At Harlem Stage, e-Moves celebrates contemporary dance artists of Africa and diaspora

Nubian Néné, one of the pop-up performers
for this season's e-moves festival of dance at Harlem Stage
(photo: Alain Wong)

Omari Mizrahi on the move for e-moves
at Harlem Stage
(photo: Robert Bader)

OMG! How to decide what shows to see this season? There's an abundance of worthwhile--indeed, downright exciting--dance productions around the city. I know the struggle well! So, please don't start throwing things when I urge you to get to yet another one: Monique Martin's e-Moves dance festival at Harlem Stage, running only through this weekend.

Martin's focus for this season is on Africa-based or Africa-diasporan artists exploring contemporary dance, as opposed to more-expected folkloric work from the continent. She has chosen Zimbabwe-born Nora Chipaumire, Lacina Coulibaly (Burkina Faso) and Ousmane Wiles/Omari Mizrahi (Senegal). Each evening also highlights dances by women choreographers in pop-up performances curated by Adesola Osakalumi. Viewers will see new, commissioned works as well as pieces re-imagined for the unique (and uniquely beautiful) space at Harlem Stage.

Chipaumire has reset her famous solo, Dark Swan (2007), on Shamar Watt, a man. Years ago, I saw the choreographer dance it; quite recently, I was fortunate to see Watt show it in a tiny corner of Chelsea's Rubin Museum where I sat perhaps not more than a foot away from him. Both artists are electrifying. But the visual intensity of this iteration for Harlem Stage is enhanced by the meeting of the brooding darkness of the space and the stark, handheld light trained on Watt and his white shirt. Dark Swan re-purposes a Russian ballet archetype as a symbol and expression of resistance, paying tribute to the determination of Africa's women.

Coulibaly adapted to the loss of his partner, Ibrahim Zongo--due to visa issues--for this world premiere of his duet, Sen Koro la (The Rite of Initiates). He adapted so beautifully, in fact, that when the audience was later informed that the "solo" we had watched was meant to be a duet, some of us gasped in surprise. I can't say that I saw much of Coulibaly's stated intention to promote "the humanity and culture of Africa, compelling the audience to appreciate its great diversity and immense cultural wealth," and I doubt this particular audience was in need of that sort of prompting. But we were treated to a solo of poetic sensitivity around timing (inhabiting the lush, flowing music but finding its own inquiry, thoughtfulness and response within it) and its own validity as a work of art. I do look forward to seeing Zongo some day, though--and, of course, much more of what Coulibaly has to offer.

A group of performers, billed as Les Ballet Afrik and led by Wiles (who dances as Omari Mizrahi), brought the house down with the celebratory Sila Djiguba (A Path to Hope). Here, music and moves of West Africa, AfroBeat, House and Vogue styles seamlessly and joyfully intersect. The young dancers making their unforgettable debut as a troupe alongside Wiles were Craig D Washington, Eva Moore, Milerka Rodriguez, Shireen Rahimi, Algin Ford, Yuhee Yang, Yuki Sukezane. I also enjoyed the masterful "pop-up" performance by Nubian Néné (of A Lady in the House Dance Company) in her solo, S T A N C E, another tribute to the self-determination and courage of women of the Black diaspora.

e-Moves continues tonight, Friday and Saturday with all performances at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Harlem Stage
150 Convent Avenue, Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Don Hogan Charles, 79

Don Hogan Charles, Lauded Photographer of Civil Rights Era, Dies at 79
by Niraj Chokshi, The New York Times, December 25, 2017

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Africa is contemporary: Tarpaga's night at Harlem Stage

Scene from Declassified Memory Fragment at Harlem Stage Gatehouse
(photos above and below: Marc Millman)

Director/choreographer Olivier Tarpaga (foreground)
performs in Declassified Memory Fragment

Only one night to see Baker & Tarpaga Dance Project at Harlem Stage Gatehouse? How is that acceptable?

If Olivier Tarpaga's Declassified Memory Fragment (2015) had a longer run, he and his all-male cast of notable dancers and musicians would be such an edifying, exhilarating treat for New York's contemporary dance fans--and everyone else. Tarpaga--whose company is based in both Burkino Faso and Philadephia--seems tired of being labeled "contemporary" as if dance made in and exported from Africa in recent years needed a special designation distinct from the folkloric, tribal work with which we, in the States, are much more familiar.

In a post-show Q&A with choreographer and filmmaker Gabri Christa, Tarpaga declared, "It's important to to know: Africa is contemporary." In other words, Get with it, New York! We're here! With Nora Chipaumire, Faustin Linyekula, Dorothée Munyaneza and the Senegalese Mother of It All, Germaine Acogny, gracing our stages and museums in recent weeks, we're getting a right schooling in this subject this season. As Christa noted, so much of this art is "based in African tradition but also free of it."

The hour-long Declassified Memory Fragment, presented in partnership between Harlem Stage and 651 Arts, has a real-world political context--intrigue and upheaval in Burkino Faso, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe--that Tarpaga began to relate during the Q&A. It's a knotty history, and I suspect I was not the only one finding it tricky to focus on and follow. But suffice to say, for now, the dance takes off from the idea that power grabs and secrecy destabilize both democracies and human relationships. Tarpaga's stagecraft does the better job of illustrating the latter--personal rifts and reconnections--through dazzling vocalization and prop work and, in particular, unusually intimate, symbolic duets. What two competitors sharing and tangling a single slim suit jacket can do and signify is amazing.

Mystery and laughable absurdity dance cheek to cheek in this work. A third dancing partner--beauty--is in the warm, twangy, bluesy music and the poetry of the work's visual graces. It's worth noting, too, that in its design and its masterful execution by dancers Ousséni Dabaré, Aziz Dermé, Jérôme Kaboré and Adonis Nébié, Declassified Memory Fragment broadens any notion of what it means to be masculine, to be African and masculine, and to dance as an African man. And it does so in a matter-of-fact way that we can't help but see, absorb and, if we will, admire.

Music: Olivier Tarpaga in collaboration with musicians Flatié Dembelé, Boubacar Djiga and Daouda Guindo

Declassified Memory Fragment has closed. For information on future events at Harlem Stage Gatehouse, click here.

Harlem Stage Gatehouse
150 Convent Avenue, Manhattan
(map/directions)

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At National Black Theatre, a "peculiar patriot," loyal to her people

Liza Jessie Peterson performs her one-woman show,
The Peculiar Patriot, at National Black Theatre
(photos: above by Garlia C. Jones-Ly;
below by Jean Chambers)

Time and time again, Betsy LaQuanda Ross spends tedious hours riding a bus to and from upstate towns, visiting family and friends like her city homegirl, Jo Jo. She takes Jo Jo hand-quilted squares bearing precious symbols that represent the incarcerated mother (an orange moon) and each of the children she desperately misses (stars). She comes laden with personal stories of life on the outside, told with verve and spice, almost ceaselessly at a breathtaking clip. Together, the women--one we see and one invisible to us yet made palpable through Betsy's love and insight--help us understand the devastating impact of America's prison industry on communities of color, particularly women.

Liza Jessie Peterson
(photo: Ani Berberian)
Below: Director Talvin Wilks
(photo: Adam Nadel)

The Peculiar Patriot--directed by Talvin Wilks and starring its extraordinary writer, Liza Jessie Peterson at Harlem's National Black Theatre--could have been 90-minutes of pure didacticism about a social ill. But it is no such thing. From the moment the pointedly-named Betsy Ross enters the space--set up like a prison's visiting room, with neat, bleak rows of industrial tables and chairs--and calls out "Hey, Boo! Look at you!" you're in her firm grasp.

Peterson, who derived her material from years counseling prisoners at Riker's Island, goes full-on Anna Deavere Smith in adopted body language, facial expressions, vocal intonations, emotional range and expert timing. Not easy to do and sustain but, let me tell you, she's brilliantly on point at every turn.

Her Betsy is hilarious, a Wanda Sykes just waiting to be discovered. But she's there at the prison on a mission to keep her friend's spirits up--as well as her own. In the meantime, we learn much about what it's like to be shut away while your kids are so far, growing up without you; what it's like to have a pal you can't lean in and whisper to and hug and cry with any time you want; how easy it is to get caught up by stringent sentencing laws that disregard your humanity.

If--when--you see this show, you might have a hard time keeping up with the mostly black-and-white slide and video projections that play throughout Peterson's monologue. You'll mostly notice some of these images with your peripheral vision, when aware of them at all, but that's going to be enough. Pay attention to that experience. Peterson holds your attention. Peterson alone, the living, breathing, ebulliently colorful person at the center of this machine. That's as it should be.

Of the many unfortunate, outrageous things The Peculiar Patriot informs us about, as it entertains us, is a new initiative restricting prisoners and their visitors from conversing in person. Some prisons--encouraged by corporate profiteers--have begun instituting visits by video only. When Betsy learns that she and Jo Jo will never again meet face to face across a table, she's shocked and heartbroken, and we immediately get it. Removing the possibility of human touch and connection, like Betsy and Jo Jo have enjoyed, represents one last, inhumane way for the prison industrial complex to control and exploit people caught up in its system. Our only partial awareness of the flat, drab visual projections has been steadily leading us, in a subliminal way, to this moment. By coming to love Betsy--and, through her, Jo Jo--we know what matters and the cost of its loss.

Set and lighting: Maruti Evans
Projections: Katherine Freer
Sound: Luqman Brown

The Peculiar Patriot runs through October 1 with performances on Thursday, Friday and Monday at 7:30pm; Saturday at 2pm and 7:30pm; Sunday at 4pm. There is no late seating. Each performance is followed by a talkback with Peterson. For information and tickets, click here.

National Black Theatre
2031 5th Avenue (at 125th Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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It's time to E-Moves again at Harlem Stage

Kyle Marshall
(photo: David Gonsier)

Spring's here and, with it, a fresh new season of E-Moves at Harlem Stage, featuring commissioned works by "emerging, evolving and established" choreographers of color, as writes E-Moves series curator Charmaine Warren.

Running from Fridays and Saturdays only, March 31 to April 8, the programming spans a range of interests--iconoclastic approaches to ballet to an innovative blend of Indian and contemporary dance. Choreographers include Francesca Harper ((y)ourstory : Chapter one, a work in progress), Parijat Desai (JustLikeThat), Kyle Marshall (Colored) and Leyland Simmons (Traffic).

E-Moves 18 also promises nightly “Pop-Up” performances by renowned artists such as tap dancer Dormeshia Sumbry Edwards and dancers from the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company.

“Pop Up” artists:

Friday, March 31: Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards: Tap solo created & performed by Dormeshia Sumbry Edwards

Saturday, April 1: Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE: SHE IS HERE (2016), Choreography: Ronald K. Brown, performed by Annique Roberts.

Friday, April 7: Dance Theatre of Harlem: Movement 3, Love from VESSELS (2014), choreographed by Darrell Grand Moultrie, performed by Alison Stroming and Francis Lawrence.

Saturday, April 8: Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company: VALLEY COTTAGE (1980/1981 revised in 2011)(excerpt), Choreographers: Bill T. Jones &  Arnie Zane, performed by Antonio Brown and I-Ling Liu.

E-Moves 18 schedule

Friday, March 31, 7:30pm

Saturday, April 1, 7:30pm

Friday, April 7, 7:30pm

Saturday, April 8, 7:30pm

Each program is approximately 90 minutes. For tickets & more information, click here or call (212) 281-9240 ext. 19 or 20.

Harlem Stage Gatehouse
150 Convent Avenue (at West 135th Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)


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With Baldwin our witness at Harlem Stage

Meshell Ndegeocello (above)
Justin Hicks (below)
in Can I Get A Witness? The Gospel of James Baldwin
(photos: Marc Millman)

There's church.

And then, there's church.

When a Black person says it, it's usually the latter and comes with a world of cultural meaning.

And that's where Meshell Ndegeocello is taking you this week--that is, if you paid the price of the ticket. And, if you did, good on you, because you can tell your grandkids you were there when Ndegeocello and her collaborators, inspired by James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time (1963), both tapped and radically remade the ritual of church to address this godawful, pivotal time in our American history.

A Harlem Stage Water Works commission, Can I Get A Witness? The Gospel of James Baldwin encircles vocalist/bassist Ndegeocello and her musicians--Jake Sherman on organ, Jebin Bruni on keyboards and Abraham Rounds on drums--with rings of church pews and chairs for us "congregants." The intimate theater space is further ringed and centered by Abigail DeVille's installations. Before the show starts, the audience can walk around and check them out. I had time to look closely at only two of these assemblages which, despite a few recessed, come-and-go lights, remained cloaked in dark, forbidding mystery. Their mirror shards, especially those covering mannequins' faces, seem designed, like nail-studded n'kisi power figures, to neutralize and deflect evil.

As audience members found seats, Sherman worked the organ slow and mellow in the manner of church. The celebrants/performers began milling around, each cheerfully stopping, here and there, to greet a congregant. Their ritual garments featured reflective glitter, adornments of fake jewels, rich alignments of strips that mimicked fur and feathers. Church began to feel indigenous and Afro-Atlantic and festive and anything but colonized into blandness.

Directed by Charlotte Brathwaite, this warm, inviting, hot and inciting service featured not only funk and jazz and call-and-response and impromptu dance and a charming communion but also several "sermons."  Yes, several. I'd imagine no church Ndegeocello could ever dream up--or could stand--would have only a single mouthpiece for the divine.

Vocalist Justin Hicks, with a voice as sweet as it was passionate, held forth, and so did Staceyann Chin, incendiary spoken-word poet and lesbian activist. And so did Paul J. Thompson, musician turned high school principal who told us how his own difficulties with the America's school system led him to teach in a more nourishing way, armed with Baldwin's essays. And so did vocalist Toshi Reagon, who invoke the righteous power of the Civil Rights movement, exhorting her listeners to raise their voices for justice.

Above and below: Staceyann Chin
(photos: Marc Millman)

It was, as Chin told us, "a call to order--or a call to disorder, whatever you deem necessary."

We needed several sermons, yes, because there remains so much to grapple with--from the threat to healthy water sources to the accelerated rise of white nationalism to the dulling despair that can make good people pull away from one another and the useful work they could do.

Baldwin's uncompromising voice and his visage--in still portrait and in ghostly, out-of-sync film imagery--presides over the setting. The back page of the program features a photo of him sitting on a chair and gazing down at something in his hands. I cannot make out what it is, but I'm imagining it might be a pocket watch. It's that kind of gaze and that kind of holding. His slender body is folded in upon itself, the bent head half in shadow, the legs and feet close together, the arms foreshortened and locking a protected--and, to our prying eyes, unseeable--space in front of his solar plexus.

Silent, this man who had so much to say with his writing and speaking voice. The face might be interpreted as sad, but I see thoughtfulness. Full of thought. Taking time for it.

He sits alone in the photograph. Writers do their work alone, even if the necessity for their work springs from engagement with a troubled society and with the world beyond it, as did Baldwin's work. Like other writers, he needed his time for quiet, for thought, for processing, for conjuring. Without any of that, we would not have the writing we turn to now and again for clarity, for reminder, for courage, for direction. The writing we need always and now as never before.

He was also a man who used the technology of his day to do a good deal of his critically important work in the world. We know the man not only from his writing but from his numerous appearances on television. Yes. Moving out from quiet, moving into public space, he took every opportunity to go in front of as many people as possible and speak good sense to a country refusing to grow up and look at itself.

I have no doubt that Baldwin, in a similar way, would work the hell out of the new technology of our day. He'd make it work for him, and we'd be better off for it.

That's right. Baldwin would figure out how to turn all this mess into church.

Can I Get A Witness? The Gospel of James Baldwin--running through Sunday with performances at 7:30pm and, on Saturday and Sunday, matinees at 2pm.

Sold out, but there is a waiting list. Go, go, go!

For more information, click here.

Harlem Stage Gatehouse
150 Convent Avenue, Manhattan
(map/directions)

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"Eclipse": Forces of Nature celebrates 35th Anniversary

Above and below:
Scenes from Eclipse: Visions of the Crescent and the Cross
by Abdel R. Salaam for Forces of Nature
(photos: Erin Baiano)

For its 35th anniversary season, Forces of Nature has gone all out with Eclipse: Visions of the Crescent and the Cross, choreographed and designed by the company's visionary artistic director, Abdel R. Salaam. Presented last evening at Aaron Davis Hall, this bustling ensemble work traces a narrative of interaction and intermingling between people of Christian and Islamic faiths from the Crusades through the Civil Rights/Black Nationalist years and up to the present day. Even that other visionary, Nostradamus, makes an appearance.

That sounds like a lot, I'm sure, and it is. But Salaam balances his fertile imagination with a strict editor's eye. And any didacticism keeps its proper place--in the program notes--as two hours of dance theater simply breeze by.

Were it not for its provocative subject matter, Eclipse, in excerpts or as a whole, would be absolutely Broadway-ready. Salaam has it all--abstract, stylistic battle scenes crafted like cut crystal; idyllic, lyrical entwinement between once shy, now rapturous lovers; energetic villagers breaking out their best Celtic, Mediterranean or West African moves and much, much more. Each scene, with further development, could work as a standalone piece or a self-contained number ready to be neatly, helpfully dropped into someone else's musical. There's old-school entertainment throughout for any audience that wants it, and Salaam's opening night audience digged it the most. Eclipse is best approached with a relaxed attitude of anything goes/what's next?/bring it!

Salaam is a man for every season, every mood and every dance technique--from modern to ballet, from step dance to flamenco to hip hop--with an equally eclectic, and quite wonderful, ear for music. He meets each opportunity to create characters and tell stories with panache--for instance, turning the competition between "The Cross" (Jeffrey Freeze) and "The Crescent" (Nathan Trice) into a boxing match that, ultimately, neither wins, though, from the look of Trice's stance and form, I'd give him the clear advantage in any rematch.

A work this demanding and ambitious calls for a lot from its dancers, and Salaam is blessed with a disciplined and ardent ensemble with notable work from Trice, Petra Duskova (as a Crusader's widow) and Jason Herbert (as her Muslim suitor).

See the repeat of Eclipse tonight at 7pm. For Program B, tomorrow evening at 7pm, the company presents classic repertory--Terrestrial Wombs, Fallen Idols, B’Flowin B’Smoove, The Word Made Flesh and Lamban Plus!

Get information and tickets for Forces of Nature here.

Aaron Davis Hall
on campus of The City College of New York
between West 133 and 135 Streets, Convent Avenue, Manhattan

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Harlem's "E-Moves" spotlights emerging dancemakers

Tap artist Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards
with trumpeter Igmar Thomas
in Jason Samuels Smith's Going The Miles...
(photo: Marc Millman)

The coziness up at Harlem Stage Gatehouse for last night's E-Moves opener was enhanced by Simone Eccleston's generous, frequent expressions of welcome and thanks. As Interim Director of Programming--replacing the now @large Brad Learmonth--Eccleston has much to uphold and to celebrate: a unique, beautiful home for the arts in Harlem, a strong international community of creators and performers, a history of events that have made and continue to make memories.

Of the four commissioned dances, Jason Samuels Smith's Going The Miles... deserves to enter venerable Harlem Stage history. You'll never go wrong featuring tap champs like Samuels Smith, Derick K. Grant and Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards. But the combination of that triple-threat sonic powerhouse with the intimacy of the Gatehouse was mindblowing. The closeness offered the chance to watch, but never quite fathom, how six feet can split musical moments into flickering microseconds, lending the overall fabric of music a refined, shimmering texture. Grant loves, is especially adept at, small, unexpected delicacies. Collaborators Igmar Thomas--a masterful trumpeter--and bassist Alex Hernandez take a journey through a trio of Miles Davis works, from 1955-1963 contributing to one of the most satisfying musical performances of this or any season.

Although already world-renowned in tap dance, Samuels Smith joined the E-Moves lineup as an "emerging choreographer," mentored by Broadway's Ted Levy.  Okay. But what of his lesser-known colleagues on the Harlem Stage bill?

Davalois Fearon in Water, Thirst & Storm
with video art by André M. Zachery
(photo: Marc Millman)

Davalois Fearon--actually a frequent critics' favorite for her dancing with choreographer Stephen Petronio--is not new to the spotlight. But as she ventures out more as her own dancemaker, we can see a personal, introspective focus that tempers crowd-pleasing, quirky agility. In her and her dancers' movement for Water, Thirst & Storm--as well as a bewitching video by collaborator André M. Zachery--she puts a quiet, ritualistic beauty in the service of expressing nature's power and preciousness. The work shown here has been excerpted from her developing project, Consider Water, "inspired by domestic and global water issues, like water scarcity, water quality impairment and water-related natural disasters." Without seeing Water, Thirst & Storm within this bigger context, it's hard to know how those issues might be integrated into a work of performance, but the piece is a good introduction to Fearon's evolving aesthetic.

Laurie M. Taylor's entertaining Deeper, Higher reflects a fusion of influences from modern dance to Broadway to hip hop, from African to the Afro-affirmative work of Urban Bush Women. An abstract ensemble for five women, including Taylor, it has the uplift of a signature piece, an appetizer. You definitely want to know what Taylor and her shining dancers might do next.

To appreciate Desiree Godsell's WONDERLAND a GO-GO, you're best advised to let go and let the psychedelics take your mind. Otherwise you might not know where you are or why--particularly if you happen to be way younger than me. While not exactly my flavor, despite the era it evokes, WONDERLAND a GO-GO has theatrical audacity. Salsa dancer Elvis Collado performs with stellar presence, and Godsell, herself, overflows with daffy charm best seen in her "Little Surfer Girl" number. Again, for those of you young ones, that's the Beach Boys.

E-Moves continues through Sunday, April 9 with performances at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Harlem Stage Gatehouse
150 Convent Avenue, Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Jock Soto and Carmelita Tropicana to host Bessie Awards

Carmelita Tropicana
(photo: Uzi Parnes)

Jock Soto
(photo: Rosalie O'Connor)

The 2015 awards show of the New York Dance and Performance Awards (The Bessies) will be hosted by former New York City Ballet principal Jock Soto and performance artist and playwright Carmelita Tropicana at Harlem's legendary Apollo Theater on Monday, October 19.

Doors open at 6:30pm for red carpet and pre-show celebrations, and the awards show begins at 7:30pm with an illustrious lineup of presenters, including Marcelo Gomes, Rennie Harris, Linda Celeste Sims, Kyle Abraham, Liz Prince and Ivy Baldwin.

Bessie Award-winning artists Camille A. Brown, Lisa Nelson and Storyboard P, recipient of the 2015 Outstanding Emerging Choreographer Award, will perform.

The evening will also include special presentations to Steve Paxton, recipient of the 2015 Bessie for Lifetime Achievement in Dance, and Movement Research, for Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance.

Get more information and your tickets for the 2015 Bessies celebration here.

The Apollo Theater 
253 West 125th Street, Manhattan
(directions)

Company Cypher to open Katrina-themed play, September 24

Company Cypher announces the New York City premiere of award-winning Gutting, written by Jeremy J. Kamps and directed by Zoey Martinson. The play, inspired by events in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, addresses issues of gentrification and displacement.

When fourteen-year-old Kali returns home to New Orleans after spending two years as a Katrina refugee in Baton Rouge, she finds the neighborhood where she grew up to be changed almost beyond recognition.

Company Cypher’s non-profit work, dedicated to transforming the conversation about skin tone prejudice and race, goes beyond producing theater. Just as important as the show, our aim is to engage communities in conversation and direct action inspired by the production. To that end, Company Cypher’s Gutting and The Center for the Living City’s ‘Jane Jacobs Walk’ have launched an initiative that will engage community stakeholders in a conversation around urban development, displacement and the growing changes of local communities through a series of free neighborhood walking tours that help to put people in touch with their environment. 

See Gutting, September 24-26 and October 1-3: Thursdays-Saturdays at 7pm with additional afternoon matinees on Saturdays at 2pm.

Selected performances are followed by talkbacks with creative team and invited community leaders. Please check out the website for the full schedule. 

Tickets may be purchased at the door as well as online at gutting2015.org. Presales are highly recommended. For more information please email guttinginfo@gmail.com

Dr. Barbara Ann Teer’s National Black Theatre

2031 Fifth Avenue (between 125th and 126th Streets), Manhattan

(map/directions)

A fantasy of James Baldwin and Beauford Delaney

Harlem Stage 

presents a staged reading of

TO THE LIGHT 

(A FANTASY INSPIRED BY TWO AMERICAN GENIUSES: 

BALDWIN AND DELANEY)

a new play by Bil Wright

directed by Reginald Douglas

Wednesday-Thursday, October 7-8 at 7:30pm

Tickets: Free with RSVP

To the Light (A Fantasy Inspired by two American Geniuses: Baldwin and Delaney) is a play by Bil Wright that celebrates the loving, dramatic, complex relationship between writer James Baldwin (1924-1987) and painter Beauford Delaney (1901-1979). It chronicles their friendship from their first meeting through each of their deaths. Both of these men were highly significant in the history of American arts and culture. They both lived and created during times of enormous political change in the United States, especially in regards to the country’s race relations. Both were also enamored with Paris, as were other black artists, feeling it was a mecca in which art prevailed and African Americans considered beautiful both physically and artistically. This was a huge bond between the men, with both men dying in Paris, Delaney the victim of severe mental illness.

Tickets and reservations to Harlem Stage go on sale starting August 24 and can be purchased online or at 212-281-9240 ext. 19/20.

Harlem Stage Gatehouse
150 Convent Avenue, Manhattan
(map/directions)

David Adjaye design planned for Studio Museum in Harlem

Studio Museum in Harlem Unveils Design for Expansion
by Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times, July 5, 2015

Stew says, "Don't blame James Baldwin...."

Stew
(photo: Susan Rosenberg Jones)

James Baldwin had nothing to do with it. Or so we're told.

Even so, he's all over Notes of a Native Song, repeatedly referenced in words and video images, popping up in comically surprising places that will have you double-checking your old vinyl albums because...well, wait a minute...!?!

Harlem Stage's 14-month Year of James Baldwin goes out boldly this week with a commissioned premiere by Stew, star and Tony-winning co-creator of Passing Strange. The new 75-minute work invites us to Baldwin Country, a place where Stew will pair Baldwin's "social remedies" with his own "anti-social questions." For it is the rockin' poet's quest to rescue "Harlem's Bard" from what Stew considers to be our selective, safe memories of the provocative writer.

James Baldwin? Safe? Respectable? Hmmm.

Well, all anti-social questions aside, Stew himself strikes me as anything but safe in his wry, incisive poetry, his madly eclectic, often gorgeous music (co-composed with Heidi Rodewald), his singing, his very being. Passionate, insistent, occasionally snide, yet capable of disarming beauty, Stew can make you grin one minute and the next, feel a chill race up your chakras.

Text/music/guitars/singing: Stew
Bass/guitars/Moog: Heidi Rodewald
Percussion: Urbano Sanchez
Woodwinds: Mike McGinnis
Piano: Art Terry
Lighting: K. J. Hardy
Video design: Joan Grossman

Tickets are almost gone. Connect with Harlem Stage here for shows Wednesday through Saturday, 7:30pm and Saturday and Sunday matinees, 2pm.

Harlem Stage Gatehouse
150 Convent Avenue (at 135th Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Upper Manhattan's dance advocates speak out

Look who's speaking out for dance!
Above: Nia Love
Below: Charmaine Warren

47 notable leaders and local residents of Upper Manhattan--including choreographer Nia Love, Yuien Chin of Harlem One Stop, Mikki Shephard of the Apollo Theater, Darren Walker of the Ford Foundation--tell what they value about the art of dance in Dance/NYC’s NEW YORKERS FOR DANCE video campaign.

Here are a few samples from the series: 

Nia Love

Charmaine Warren

Mikki Shepard

All videos are now live on DanceNYC.org website and YouTube channel.

Whitney V. Hunter: Open Practice in Harlem

Whitney V. Hunter at Chasama in Harlem
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Whitney V. Hunter

1st American Shapist House for the Practice of Performance/Ritual

Open Practice

a seven-day public performance/installation 

at chasama

Activate The Materials
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Hunter, activating
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Open Practice
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Persistence Is Resistance
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Open Practice
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Soil platform for Open Practice
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Persisting
(c)2015, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Daily Public Participation 5-9pm

remaining dates: May 8-9

May 9: 
5-6pm -- closing solo performance & reception
7pm -- artist talk with guests, Manbo Dowoti Desir, Samita Sinha and Andre M. Zachery

Admission: free

chasama
1351 Amsterdam Avenue (at 126th Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Laveen Naidu resigning Dance Theater of Harlem directorship

Dance Theater of Harlem’s Executive Director to Step Down

by Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, December 8, 2014

Arthur Mitchell and Chuck Davis to receive Bessie Awards in October

Bessie Awards to Honor Arthur Mitchell and Chuck Davis

by Felicia R. Lee, The New York Times, September 16, 2014

Trajal Harrell: Serving looks at The Kitchen

Dancer Trajal Harrell and his audience,
prepare for Monday night performance at The Kitchen.
(all photos: Eva Yaa Asantewaa)

Trajal Harrell is, by now, legendary for his "looks"--specifically, the array of interconnected dance projects, created since 2008, that wear the title Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church. In each of these pieces, Harrell plays with the fantasy of crossing two influential performance movements that arose in New York in the 1960s--a neutral minimalism favored by "downtown" dance artists, questioning what dance is, and Harlem's competitive and fabulous ball culture. Harrell's works, like articles of clothing, come in a variety of sizes--(XS), (S), (jr.), and so on, leading up to what he says will be a publication (XL). On Monday night, Harrell performed his solo, (S), at The Kitchen as part of FIAF's 2014 Crossing the Line Festival.

In the stripped-down, democratic Judson aesthetic, external appearance was nothing; in the world of the balls, it was everything, all about displaying the look of something you're not and, in most cases, will never be. That surface look transcends its illusion and elusiveness, cleverly employing yet moving beyond costume and even physicality to something trickier to glimpse, the spirit of the performer. That spirit becomes more clearly visible the longer we watch Harrell perform (S).

For (S), Harrell spends an hour on and around his catwalk, shifting through twenty personae of apparel and movement, starting from "West Coast Preppy School Boy" (in yellow slicker and white flipflops) and nerdy "East Coast Preppy School Boy" (complete with Obama backpack). In a Judsonian touch, the frequent costume changes take place right in front of us at a stand of ordinary folding chairs draped in pants, jackets and other gear, shoes and boots stored beneath. Harrell dons each "look" with zero fuss and with utmost transparency, hurriedly discarding one outfit for the next. Harrell's strides back and forth and around the rim of watchers, though inspired by the atmosphere and dramatics of a high fashion runway, are based in matter-of-fact human walking.

In the early phases at least, he takes on a modest, restrained demeanor that looks like the imaginary Harlemite showing up for postmodern dance class: "I'm here, but I'm not here." But there's way too much drama, way too much Josephine Baker, Graham, Basquiat, Meryl Streep in this guy to be sealed up in pure Judson, and what Harrell allows to shimmer through and seep out of any and all formal containers can be weirdly beautiful.

More "looks" coming up: (M)imosa, tonight at 8pm; (jr) Antigone Jr. and, at 9:30pm (Plus) Antigone Jr. ++ on Wednesday; (L) Antigone Sr. on Friday; and (M2M) Judson Church is Ringing in Harlem on Saturday. Clicking here will get you complete schedule, casting and ticket information.

The Kitchen
512 West 19th Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues), Manhattan
(map)

For more information on FIAF's 2014 Crossing the Line Festival, running through October 20, click here.

Caribbean Cultural Center to break ground for new home in El Barrio

The Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute invites you to celebrate the groundbreaking for its new home in East Harlem, planned to open in 2016 at 120 East 125th Street, a four-story, landmark Romanesque Revival-style firehouse completed in 1889. CCCADI, founded by Marta Moreno Vega in 1976, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to honoring and documenting the cultures of Africa in the New World and to connecting Diaspora communities to their root cultures.

Special events will be held on Tuesday, September 16:

10am-11:45am (BY INVITATION ONLY)
Groundbreaking Ceremony
                                         
11:46am-2pm (open to the public, free with RSVP*)
Launch and demonstration of new CCCADI mobile app
Live musical presentation

For more information, click here.

Directions to 120 East 125th Street (MAP):

Subways: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 to 125th Street. Walk to Lexington Avenue.
Buses: M15, 101,100 to 125th Street
Metro North to 125th Street

*RSVP to: www.rsvpcccadigroundbreaking.eventbrite.com

For information: Contact event coordinator, Lisa Banks at (516) 353-8048/email at banks244@hotmail.com

Learn more about the CCCADI's cultural, educational and advocacy activities here.

Harlem street named for James Baldwin

James Baldwin gets his 'Place' in Harlem
by Herb Boyd, The Amsterdam News, July 31, 2014