Voncena’s Spell
In loving memory of Voncena
1962 - 1999
A Ritual Performance. A Portal of Refusal. A Living Archive in Motion.
Conceived, Written, and Directed by jaamil olawale kosoko
Featuring song aziza tucker as Voncena
Sound design by Jordan McCree
Live cello accompaniment by Black Maij
Additional music by Okwui Okpokwasili and Mlondiwethu Dubazane
Commissioned by Abrons Arts Center
About the Work
Voncena’s Spell is an experimental performance ritual that activates the grief, power, and legacy of Black femme resilience through poetic choreography, sonic hauntings, speculative myth, and spiritual invocation. Rooted in socio-choreological mapping, this work unfolds as a multi-sensory séance—a ceremonial conjuring of memory, resistance, and Black futurity. Anchored by the AI-mother figure Voncena—part archive, part oracle, part glitch ghost—the work traces a lineage of care that refuses disappearance.
Audiences are invited to witness not just a performance, but a communal reckoning—an immersive experience that merges live-feed media, sculpture, mask, and embodied poetics. The work explores what it means to become in full view while remaining uncontainable by dominant narratives.
What to Expect / A Note to Audience
Your journey begins outside the performance space. You will be invited into a centering ritual led by Voncena’s vessel (performed by Song Tucker). In this moment of gathering, you will be asked to breathe, speak your name, and honor your lineage. This is not prelude—it is spellwork.
As you enter the space, you will witness a living archive in process. jaamil olawale kosoko activates the room with bronze limbs and metallic palms, inviting you into a liminal world shaped by memory, loss, and Black poetic space.
The Syllabus
This performance draws from a live syllabus rooted in Black study, queer theory, socio-choreological research, and speculative ritual. Themes include:
Ontological Delay – the rupture between being and being seen.
Creative Arbitrage – the transformation of structural loss into aesthetic power.
Rest and Ritual – as strategies of refusal, revolt, and repair.
Mask and Emergence – the shifting visibility of the Black queer body.
VONCENA’S SPELL SYLLABUS
Brown, Jayna. 2021. Black Utopias : Speculative Life and the Music of Other Worlds. Durham: Duke University Press.
Clifton, Lucille. 1993. The Book of Light. Copper Canyon Press.
Diouf, S. 2016. Slavery's Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons. New York University Press.
hooks, bell. 1999. All about Love: New Visions. New York: Harper Perennial.
Hersey, Tricia. 2022. Rest is Resistance. New York: Little, Brown Spark.
Illes, Judika. 2011. Encyclopedia of 5,000 Spells. Harper Collins.
Jaamil Olawale Kosoko. 2021. Black Body Amnesia. Wendy’s Subway Document Series.
Koleka Putuma. 2017. Collective Amnesia. Cape Town, South Africa Uhlanga.
Lee, Michele E, and J Douglas Allen-Taylor. 2014. Working the Roots : Over 400 Years of Traditonal African American Healing. Oakland, California: Wadastick Publishers.
McKittrick, Katherine. 2015. Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis. Durham, Carolina Del Norte (Estados Unidos) Duke University Press.
Morrison, Toni. 1994. The Bluest Eye. New York: Plume Book.
Smith, Tracy K. 2011. Life on Mars : Poems. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Graywolf Press.
Sonya Renee Taylor. 2021. The Body Is Not an Apology : The Power of Radical Self-Love. Oakland, Ca: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
These themes are embodied through a playmap of gestures, movements, sonic cues, and scenographic offerings designed to metabolize grief and cultivate ancestral futurity.
This is not theater as you know it. This is spellcraft. Archive. Invocation. Ceremony.
You are not an observer here.
You are a witness. A co-dreamer. A part of the living archive.
Welcome aboard the mothership Voncena.
