The Brutal Joy is the final part of the Heirloom Suite, a four-part series of performances that wields the materiality of Black Vernacular dance and Black Sartorial gesture as physical cogitation, reverie, and devotion to Black-Living. The Brutal Joy is a porous repository of the three previous works Tailfeather (2018), Archives and Heirlooms (2022) and Heirloom inaugurated in March 2023 at the Ellen Gallery, Concordia University. Each work speaks through each other and this final utterance is envisioned as a scored improvisational performance for sound, light and dance performed by Mauricio Pauly (composer and musician), James Proudfoot (lighting designer) and Chambers as an antiphonal relational collaboration. The work posits Black dandyism and the Electric Slide as practices and mutable containers that embody self-sovereignty and affirm Black-living. The series and this upcoming performance emerge from the premise that the embodied archive is already there. It is the source of the collaborators creative material and supports their choices in the act of improvisation. Central to Black vernacular dance and music is the value that improvisation is composition allowing our archives to speak and act when and as needed.