Drilled Choreographies: Interventions on Preparing for the Active Shooter

Abstract

In the United States, safety preparation in the form of active shooter trainings are quotidian practices performed in nearly all K-12 public school systems. This paper works to understand how active shooter trainings in the U.S. advance a history of policing and surveillance through choreographic methods. This study combines movement scores and performance analysis derived from practice-based research to understand how safety preparation’s choreographies battle the potential for risk by compromising dance as a practice of freedom. In order to address this denial of liberty, this paper argues that active shooter drills must be discussed through a feminist and abolitionist lens to interrupt the police state’s choreography with a reparative ethics of care.