Days of Black Future Past: Black Rock Coalition at The Met

Above: Sandra St. Victor
Below: Shelley Nicole
Black Rock Coalition: The History of Our Future
Metropolitan Museum of Art
photos: Paula Lobo

"Black music has been the taproot of every significant movement in rock music. Sadly, the vast majority of Black artists in rock have been erased from the historical narrative or relegated to footnotes."

--Darrell M. McNeill

When you imagine venues to host one of the badbadbadass-iest rock concerts of all times, do you think of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art?

Mmmhmmm.

Well, think again, because you missed Black Rock Coalition: The History of Our Future, a MetLiveArts show designed to demonstrate that Black people not only did rock first but they did it best, do it now and have no intention of stopping. Under Darrell M. McNeill's creative and musical direction, the famed Black Rock Coalition Orchestra and featured guests rocked that house last night with a steady roll. All walls and pedestals should be checked for damage.

Named for BRC Orchestra's 1991 album, the two-hour show started off with the pumping Sly Stone hit "Dance to the Music." That funk functioned here like it did when it was new back in 1967--a sure-fire commercial success for David Geffen's CBS Records and, in 2019, an icebreaker like no other. Though the predominantly white Met Museum audience needed the initial permission to dance to the music, as the evening sped along, folks required little prompting to get up on their feet.

The stage of the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium was packed, side to side and front to back, with instruments and artists including a revolving cast of standout featured performers--among them, Nona Hendryx, Toshi Reagon, Stew, Carl Hancock Rux, Living Colour's Vernon Reid and Corey Glover and, led by a commanding Sandra St. Victor, The Family Stand reunited. Yoruba chants and drumming, spoken word, jazz vocals, traditional work songs, gospel tunes, rock and roll and straight-up rock presented a stream of Black genius, all telling a story of determination, improvisation, spiritual depth and lust for life in the face of a long, long stretch of rough times under white supremacy. Times are still rough; the music persists and continues to do its work.

"So what is rock and roll?" Hancock Rux asked, "We begin with juke joints, and women loving women...." He went on to say it's rooted in "trying to find our way home."

Each performance--like vocalist Everett Bradley's unquestionable authority on both "Dance to the Music" and Louis Jordan's "Choo Choo Ch'Boogie"--felt like a sturdy home and one connected, at the foundation, to every other home. Places of rest and reflection, generous nourishment, everyday miracles and jubilation. Hendryx, above all others, took all my heart with witchy renditions of the jazz classic "Afro Blue" and, later, an unexpectedly expanded and capacious "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." She enters a song at unusual angles, spies just the right, clear path, then guides you through as intensity builds. Reagon quietly took up and met the challenges of Curtis Mayfield's bleak "When Seasons Change" with agility of voice and soul. Stew, with David Barnes on harmonica, updated Bo Diddley's "I'm A Man," making a statement on toxic masculinity from the White House to the church house, from FOX News to NPR. And it was just pure fun to watch Glover rock out again to "Cult of Personality," the show's closer.

An historic one-night only event. So, if you didn't catch it, bummer! But if you love rock, you can still check out Play It Loud: The Instruments of Rock & Roll, at the Met through October 1. Plan your Met visit here.

*****

Featured Artists:

Nona Hendryx
Fantastic Negrito
Vernon Reid, Corey Glover (Living Colour)
Toshi Reagon
Stew (The Negro Problem)
The Family Stand
"Captain" Kirk Douglas (The Roots, Hundred Watt Heart)
Carl Hancock Rux
Ronny Drayton

Black Rock Coalition Orchestra:

Darrell M. McNeill (bass)
LaFrae Sci (drums)
Howie Robbins (keyboards)
Elenna Canlas (keyboards)
Marcus Machado (guitar)
Marvin Sewell (guitar)
Gordon "Nappy G" Clay (percussion)
V. Jeffrey Smith (saxophone, flute)
Don Byron (clarinet, saxophone)
Bruce Harris (trumpet)
JS Williams (trombone)
Sophia Ramos (vocals)
Shelley Nicole (vocals)
Bruce Mack (vocals)
Everett Bradley (vocals, percussion)
Kelsey Warren (vocals)
David Barnes (harmonica)
Mikal Amin (vocals)

******

DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

******

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Branfman and Strimpel of B.S. Movement duet at Tisch

Shaina Branfman and Bryan Strimpel,
co-directors of B.S. Movement
(photo: epfalck|effyography)

Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun.

Shine on you crazy diamond.

--Pink Floyd, "Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Pts. 1-7)"

In 2013, I named dancer Bryan Strimpel--then performing with Nicholas Leichter Dance--as one of Dance Magazine's 25 to Watch for that year. I noted his "sizzling" duet with Leichter in Twenty Twenty and how he matched the two-decades-older choreographer, himself a sensation, in "the all-important slink and sass." Several years later, Strimpel is still one to watch, but now he's moving in concert with Shaina Branfman, his personal and artistic partner in B.S. Movement, and you need to keep both in sight.

I had my chance, on Thursday, at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and almost missed it. One of those one-night only gigs.

The pair presented an intense duet called FLOYD (as in Pink Floyd, their musical touchstone, along with a little Radiohead), and they made Tisch's Jack Crystal Theater their own domestic space. They filled it with signs of mundane homelife (the morning ablutions, the cheerful sharing of a bath towel), the occasional blow-up and reconciliation and, for most of the time, a sense of venturing, together or separately, into the swift currents of life and self. Watching much of this felt voyeuristic, but the couple doesn't mind having a few witnesses to what clearly sparks their creativity.

FLOYD, indeed, serves as a way to keep an eye on these two. Not only does it look like the kinetic, theatrical version of a personal journal; it is a dual portrait. And these two might have their moments of conflict, but they're definitely attuned. They both move through air like oil droplets in shaken water and flow like summer sweat. Molten creatures. Slouchy. Sloshing. Undulating. Woozy. Adaptable, like cats, to any size or shape of space, any potential obstruction. Smacking together only to rotate and glide over each other, slithering skin to skin. Collapsing and tumbling. Driving and diving bluesily into the bluesiest bluesiness those Brits could play. I don't know the story of how Branfman and Strimpel found each other, but I'm glad they did.

Now, let's hope next time we'll have more to see from B.S. Movement and a longer window of opportunity.

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Complexions Contemporary Ballet rocks out at The Joyce

Complexions Contemporary Ballet
(photo: Rachel Neville)

Overflowing with virtuosity and technique, Complexions...is the future of contemporary ballet. Embracing diversity with 15 dancers of different ethnic and dance backgrounds and founded by Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson, two former stars with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, this company is pure dance, pure excitement. 

--from the website of The Joyce Theater

As anticipated, a whole batch of David Bowie hits--from "Space Oddity" to "Lazarus"--have taken up residence in my brain, thanks to Complexions Contemporary Ballet, now presiding over The Joyce Theater through February 5. I saw Program A last night, a show that concluded with a New York premiere, Dwight Rhoden's STAR DUST, subtitled in program notes as A Ballet Tribute to David Bowie. Currently, my head's streaming "1984." The other piece on the bill, a world premiere, is called GUTTER GLITTER and has an epilogue duet inelegantly titled SO NOT A... (AN EPILOGUE TO GUTTER GLITTER). I'm not sure, but I think all these uppercase letters are intentional parts of the title, not just a graphic design element. Sometimes uppercase letters in titles can be a bit much, but with this company, they just make sense.

Yes, these dancers are certainly "overflowing with virtuosity and technique." I haven't seen Complexions in years, but I don't remember the virtuosity and technique being so convincing as standalone values that they would lure me back for more. What I remember is struggling to see past them. But now I would happily revisit the current troupe just to savor how remarkably good these dancers are at what they are asked to do, how hard they work at this, and how Rhoden pushes his abundant, maximalist aesthetic to the max, splashing that stage with a big corps and deploying it like an agile, formidable army. And, yes, if you like pure, abstract dance, if you crave pure sensation, if you want precision and performance that seizes space and never lets it go, then Complexions is your company, "the future of contemporary ballet."

Andrew Brader and Jillian Davis
in Dwight Rhoden's GUTTER GLITTER
(photo: Moira Geist)

Terk Lewis Waters,
in Dwight Rhoden's STAR DUST
(photo: Breeann Birr)

There's so much. Often, there's too much. The GUTTER GLITTER glittering glitters on too long. Seriously, dances that sprawl like that and seem to be resolving towards an end only to start up again work my nerves something fierce. It's something I just don't have a lot of patience for, I'll admit.  STAR DUST, organized around nine Bowie songs and their actual length, at least gives you a sense of where you are in the schedule. If you've read your program, when you get to "Young Americans," you know the end is nigh--although, I must say I was surprised by the thinness and lethargy of the ensemble work in "Young Americans," relative to everything that came before, as if Rhoden's movement ideas had run out. By contrast, Peter Gabriel's mournful version of "Heroes," set near the middle of this suite, gave Rhoden and dancers space to breathe without dragging them down. Don't mind me, though. At STAR DUST's end, the audience loved on this company, with good reason, for the gift of this entire evening. People leapt to their feet, sending the dancers off with cheers ringing in their ears.

The sensual STAR DUST has a readymade advantage--our Bowie nostalgia as well as the matchless Bowie songs, despite the visual silliness of lead dancers like Terk Lewis Waters or Andrew Brader, both standout performers in any moment, lip-syncing to them. Moves-wise, it draws upon the same rare physical elasticity, crystalline precision and brashness that makes GUTTER GLITTER a breathtaking eyeful. Take your dance-reluctant friends to a Complexions show and make newborn dance fans of them. I dare you. I double dare you.

Complexions Contemporary Ballet runs at The Joyce through February 5 with a gala this evening and two programs. For detailed programming and schedule information and tickets, click here.

The Joyce Theater

175 Eighth Avenue (corner of 19th Street), Manhattan

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