Joy at The Joyce: Celebrating Cabuag and EVIDENCE

Arcell Cabuag of Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE
(photo: Bill Hebert)

Above: Cabuag (left) with Ronald K. Brown
(photo: Julieta Cervantes)
Below: Brown with Annique Roberts of Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE
(photo: Ayodele Casel)

Two decades ago, a Filipino-American dancer from California joined Brooklyn's Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE, going on to become not only one of Brown's most iconic and beloved performers but also a dancemaker, educator, administrator (Associate Artistic Director) and Bessie winner in his own right. Last evening, Brown paid joyful tribute to his colleague, Arcell Cabuag, sharing the stage with him in Den of Dreams during the launch of the troupe's season at The Joyce Theater.

In addition to this new duet, opening night included three selections from Brown's repertory--Come Ye (2002); March, an excerpt from Lessons (1995), part of Carnegie Hall’s The ’60s: The Years that Changed America festival; and Upside Down, an excerpt from Destiny (1998).

The most thrilling moments of all came in the finale of Come Ye, set to Fela Anikulapo Kuti's furious protest song, "Coffin for Head of State." The work's opening passages offer viewers an uncluttered, transparent tutorial on Brown style--a hybrid movement style reflecting the legacy of being and dancing Black across two hemispheres and many cities. But it is, the last section, with Fela's insistent, irresistible Afrobeat, where we can watch the handsomely-trained ensemble take off as never before, at the top of its game.

Brown is less an assured shaper of theatrical landscape than a liberator and enlivener of the dancing body from head to feet. His landscape is there--in the roiling, rippling shoulders, the pitch of the back, the give of the knees, the expansive pumping, slashing arms, the way the body sings the music it hears and tells of the multitudes it contains. In each body, actually--among the many individual bodies on stage--we see a village, many villages, Fela's avenging warrior angels. This finale, a masterpiece, is one of the most beautiful ways to connect with Brown's aesthetic, to connect with his commitment--to connect with dance, period. If I were a professional dancer, I would beg to live inside this work and crave nothing more.

Den of Dreams is a sweet moment of "I'm here to learn from you...I'm here to follow you...and, now, look at us: we are brothers." Sweet, too, to see Brown take the stage again (as he also did as part of the corps in Upside Down, scheduled only for opening night). As choreography, this brief duet might not hold its own, but it clearly speaks of memory, times of testing and response, comradeship and a journey set upon, continued and continuing with respect and affection--feelings the audience and I also share for these two veteran artists.

Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE continues at The Joyce through February 10 with performance tonight at 7:30 and Thursday through Saturday at 8pm with a Saturday family matinee at 2pm. For information and tickets, click here.

The Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Avenue (at 19th Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Reasons to be thankful!

I have many things to be thankful for--among them, being so often surrounded by gifted, accomplished artists. This season, I had the great pleasure of moderating BRIC Arts Media's post-show Q&A with choreographer Ronald K. Brown (celebrating his troupes's 30th anniversary) and poet Cheryl Boyce-Taylor. For Ronald K. Brown/Evidence's season at BRIC, Brown and Boyce-Taylor presented a revival of Water, their 1999 collaboration. 

The Q&A followed the performance on Friday, November 13 as New Yorkers were just hearing and struggling to process the horrific news from Paris. All through our conversation, I felt the unshakable force of Ron and Cheryl's groundedness and focus. I was happy that they both emphasized how important it is for young, innovating artists to value and tap the experience of arts elders as they move forward in a field--and a world--presenting numerous challenges.

Movers and Shakers: Dance Activists in NYC
a panel at Brooklyn Historical Society
(photo: Tyrone Z. McCants)

L to r: Jason Samuels Smith, Eva Yaa Asantewaa, AntBoogie,
Tamia Santana, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Camille A. Brown
(photo: Tyrone Z. McCants)

I also had the honor of being invited, by Meredith Duncan, Programs and Communication Manager of Brooklyn Historical Society, and Tamia Santana, Executive Director of the Brooklyn Dance Festival, to moderate their panel on dance and activism at BHS. The panelists? Knockouts, all: Camille A. Brown, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, AntBoogie and Jason Samuels Smith, distinguished in their respective genres of dance and deeply engaged with community, education and social justice.

(photo: Tyrone Z. McCants)

(photo: Tyrone Z. McCants)

Despite a late-fall downpour that kept some people home, we had a good gathering and a rich, wide-ranging discussion touching on the power of the arts to shift the way we think and imagine, the fundamental importance of technical discipline, the role of the body in political action, and the perennial challenge posed by mainstream media and conventional tastemakers and gatekeepers. So often, our talk returned to the imperative that progressive artists just go for it, find their own truths, control their own spaces, creating alternatives in an end run around these barriers. I greatly appreciate the example these artists continue to set for us all.

Finally, I want to thank all of you for your nourishing support over the years. InfiniteBody continues to be here for you, and I hope you will continue to enjoy it and send your friends and colleagues my way.

Have a great Thanksgiving!

Love,
Eva :-)

How's that Ailey troupe looking?

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
performing Ronald K. Brown's Four Corners
(photo: Paul Kolnik)

Holiday time has come again. As we ask each year, then, how's the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater looking?

Looking good! That is not news. That is pretty much what they do.

I have no news for you in this post.

And I really won't be able to tell you much about the 2014 New York City Center season, because I'm making only one dip into it, and that happened last night in the company of loyal fans of America's cherished dance ambassadors to the world.

Antonio Douthit-Boyd
in Ulysses Dove's Bad Blood
(photo: Steve Wilson)

The troupe performed Bad Blood (Ulysses Dove, 1984), Four Corners (Ronald K. Brown, 2013) and After the Rain (Christopher Wheeldon, 2005), capping the evening off with Ailey's Revelations (1960). I wouldn't call this slate a program of radical experimentation or risk on the part of Robert Battle. I'd say it maintains the status of Ailey as filled with expertly sculpted performers whose bodies are the point and the meaning behind whole stretches of movement of any kind in any season. Give Ailey audiences this beauty, this technical facility, this passionate physicality to behold, and the job is done. We go to kick back and drink in these marvelous stars and stars-in-waiting, maybe to feel a little better about the potential of the human race, and they give us their all.

This is not all I look for in an experience of dance. Far from it. But it's not nothing either. It is what it is.

Ailey dancers in Four Corners
above: Belen Pereyra
below: Kervin Douthit-Boyd

Last night's marquee item might have been the pas de deux from Christopher Wheeldon's After the Rain, danced by Linda Celeste Sims and Glenn Allen Sims. Anything coming from the world of ballet has a certain built-in sheen to it, and this is Wheeldon, after all. Safe choice. But, for me, Brown's Four Corners was the evening's knockout. The piece stirs Brown's eclectic (and perennial) movement elements and embodied spirituality to silky perfection. And look at its primary inspiration--a song by poet Carl Hancock Rux with grief for the fallen, angels seeking to bestoy healing peace and a ringing exhortation to the people:

Yours is simply this

Command and stand up

Stand

You are beautiful

And lovely

Beautiful and lovely

In this time of pain and despair, could there really be anything more in the spirit of Ailey?

an excerpt from Four Corners

The 2014 Ailey season at New York City Center continues through January 4. For schedule and ticket information, click here.

New works by Ronald K. Brown, Asha Thomas at The Joyce

Shayla Caldwell in The Subtle One
(photo by Ayodele Casel)

After looking at Ronald K. Brown's aesthetic for years, I find that I'm no longer closely watching movements--which are largely familiar by now, a smooth and juicy contemporary blend of kinetic styles from regions and eras of the African diaspora--or even Brown's broader and equally familiar thematic tendencies. Instead, the just-opened spring run of Ronald K. Brown/Evidence, A Dance Company at The Joyce Theater draws my attention to how Brown uses movement to deploy energy. After all, this season's world premiere, The Subtle One, set to a beautiful score by jazz pianist Jason Moran, is all about angels--and the idea of angels is all about activated energy.

And I see Brown as holding his dancers--and his people, mine, too--in a place of angelic condition, angels earthbound. A faithful and purposeful community, activated and engaged with the Radiant Invisible somewhere high and offstage, just along an oblique, illuminated path. Earth angels, as in his 2001 Ife/My Heart, in white costumes that swing and float and extend the body's flow into space. (White is the essential color of spiritual purity in African/Afro-Atlantic traditions.) As in all of his work, the body rises and falls and rises to connect levels of external and internal being. The arms lash circles and drives of energy along a variety of planes. A polyrhythmic conversation--with spongy moves and countermoves and arching suspensions--erupts between body and music across ground and air. Often moving to irresistible music, the lush dancing has a heightening and tranquilizing effect.

Looking at the work this time, I suddenly get why I'm often on the fence about Brown's dancemaking. I realize that I'm often seeing something very much like club dancers neatly arranged in shifting lines across space; each man or woman dancing in his or her own bubble of air, even when they move as one. I might enjoy the look, get into the feel, but I wonder if there isn't a little more that can happen.

Ife/My Heart and, to an extent, last year's Torch--specifically due to the uncanny, shapely, lighter-than-air dancing of Annique Roberts in Torch--are dynamic examples of Brown doing what he loves to do. By comparison, The Subtle One, opening Program A, seems thin and juiceless and bearing the company's most dispiriting tendencies towards earnestness, clearly not up to the responsibility of being a program's climax--and so, it isn't. Instead, IFE/My Heart and Torch conclude the show.

Guest artist Asha Thomas's New York premiere, Ghazals, which follows The Subtle One, opens with an annoying (because difficult to hear over the music) spoken word performance by Thomas while guest artist David Gaulein-Stef makes his entrance by gradually rolling across the floor from the opposite end of the stage. The lanky, rubbery Gaulein-Stef, a multi-talented native of French Guyana, is a marvel throughout. But the piece only picked up interest for me in its final moments when, for some reason, the dancers turned playful in a daffy way. Good for Thomas (who credits Brown as a special collaborator in this piece) for resisting making this closing passage an obviously romantic one. The horsing around here looks more like an exchange between two giddy siblings or two peers who have become really close friends. It looks real, and that's affecting. If Thomas does not provide a decisive theatrical conclusion to her duet, at least we take away and savor what appears to be a genuine feeling.

Ronald K. Brown/Evidence, A Dance Company continues at the Joyce through this Sunday on the following schedule:

Program A: The Subtle One, Ghazals, IFE/My Heart, Torch on June 3, 4, 8 at 7:30pm and June 7 at 2pm

Program B: Ebony Magazine to a Village, Dancing Spirit, High Life, Upside Down on June 5, 6, 7 at 8pm and June 8 at 2pm

For information and tickets, click here.

The Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Avenue (at 19th Street), Manhattan
(directions)

The Apollo celebrates James Brown in dance: my review for TDE

The amazing Derick K. Grant
in Live by Otis Sallid
(photo by Shahar Azrari)

I reviewed the just-closed James Brown: Get on The Good Foot, A Celebration in Dance show at The Apollo Theater for The Dance Enthusiast, and you can find my review by clicking here.

Brown gives "Evidence" at The Joyce

Ronald K. Brown/Evidence looks better than ever. For his season at The Joyce Theater (now through Sunday), Brown has carefully selected a retrospective of works that represent him, his unique aesthetic and his current lineup of dancers with clarity and power.

Program A, which I attended last evening, includes two confident works from 2005--the Order My Steps ensemble and the rapturous solo Ife/My Heart, with guest artist Matthew Rushing absolutely on fire--as well as the 1998 Incidents and the world premiere of Torch. Program B, which I will miss, focuses on Walking Out The Dark from 2001 and Upside Down from 1998.

This most satisfying season offers evidence of this artist's diligent and joyful exploration of texture and time in music, brushing past the strict outer lines of movement to uncover more of what's possible to the dancing body, doing so from a place of mindfulness of the travels of African peoples throughout our history. Brown's through-line, his sustenance--and the fuel for his dancers--comes from the history of Black people uplifted by their connection to a spiritual source and to one another. His dancers help me see this as an experience of being filled to bursting with energies and identities. We carry so many stories and ancestors within our bodies, hence, so many impulses clamoring to be remembered, honored, expressed. The individual body must fragment, loosen, release, become its own orchestra. Yet, at times, Brown's troupe falls into smooth, disciplined harmony. I have always loved the way Brown chooses and reveals the diverse, rich music of the Black diaspora--from spirituals to Marley to house--and, for that, I view him as my teacher.

Torch, a tribute to Beth Young--Brown's friend and student, lost to cancer--opens with a cluster of dancers, wearing costumes of a fabric and color reminiscent of hospital scrubs, elevating then engulfing and concealing Annique S. Roberts while Otis Donovan Herring dances alone. But this obvious setup gives way to jaunty celebration of a relationship and a life, set to South African house music. Roberts, Herring and the entire company shine, and it is fun and moving to see Brown participate in the dancing as well.

See Ronald K. Brown/Evidence at The Joyce Theater through Sunday night. For a complete schedule and ticket information, click here.

The Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Avenue (at 19th Street), Manhattan
(directions)

My review of Philadanco at The Joyce Theater

Here's my review of Philadelphia's great dance troupe, Philadanco, just posted on DanceMagazine.com: Click here.

Ronald K. Brown's Evidence

Ronald K. Brown's Evidence, A Dance Company at The Joyce Theater: Click here to read my review for Dance Magazine.

Job opening at Evidence, A Dance Company

Evidence, A Dance Company - Managing Director

Evidence: Here's to 25 more!

Harlem Stage's E-Moves dance series throws a big celebration for the 25th Anniversary of Evidence, A Dance Company, June 17-20, with highlights from works by acclaimed choreographer Ronald K. Brown and a special Father's Day workshop for boys and their dads or male mentors/guardians. Experience the powerful and inspiring dancers of Evidence and live music by Gordon Chambers, Wunmi and more.

For complete schedule details and ticketing, click here or call 212-281-9240 x 19 or 20.

Harlem Stage: The Gatehouse
150 Convent Avenue (at 135th Street), Manhattan

"Dance is for peace."

Evidence, ODC and Urban Bush Women Dance for Diplomacy

by Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times, March 19, 2010

Evidence represents

Evidence in Africa: Dance Troupe as Ambassadors

by Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times, February 28, 2010

Dance in the Township of Joza
by Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times, February 28, 2010

How Do You Do What You Do?
by Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times, March 1, 2010

651 Arts is LIVE AND OUTSPOKEN

Brooklyn's 651 Arts--dedicated to performance of the African diaspora--launches LIVE AND OUTSPOKEN, its new series of arts conversations, this spring with an exciting line-up:

Tuesday, April 27
Award-winning choreographer Ralph Lemon interviews Mississippi bluesman Jimmy “Duck” Holmes in the home of Emmy Award-winning producer, Tom Fontana
Tuesday, May 4
Poet/playwright/activist Sonia Sanchez interviews choreographer Ron BrownMark Morris Dance Studio at , Brooklyn

Tuesday, May 11
South African composer Hugh Masekela interviews musician/performer Somi at the Kumble Theater for the Performing Arts, Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus

Tuesday, May 18
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage interviews actress/writer April Yvette Thompson at BRICstudio, Brooklyn

Tickets go on sale on March 1.

For further information about this and other activities of 651 Arts, click here.

Getting the Ailey spirit

To honor beloved Judith Jamison on the occasion of her 20th anniversary at the helm of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Ronald K. Brown choreographed a new work named for Jamison's 1993 autobiography, Dancing Spirit. While this evocative nontet has won a New York Times critic's stamp of approval for gently nudging Ailey's dancers past their patented smooth virtuosity, it scarcely departs from Brown's own comfort zone.

In terms of its delicious music mix, hybrid movement technique, staging, idealistic tone and spiritual reverence, Dancing Spirit is recognizably part of the Ronald K. Brown family of dances. It probably just looks more uniformly classy on Ailey than it might on Evidence, Brown's scrappier group.

And, yes, Dancing Spirit looks especially grand on Ailey, with the grandest of all performances coming from Matthew Rushing and Yannick Lebrun. They work Brown's movement through their bodies with openness and vivacity (Rushing), minute, agile precision (Lebrun), attentiveness and understanding (both gentlemen). They make you glad to be there. And what they most clearly tell me about Jamison is how focused and serious she is--like Brown--about attending to the work at hand.
 
I got unexpectedly emotional watching the all-too-familiar swirl and twirl of Memoria--Alvin Ailey's 1979 tribute to the late Joyce Trisler, his colleague and friend. (Haven't I seen this piece, like Revelations, a gazillion times?) But, this time, it brought a warm flush to my cheeks and tears to my eyes--perhaps, in no small measure, because of Constance Stamatiou's sensitive performance. She's lovely. Truth be told, though, it was probably Ailey's vision of the future--the exuberant chorus of young dance students swarming the stage in the work's celebratory conclusion--that did me in. In a difficult time, it feels good to reconnect with that sense of optimism and dedication.

New York City Center season (through January 3) schedule and ticketing

Return from exile: Sanchez illuminates World AIDS Day

Last night, I made my first trip to WNYC's Greene Space for a World AIDS Day event featuring performances by the pioneering poet Sonia Sanchez and acclaimed dancer-choreographer Ronald K. Brown as well as a conversation among Sanchez and health advocates. Greene Space's intimate setting created a special feeling of welcome quite appropriate to the artists' theme of acceptance, truthful dialogue and reconciliation within the Black family and within the larger family that is the Black community.

Warmly accompanied by jazz musicians Odean Pope (saxophone), Kenny Gates (piano) and Lee Smith (bass), Sanchez performed her award-winning Does Your House Have Lions?--a rhythmic conjure-work in book form. The poem deals with her gay brother's estrangement and struggles, his migration from the South to New York City where "a new geography created him," his political awakening and his passing, from AIDS, in 1981. Brown enhanced Sanchez's mesmerizing vocal performance with big, hungry, panther-ish moves. The radiance of speaker, dancer and musical trio reached across the short distance from artists to audience, hearts to hearts.

"How how how...how to return from exile?" Sanchez's poem asks. The evening's panel, moderated by pan-media journalist Esther Armah, explored this question as it relates to the disproportionate impact of HIV/AIDS on people of African descent. With an increase in HIV infection among Black men who have sex with men, young Black men and Black women under 30, the African-American community simply cannot afford to avoid frank, uncensored talk about sexuality and health.

Panelists Dr. Monica Sweeney, MD (Assistant Commissioner for HIV/AIDS for the New York City Department of Health) and Phill Wilson (Founder and Executive Director, Black AIDS Institute) offered some measure of hope, pointing to a gradual decrease in stigmatization of people with HIV/AIDS, even within Black churches, and more openness to honest talk about sexual orientation, sexual behavior and methods of preventing infection.

Societal and psychological barriers to prevention and care still exist, but Armah's panelists emphasized how individuals and communities can empower and protect themselves. "We need to have these conversations in more robust ways," Wilson said. "You have the power to stop transmission of HIV. You deserve to protect yourself."

Sweeney noted, with great concern, one segment of the population--women over 50--who sometimes engage in unprotected sex "as if age is a vaccine" and HIV something that happens to other people. She offers HIV testing to people of all ages and believes that if the test were part of all routine care, it would be accepted with no shame. The NYC health department's female condom program has been expanded, she says, enabling women to guard their health without having to figure out ways to negotiate safety with their partners.

One audience member raised the question of sexual abuse and domestic violence in the community and how they complicate prevention and healthcare. The panelists noted that the Black family and community have tended to shroud these issues in silence, although--thanks to high-profile cases, the testimony of celebrities who have been victimized, and works of art such as Sapphire's novel Push and the extraordinary film, Precious, based on it--more attention and resources are being directed to these parallel problems.

"AIDS is the health crisis of our day, and what we do about it will be our legacy," Wilson said. While he acknowledged the Obama administration's efforts around needle exchange programs, the extension of the Ryan White Act and the recent lifting of the ban for HIV+ people traveling into the US, he noted that we still lack a comprehensive, national AIDS strategy and meaningful healthcare reform.

I commend WNYC for presenting this informative and imaginative program. To view a schedule of upcoming events at the Greene Space, click here.

World AIDS Day with Sonia Sanchez and Ronald K. Brown

In recognition of World AIDS Day 2009, WNYC's Jerome L. Greene Performance Space welcomes poet Sonia Sanchez and choreographer Ronald K. Brown, plus a discussion of AIDS in the African-American community.

Complete information here
Tuesday, December 1 -- 7pm-9pm

Show some "Evidence" you can dance

Ronald K. Brown's Evidence, A Dance Company will hold a five-day workshop (November 16-20) including master classes taught by Brown and Associate Artistic Director and dancer Arcell Cabuag. There will be a student showing of Evidence repertory on Saturday, November 21 at 3pm. Invite your friends to see what you've learned!

Come for the whole week ($50) or by the class ($12).

Schedule

Brown: Tuesday, Thursday
Cabuag: Monday, Wednesday, Friday 

Location

Black River Dance
345 Lenox Avenue (127th-128th Streets), Manhattan

Shani Collins: Woman Warrior

Check out this month's issue of Dance Magazine for my profile of dancer-choreographer Shani Nwando Ikerioha Collins--Woman Warrior--pages 50-54.

Evidence and the United Colors of Armitage

Every year, dance events at Lincoln Center Out of Doors bridge the gap between dance artists and New Yorkers who aren't necessarily dance aficionados but who like that certain sexy combination of summer + free + outdoor + entertainment. It's one of the perks of having the endurance to stay in (or visit) New York during the heat stroke season, and this year's lineup shimmers with great opportunities. You can catch up with Fraulein Maria, Doug Elkins's deliciously bite-sized and lovingly-wacky version of The Sound of Music (August 16). And, if you were elsewhere last night, perhaps devastated by John Edwards's revelation, you could instead have witnessed a West African musical phenom--electronica band Burkina Electric, fronted by the dynamic, Angelique Kidjo-reminiscent Maï Lingani--that features some pretty hot dancing of their own.

I haven't yet mentioned Armitage Gone! Dance, with its own stellar and fierce performers, who collaborated with Burkina Electric on Karole Armitage's Summer of Love, previewed last evening at LC's Damrosch Park. This dancemaker is on a natural high, having recently made her Broadway choreography debut with Passing Strange and choreographed the Public Theater's critically-acclaimed revival of Hair. Teaming up with the Burkina Faso troupe is a very smart move. Not only do Lingani and her comrades provide irresistible beats, they also provide the glue that Armitage's loosey-goosey hour requires. Not enough though. In bits and pieces, Summer of Love can be fun--with its aura of a kind of upscale, deliberately multiculti '60s dance party--but its patched-together, song-related sections don't congeal and keep teasing us with potential endings that aren't. It feels shallow and as self-indulgent as neo-cons accuse the '60s counterculture of being. Despite the dancers' technical perfection and their obvious sense of play, AGD in Summer of Love comes off like the United Colors of Armitage. On the other hand, Burkina Electric is the real deal, and I'm glad to have made their acquaintance.

As for Evidence, A Dance Company, second on the Damrosch bill, Ronald K. Brown's troupe lit up the stage just as we knew it would. Brown presented a couple of works from repertory: Upside Down (excerpted from Destiny, a 1998 collaboration with Jeune Ballet d'Afrique Noire) and High Life (2002). Upside Down? Call the FDNY! These people are on fire! Top marks to Shani Nwando Ikerioha Collins and Tiffany Quinn, dancers who go from strength to strength. But it was especially wonderful to see Brown himself dancing with renewed vigor, openness and acuity--evidence of what inspires all his dancers to give their all.

Brown and Sommer go BAAD!

As part of the Boogie Down Dance Series 2008, the Bronx Academy of Arts & Dance (BAAD!) presents a master class with Ronald K. Brown of Evidence Dance Company.

Sunday, June 1 (1pm-3pm)
$20 (space limited; registration required)

Praised as "one of the most profound choreographers of his modern dance generation’ by the New York Times, Ronald K. Brown/Evidence blends African, modern, ballet and hip-hop dance styles to tell stories about what is important about the human experience. Mr. Brown will teach a master class in contemporary dance that infuses the movement vocabularies that inform his acclaimed and award-winning choreography.

This master class is for artists with dance training. Space is limited and registration is required.

Also, presented by BAAD!, a screening of Check Your Body at the Door, a documentary film by Sally Sommer, Ph.D.:

Friday, June 6 (8pm)
$5 (suggested donation)

Dr. Sally Sommer, dance scholar and historian, presents her remarkable documentary film that explores the movement vocabulary of legendary NYC house dancers, including Archie Burnett, Willi Ninja, Ejoe Wilson, Marjory Smarth and Conrad Rochester. Made possible in part by support from the National Endowment of the Arts, Dr. Sommer interviews dancers from the local NYC scene and captures now-vintage footage from the late 80s and early 90s. Check Your Body at the Door (a work-in-progress) now stands as an historical document and testament to the early years of NYC’s house dance culture. The film will be followed by a panel discussion on House Dance with Dr. Sally Sommer, dancer Archie Burnett and Red, the co-director of House Dance International and Soulgasm, and a closing night party with DJ Chip Chop. Program subject to change.

For the full Boogie Down schedule and more information on and directions to BAAD!, click here.