Protest with joy: a view from Baltimore

We need to be reminded of black beauty in the face of black death. Moments of light to help us not to get lost in the darkness.

--Steven W. Thrasher

In Baltimore we need protest in all its forms. Even joyful ones
by Steven W. Thrasher, The Guardian, May 2, 2015

Artist activists talk on self-determination, funk and jazz, Saturday

Creative Time and Weeksville Heritage Center

in collaboration with

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

present

Conversations on Self Determination: 

Funk and Jazz

at Weeksville Heritage Center

Saturday, October 4, 3:30-5:30pm

Free 

with required RSVP

Explore music as a soundtrack for social justice. Leading contemporary Brooklyn artists reflect on their art while revisiting the anthems that fortified and consoled the African-American-led struggle for desegregation and equal rights.

Moderator: Una-Kariim A. Cross, artist, writer, and educator

Speakers: Willard Jenkins, jazz writer and radio/TV host; Toshi Reagon, activist, singer, songwriter, and musician working in genres from folk to blues and funk; and Carl Hancock Rux, interdisciplinary performative artist, writer, and playwright.

Performer: Martha Redbone, singer-songwriter and community activist

Click to RSVP

Weeksville Heritage Center
158 Buffalo Avenue (between Bergen Street and St. Marks Avenue), Brooklyn
(map/directions)

40th anniversary of "For Colored Girls..." celebrated in Harlem

Schomburg Center Plans Exhibition on ‘For Colored Girls’
by Felicia R. Lee, The New York Times, September 8, 2014

Brooklyn Center welcomes South Florida's Black Violin

Black Violin:
Wil B (left) and Kev Marcus

Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts

presents

Black Violin

Saturday, November 22, 2pm

They've played Harlem's Apollo (and won Amateur Night three times). They've played Obama's Inaugural Ball. They've collaborated with everyone from Aerosmith to Aretha Franklin. And now they this classically trained violin duo and their band return to Brooklyn with their unique blend of classical, hip-hop, jazz, blues, and R&B in a program for youth and everyone who loves irresistible music.

Recommended for ages eight and up. 

For more information and ticketing, click here.

For more information on Black Violin, click here.

Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts

Walt Whitman Theatre at Brooklyn College

2/5 trains to Brooklyn College/Flatbush Avenue
(map/directions)

Black classical composers on race and invisibility

Great Divide at the Concert Hall
Black Composers Discuss the Role of Race
by William Robin, The New York Times, August 8, 2014

Cool evening: my photos from Cave Canem reading, Bryant Park

Photos from Word for Word Poetry at The Bryant Park Reading Room (August 5, 2014), presented in partnership with Cave Canem, featuring poets Cornelius Eady, Derrick Weston Brown and Kyle Dargan with a special music performance by Cornelius Eady and Rough Magic

Cornelius Eady, poet and Cave Canem co-founder
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Cave Canem supports emerging African American poets 
through summer retreats, regional workshops, a first-book prize, 
annual anthologies, and events and readings across the country.

An English House Sparrow visits the reading.
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Eady performing with his band, Rough Magic,
which includes singer Robin Messing; guitarist Charlie Rauh; 
violinist/violist Concetta Abbate; drummer Leo Ferguson; 
and (shown here with Eady) bass player Emma Alabaster
all photos (c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Derrick Weston Brown, author of Wisdom Teeth 
all photos (c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Kyle Dargan, author of Logorrhea Dementia, 
Bouquet of Hungers and The Listening
photos above and below
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Cornelius Eady reading
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

For a schedule of future Word for Word events at Bryant Park, click here.

Bryant Park
behind New York Public Library
40th-42nd Streets, 5th-6th Avenues, Manhattan
(map/directions)

New Brooklyn Theater partners with its diverse audience

New Brooklyn Theater Casts Audience in Crucial Role
Four Plays by African-American Playwrights
by Richard Morgan, The New York Times, July 4, 2014

Black poetry, Black infinity

The Dark Room Collective: Where Black Poetry Took Wing
by Jeff Gordinier, The New York Times, May 27, 2014

Tia Powell Harris to lead Brooklyn's Weeksville Heritage Center

Tia Powell Harris

New Director Named for Weeksville Heritage Center
by Felicia R. Lee, The New York Times, March 3, 2014

Of related interest:

New Center, but Woes at Historic Site
Weeksville Black History Site Hobbled by Dip in Donations
by Felicia R. Lee, The New York Times, February 20, 2013

Queens Library youth celebrate the legacy of Alvin Ailey

Alvin Ailey

Alvin Ailey Tribute

for teens

Saturday, February 15, 2:30pm

Free admission

Teen Center at Central Library
Queens Library
89-11 Merrick Boulevard, Jamaica, Queens
718-990-0700

Directions: F train to 169th Street. Numerous buses go to the 165th Street bus terminal.

Click here for a listing of other special events at Queens Library branches this weekend.

Race barriers in classical ballet: A conversation at NJPAC

Ballerina Ashley Murphy
(photo by Matthew Murphy)

Black Ballerinas: 

Breaking the Boundaries of Classical Ballet

Thursday, January 16, 7-8:30pm

New Jersey Performing Arts Center

1 Centre Street, Newark, New Jersey

Free admission

In 2007, The New York Times asked, Where are all the Black Swans? An urgent dialogue sparked by that question has caused leading dance institutions nationwide to examine the rarity of African-American women among their ranks.

A conversation about raising the profile of the black ballerina, and the economic opportunities for diversifying and expanding audiences, will be held on January 16, the evening prior to a performance by Dance Theatre of Harlem at NJPACs annual tribute to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Moderator:

Charmaine Warren, dance journalist

Announced panelists (as of January 8):

Virginia Johnson, Artistic Director and a founding principal dancer of Dance Theatre of Harlem

Michelle Gadson-Williams, Head of Global Diversity at Credit Suisse

Map/Directions

"Go forth where?" An artist challenges Levi's

In this 2011 video, citizen-artist LaToya Ruby Frazier uses her power as an artist to throw serious questions (and shade) at jeans manufacturer Levi's.

What is the responsibility of an artist to her community? In this film, artist and activist LaToya Ruby Frazier discusses the economic and environmental decline of her hometown—Braddock, Pennsylvania—the city that the clothing company Levi's used as inspiration and backdrop for a major advertising campaign in 2010. Having photographed in Braddock since she was sixteen years old, LaToya's black-and-white images of her family and their surroundings present a stark contrast to the campaign images of "urban pioneers" and slogans such as "everybody's work is equally important." In a performance developed in collaboration with the artist Liz Magic Laser, LaToya carries out a choreographed series of movements on the sidewalk in front of the temporary Levi's Photo Workshop in SoHo. Wearing a costume of ordinary Levi's clothes, the artist's repetitive and relentless motion ultimately destroys the jeans she's wearing. 

LaToya Ruby Frazier (b. 1982, Braddock, Pennsylvania, USA) lives and works in New Brunswick, New Jersey and New York, New York.

Camille A. Brown: changing the joke, slipping the rope

Above: Choreographer Camille A. Brown
in Mr. TOL E. RAncE
(photo: Grant Halverson)
Below: Scott Patterson at the piano
(photo: Christopher Duggan)

from publicity for Camille A. Brown's Mr. TOL E. RAncE:

"Inspired by Mel Watkins’ book, “On The Real Side: From Slavery to Chris Rock”, Spike Lee’s controversial movie, “Bamboozled”, and Dave Chappelle’s “dancing vs. shuffling” analogy, this evening-length dance theater work celebrates African-American humor, examines “the mask” of survival and the “double consciousness” (W.E.B. DuBois) of the black performer throughout history and the stereotypical roles dominating current popular Black culture.

"Mr. TOL E. RAncE speaks to the issue of tolerance--how much Black performers had to tolerate, and addresses-forms of modern day minstrelsy we tolerate today. It is not a history lesson. Blending and contrasting the contemporary with the historic, the goal of this personal work is to engage, provoke, and move the conversation of race forward in a timely dialogue about where we have been, where we are and where we might want to be."

Something unprecedented happened last night at Kumble Theater for the Performing Arts when Camille A. Brown & Dancers presented Mr. TOL E. RAncE, Brown's magnificent work from 2012. Something that rocked me back in my seat. No, I don't mean the hour-long delay before the show started (serious technical problems). Or 651 Arts's Shay Wafer gamely and humorously fielding audience questions while we waited. And, no, I don't mean the dance itself--although that certainly would qualify, and we'll get to that.

I'm talking about what happened when Brown, her fellow dancers and her remarkable pianist, Scott Patterson, reassembled after the performance to sit in dialogue with their audience. A few groups of young students, not staying for the talkback, had just filed out of the front rows, and Patterson spoke his mind, admitting that this performance had been, in all the history of the piece, the toughest he had ever faced.

As Brown and other company members also spoke up, it became clear that the youngsters' behavior--visible and audible to the cast, if not to those of us farther back--had been unnerving. Performing a physically and emotionally intense, political work drawn from Brown's experience of being a Black artist and woman up against mainstream power, drawn from the long, twisty, complicated history of Black entertainers in America, Patterson said he felt as if he himself had been made into a minstrel. "I felt that they [the students] were laughing at me, at us, not with us."

Brown later tempered that a bit. Though she had noticed the disturbance too, she also caught moments when the students were quiet, clearly into what the company was doing--presumably because they more readily related to the hip hop style of one particular passage.

Scenes from Mr. TOL E. RAncE,
a work referencing the history of Black enertainers in the US,
racist and sexist stereotypes,
and the perilous double consciousness of the Black artist
(top photo: Grant Halverson
bottom photo: Christopher Duggan)

You might say, Why should this matter? It does matter, because Mr. TOL E. RAncE is, in itself, a blistering, exhausting piece, and I frankly don't know how Brown has managed to bring her dancers to the point where they can perform this work at all, let alone perform this tight, this polished. It matters, because all performers continuously exchange energy with their audiences (why Mr. TOL E. RAncE nearly killed me even as I marvelled at it and its maker), there being no blood-brain barrier at the edge of a stage where a fourth wall would stand, and those students were messing with those performers. It matters, too, because Mr. T--let's just call "him" that from now on--has a lot of questions to pose to Black youth. No answers, but deep questions about their autonomy and their choices.

It also matters, because of what Brown went on to say about herself, referencing, among other things, how Dave Chappelle gave up his lucrative tv gig because he didn't want to compromise his values. Which kind of spooked me, because it's unnerving to hear a woman of her unquestionable gifts and achievements--as dancer, choreographer and educator--openly express feelings of exhaustion and discouragement. Maybe because, in my own way, I can relate. Despite Mr. T being a kind of f... you to the status quo--and a massively effective one, I'd say--for Brown, the exhaustion and questioning continues.

As Brown would readily tell you, Mr. T is not a history lesson, but it is broadly sourced in the history and legacy of Black American popular entertainment, as well as contemporary controversies like Miley Cyrus's twerking and hip hop's ease with the N-word, violence and hypersexuality. It dares to examine the external and internal challenges that Black artists continue to face.

Brown jams all of that into an hour, vacuuming out most of the air and leaving us with something compressed that whips past us in a fury. Projected snapshots and film clips get distorted as they play across a back curtain. Fast, fast movement snaps and wrenches into place with little let-up; movement so hectic, so relentless that, in the work's beginning passages, the faces of the dancers, when not averted, become a blur. Eventually, we do come to know individual faces, and they sometimes present cartoonish, stereotypical exaggerations. But even some handsome smiles prove tricky to read because they emerge from different places within the person. Some are practiced and plastic. Some are self-satisfied. Some reflect real pleasure. And sometimes, there's a combination of these embodied states of consciousness. Black American performers, then as now, have been among the best at what they do, and it's all there--confidence, ambition, competitive ego, genuine joy in being and giving--in the faces they turn to their audiences.

This show can get very loud; it's one of the loudest dance shows I've ever seen (heard?) short of maybe something involving Streb or STOMP or something on that order. We get a warning about "strong language and sexually suggestive content" but not about the din or the fact that the movement won't often let you relax and breathe. Yeah, Mr. T is a brutal son of a gun.

You feel that brutality because the choreographer has baked it in, on purpose, to take us right to that place where she, regrettably, finds herself. But if you also feel the deep investment of each of Brown's performers in what he or she is doing, you've learned something important that she needs you to know about the Black artists she has studied.

Some segments relieve the onslaught. Things slow down, or there's genuine amusement. Audiences, at least those members of a certain age, respond well to the dancers movement parodies that accompany images from long-lost tv shows like "Amen" or "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" or "Good Times" or "The Jeffersons."

Waldean Nelson in Mr. TOL E. RAncE
(photo: Christopher Duggan)

Brown talks of how she was advised to "not be so direct," to tone down Mr. T. Let me catch my breath long enough to tell you that she was right to sharpen her knife and keep going. I want to tell her--here in this review--that she must sharpen her knife again. And keep going.

The Kumble Theater season of Mr. TOL E. RAncE concludes tonight with a performance at 7:30pm. If tickets remain, you can get them here.

With dancing by Brown, Timothy Edwards, Juel D. Lane, Waldean Nelson, Mora-Amina Parker, Willie "Tre" Smith III and Marlena Wolfe. They are all terrific, but watch for extraordinary solos performed by Brown and Nelson, portraits that, remarkably, compress the story, and the heartbreak, even further.

Lighting: Burke Wilmore
Set: Philip Treviño
Costumes: Carolyn Meckha Cherry
Text: Camille A. Brown

For more information on Mr. TOL E. RAncE and resources for study and discussion of its issues, click here, then click on the Mr. TOL E. RAncE tab on the navigation bar.

Kumble Theater for the Performing Arts
at LIU Brooklyn
One University Plaza, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

Join Shay Wafer and Camille A. Brown on Facebook today, 3-4pm EST

Shay Wafer, 651 Arts ED

You know what? We really should talk about how Black arts organization and business can survive and thrive in today's economic climate.

651 ARTS Executive Director Shay Wafer will discuss the arts and sustainability with choreographer Camille A. Brown in an open Facebook chat today, 3-4pm. You're invited to join in with your questions, observations and ideas.

As 651 ARTS enters its 25th year of dedication to the performing arts of the African Diaspora, we are thinking about sustainability over the next 25 years. There have been conversations about the future of Black organizations and how we can create new business and economic models. Inevitably, a conversation on sustainability always includes the question of individual contributions and earned income: How de we create and/or grow these revenue steams?

We would love to hear from folks why they contribute to an arts organization, or if they don’t, why not. What would inspire or encourage them to do so?

For more information and to participate in today's chat, click here. 

"The problem in modern ballet is the problem of the color line."

Shannon Harkins, the face of African American ballet dancers’ struggle

by Lonnae O'Neal Parker, The Washington Post, November 29, 2013

Budget problems threaten Pittsburgh's August Wilson Center

Pittsburgh Center Honoring Playwright Finds Itself Short on Visitors and Donors

by Trip Gabriel, The New York Times, November 23, 2013

Afrofuturism: Black to the future!

[BLACK ALT] What Is Afrofuturism?
Has Janelle Monae become the poster girl to a movement that started way back with Octavia Butler, Samuel Delaney and Lt. Uhura?
by Michael A. Gonzales, Ebony, October 1, 2013

See also:

Black in the future 
Announcement of Studio Museum in Harlem's Afrofuturism exhibition, The Shadows Took Shape (Nov 14, 2013 - Mar 9, 2014)
InfiniteBody, July 10, 2013

Steppin' out with Rick Owens in Paris

Rick Owens Paris Fashion Week Show Took Runway Diversity To A Whole New Level

by The Huffington Post, September 26, 2013

Theater troupes to examine "Trayvon, Race and Privilege"

Festival of Short Plays Inspired by Trayvon Martin Case
by Felicia R. Lee, The New York Times, August 5, 2013

Jamel Shabazz: Documenting rap's history

Rappers of Old, Through a Lens of History
‘Jamel Shabazz Street Photographer,’ a New York Portrait
by Nicolas Rapold, The New York Times, August 1, 2013