016, choreographer and educator Suchi Branfman began a five-year choreographic residency inside the California Rehabilitation Center, a medium security state men’s prison in Norco, California. The project, dubbed “Dancing Through Prison Walls,” developed into a critical dialogue about freedom, confinement, and how we survive restriction, limitations, and denial of liberty through the act of dancing. The project abruptly ended in March 2020, when the California state prison system shut down programming and visitation due to Covid-19. The work was rapidly revised, and the incarcerated dancers—Brandon, Yusef, Richie, Landon, Carlos, Terry, Raymond, Angel, and Clinton—began sending out written choreographies from their bunks to the outside world.
Undanced Dances Through Prison Walls During a Pandemic is the resulting deeply imagined work, written between March and May of 2020.
Proceeds from this book go to the choreographers and to support the work of Critical Resistance and California Coalition for Women Prisoners.
Suchi Branfman, choreographer, curator, performer, educator, activist, has worked nationally and internationally, from the war zones of Managua to Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre, and from Kampala’s Luzira Prison to New York’s City Center Theatre, as a member of Wallflower Order and Crowsfeet Dance Collectives, and, with Augusto Boal, Liz Lerman, Vic Marks, Gus Solomons Jr., Harry Streep and Dan Wagoner. Branfman is currently in the midst of a five-year choreographic residency at California Rehabilitation Center, a medium security state men’s prison in Norco (CA), serves on faculty at Scripps College, and is a community gardener, prison abolition activist, and co-director of Catalpa Residency Desert Hot Springs. Her supporters have included the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, California Arts Council, and the Los Angeles and Santa Monica Cultural Affairs Divisions. Contact: dancingthroughprisonwalls@gmail.com
