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| Dance artist Maleek Washington (photo: Whitney Brown) |
Last night in the sudden chill, the mist-veiled, almost-full moon rode high over St. Peter's Episcopal Church, its landmark chapel, Foster Hall--home to Bronx performance space BAAD!--and its cemetery. Approaching from nearby Zerega Avenue station felt like stumbling onto the set for Michael Jackson's Thriller, a feeling intensified at first sight of signs directing visitors to enter not through the usual chapel doorway but by a side path within inches of massive gravestones.
For the opening section of Shadows of Heaven: Bronx Blues, dance artist Maleek Washington took over the familiar, modest allotment of space inside Foster Hall's entrance. So his audience had to wait downstairs in BAAD's office--stocked with refreshments and brightened by disco classics--before being let upstairs, carefully, in groups of five. I lined up, walked up and found myself in cramped quarters with a ring of people, some of whom, clearly, were family and friends of Washington. How did I know this? Well, he had strung up several mobiles to which old family snapshots were clipped. People were touching them, oohing and ahhing and wow-ing and OMG-ing at the sight of people they knew--or themselves!--so much so that they appeared to completely ignore the dancer's presence and performance.
I kept shifting--dodging these folks, trying to stay out of Washington's way, too, as he coiled and spun or abruptly darted back and forth with photos or photo albums in his hands. I admired how he managed the continuous reconfiguration of his space as people entered and moved about. I wondered if he improvised his ductile maneuvers according to whatever space was presented to him at any given moment.
There was something...a sudden lighting change, if I recall...that signaled the next phase. Filing past large painted portraits (by Sophia Dawson) and reflective "portal" paintings (by Chet Gold), we transferred to BAAD!'s theater space and, gratefully, its usual seating. "Papa Was A Rollin' Stone" was in the air, and dancers--a man and a woman--posed behind huge painting frames on either side of an empty frame. A disco ball twirled, and Chic's "Le Freak" came on, which made the dancers groove, and then Smokey Robinson's "Ooo Baby Baby," which took their story further. In just the space created by two songs, you could grasp how different they are--her powerful self-possession; his sweetly easy-going, if less-focused, nature. As I type that now, I realize how stereotypical it looks--the Strong Black Woman; uncertain, emasculated Black man. But this seems drawn from personal life, Washington's history, a couple of actual portraits, and Washington is at his best, in this work, as a portraitist.
Although a first-rate dancer with extensive technical background and range, I find my attention not fully engaged with the solo material he has made for himself. I think we're meant to understand him to be the son of this couple long separated, apparently, by the man's incarceration--a story that ultimately fascinates me much more for its sensitive and moving depiction.
Performers: Danielle Mills, Sophia "Wet Paint" Dawson, Chet Gold and Maleek Washington
DJ: DTTONYMONKEY (aka Antonio Brown)
Writer: Niya Nicholson
Mentors: Sidra Bell, Francesca Harper
Shadows of Heaven: Bronx Blues (closed) was a presentation of Pepatián and BAAD!'s joint Dance Your Future: Artist & Mentor Collaborative Residency and a feature of BAAD's BlakTinX series (on through November 18).
Dance Your Future programming continues
with the following performances:
Tatiana Desardouin / Passion Fruit Dance Company
Friday, November 10
Beatrice Capote & Miguel Aparicio / The Sabrosura Effect
Friday, November 17
Click here and scroll down for information and tickets.
BAAD!
2474 Westchester Avenue, the Bronx
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