Manos Fluidas (Fluid Hands/Fluent Hands): I am part of a community of salsa dancers. In traditional partner dances like salsa, there is a lead role and a follow role, usually assigned automatically according to sex. For this project I investigated a recent shift in the partner dance community – pockets of people all over the globe exploring methods of lead/follow that are not only stripped of gender, but allow for a change of roles fluidly mid-dance.  In studying one of the most popular methods, Liquid Leading, I realized that no matter the step involved, the hands must change positions when swapping the lead and follow mid-dance. The openness of this gesture in itself is beautiful and embodies a position of fluidity, exchange, and care. Because Covid-19 limited social dance opportunities, I decided to focus on this one element of the non-verbal language of social partner dance. My Oklahoma City community began opening social dances back up in May and June of 2021.  While I didn’t feel comfortable dancing yet, I did feel comfortable sitting across from other dancers and sharing with them about Liquid Leading.  We did this short meditation together to practice how the hands might feel to exchange lead and follow in a dance.  To assist with this meditation, I embroidered a mandala for the backdrop.  The elements of the mandala are the crops found in Glissant’s description of the creole garden (see below). Perhaps more than any dance, salsa has been a place for this type of experimentation around mutuality and multiplicity when it comes to race and gender, but like all relational spaces it has also at times been a place of erasure.