the Black Arts Movement and the many women of the movement in the late 1960s who were using their work to challenge the Black Aesthetic's disposition and centering of Black patriarchy and masculinity. Thus, her genre and praxis created an explorative and central space for Black Women's various and complex experiences, in a personal, familiar, yet crafted language and voice. Her genre of choreopoem substantiated processes of narrative creation beyond what existed in both European Western theatrical dance practices and in the Black Theatre tradition alike. She understood and criticized the Black Theatre tradition's role in recreating Eurocentric frameworks of creativity and thought within Black communities. She urged Black artists to look to Afrocentric, interdisciplinary, and alternative forms of artistic communication and structures instead. During summer 1974, while working with choreographer Paula Moss, Shange created about twenty poems that were understood as a larger choreographic project. During this time, her first formal, published, and most renowned choreopoem for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, was developed. Working closely with choreographer Dianne McIntyre, Shange was able to confront her childhood experiences through movement. McIntyre helped to choreograph for colored girls with Shange, as they wanted to convey awareness and community through dance. The inclusion of movement and dance in a choreopoem was as essential to her as the poetry aspect. Shange described that "with dance (she) discovered (her) body more intimately than (she) had imagined possible." Shange’s emphasis on dance was a result of her experience with African dance and movement classes as well as her exposure to Santeria through dance and music as it relates to African dance. Shange found that Black performance art as a theatrical practice was more suited for the abstract interdisciplinary work she was creating, compared to that of prior Western theatrical traditions. Chorepoem in its nature creates an intersection between the physical materiality of the written poems and the embodied meaning, rhythms, sounds, and experiences embedded within them, thereby creating new possibilities, new theatrical traditions, new languages, new narratives, and new worlds. After for colored girls, Shange continued to explore and utilize choreopoem, creating works such as boogie woogie landscapes (1977), From Okra to Greens/A Different Kinda Love Story: A Play/With Music & Dance (1978), Spell #7 (1979), and A photograph: lovers in motion (1979). Many other artists including her friend and collaborator Dianne McIntyre have also innovated within the choreopoem