We Will Dance with Mountains:
Vunja! Live Session Libations

Vunja! was the exploratory landscape for the sixth iteration of Báyò Akómoláfé’s world-renowned class, We Will Dance with Mountains. The course is a theoretical-practical inquiry into postactivism and a carnival of departure in teaching, in creating together, in leaning into the exquisite, in texturing exile, in re-membering with the places that hold us, in making sanctuary. Thousands of people from across the world, with different cosmovisions and persuasions, come together for this experience to lean into the cracks, to try new moves, to revisit the ordinary, to stray generously from the assured.

In 2023, the pedagogical goal of the course shapeshifted to further theorize the breaks, to stay there, to serve those disarticulated by, distressed with, and disenchanted from, dominant politics and its counteroffensive activisms – those tired of usual ways of speaking, exhausted with forced compliance, and longing for other ways of becoming response-able to these interesting times.

The unique invitation of the festival was to compose a celebratory trans-local politics of going invisible, a postnationalist/posthuman aesthetic of meeting the world differently, a falling-apart-together, a coming alive in another way. During the nine live sessions held over three months, participants created a great variety of “libations” inspired by the material presented by Báyò, the We Will Dance with Mountains production team and a plethora of creative contributors to the course. Here is a curated selection of creations from We Will Dance with Mountains VI which liberate the spirit of Vunja! most potently.