Black Arts Movement: Examined Part 6—Dance (E-Moves)

BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT: EXAMINED

Thursday, April 13–Saturday, April 15, 2023, 7:30PM Harlem Stage Gatehouse

Address: 150 Convent Avenue at West 135 Street, New York, NY 10031 Phone: 212.281.9240 ext. 19 | Website: www.harlemstage.org

@harlemstage

@myharlemstage

CALENDAR PART I: INTRODUCTION

Pat Cruz & Carl Hancock Rux In Conversation

PART II: FILM

Dutchman Film & Conversation

PART III: POETRY

Music & Poetry: Thulani Davis + Wadada Leo Smith

PART IV: MUSIC

THU, APR 20 | 7PM FREE ZOOM

VISUAL ARTS

Dive Deeper with Pat Cruz & Michael Sawyer

THU, MAY 11 | 7:30PM $15 / $7 SUGGESTED DONATION

Max Roach’s We Insist! Freedom FILM SCREENING Jason and Shirley Now Suite Reimagined feat. Michela Marino Lerman Presented in collaboration with

PART V: THEATER

Readings + Conversation Funnyhouse of a Negro by Adrienne Kennedy

PART VI: DANCE E-MOVES

Our signature dance series curated this season by Stefanie Batten Bland

Maysles Documentary Center

THU–SAT, MAY 18–20

PART VII: BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT: THEN AND NOW CONFERENCE

The Black Arts Movement Conference is a three-day event featuring panels, discussions, essays, and performances that reflect, examine, and point to the full experience and culture of the Black Arts Movement, culminating in a concert curated

by Vernon Reid.

The Black Arts Movement: Examined series and conference have been made possible by a generous grant from the Mellon Foundation.

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Photos by Kwame Brathwaite

FROM THE ASSOCIATE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR/CURATOR-IN-RESIDENCE Over the course of the 2022/2023 Season, Harlem Stage examines the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s to the 1970s, and its relationship to race, gender, sexuality, music, photography, film, poetry, theater, and dance, as well as its intersectionality with the larger Black Power Movement. Harlem Stage also intends to raise key questions that remain relevant to artistic production: what is the relationship between art and politics and what is the role of the politically conscious artist?

Harlem Stage will convene seven programs, culminating in a spring conference and concert, paying tribute to the groundbreaking writers, poets, visual artists, musicians, and intellectuals who attempted to situate their work within the political, economic, social, historical, and artistic context of Black Americans. Employing roundtables, public dialogues, and screenings, Harlem Stage also intends to explore controversial areas of tension between the intellectual, ethical, and commercial imperatives of the Black Arts Movement, its scholarship, and the professional demands many of its leaders (given the constraints, and disparate doctrinal paths of debate, within its institutional academy) imposed upon artists, and whether or not the Black Arts Movement’s libertarian, racism-countering goals were ever truly achieved.

Employing “conversations” between highly esteemed sovereigns of the Black Arts Movement and a contemporary generation of artists, Black Arts Movement: Examined centers itself within a dialogue that is both historically and culturally relevant in the ever-changing present world.

Carl Hancock Rux Associate Artistic Director/Curator-in-Residence

FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR & CEO When Carl Hancock Rux and I first started discussing his joining the staff of Harlem Stage as our Associate Artistic Director and Curator-in-Residence, our conversations centered on how a practicing artist with an active career would be able to adjust to the various responsibilities associated with the running of an arts organization. More significantly we talked about curatorial processes involving the design and implementation of our programs within the context of a team. Even before we sealed the deal for his engagement, made possible through the generosity of the Mellon Foundation, Carl, who had presented his art at Harlem Stage for over 30 years, was brimming with ideas. Certainly something that I should have expected, but when one of his many ideas was to propose a yearlong series of programs examining the Black Arts Movement, I was deeply moved and inspired.

Essentially, I cut my teeth in performance and administration as a participant in the Black Arts Movement almost accidentally as the young partner of the artist, Emilio Cruz, who reluctantly left a career in the NY art world to join the Black Arts Group (BAG) in St. Louis.

It was life-changing in many unexpected ways. We were suddenly in the center of an amazing group of artists and activists who mixed their dedication to creative work with the idea of building and transforming community, confronting the social and political strictures that reinforced racist oppression. In part as a response to the Civil Rights movement of the ’60s, we marched, we protested, and we created art meant to respond to and challenge the status quo. Carl and I spent many hours discussing the parallels between those times 50 years ago to the police killings of Black men, women, and children and the continued oppression that inspires the Black Lives Matter movement of today. The ultimate parallel is the creative response of contemporary artists, looking back and creating forward.

Cycles abound sometimes more quickly than we can record or absorb. The point of the series that Carl has conceived, and programmed collaboratively with myself, Managing Director Eric Oberstein, and Programming Manager Yunie Mojica, is not only to absorb, but it is also to examine, to expand our understanding, to learn from the past through the lens of transformative art. As an organization that sits proudly at the intersection of art and social justice, this examination of an arts movement born out of resistance exemplifies the mission of Harlem Stage. I hope that you will join us and participate with us in this examination.

Pat Cruz Artistic Director & CEO

ABOUT THE EVENT For over 20 years, Harlem Stage’s signature dance series, E-Moves, has brought together phenomenal choreographers, artists, musicians, and dancers of color to showcase their choreographic visions and pull audiences into an exploration of movement and message. The Black Arts Movement: Examined series inspires this year’s program, curated by Jerome Robbins Award-winning dancer, choreographer, and Harlem Stage alum Stefanie Batten Bland, and will feature works in conversation with the Black Arts Movement.

Join us for an evening showcasing choreographers experimenting with and responding to the legacy of the past while creating dances that lean into the future.

Performer artists include Jamal Abrams, Kayla Farrish, and Ogemdi Ude. Thank you for joining us!

Harlem Stage

CREATIVE TEAM Stefanie Batten Bland Curator Ogemdi Ude Choreographer Jamal Abrams Choreographer Kayla Farrish Choreographer

Special thanks to The Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University for dedicated rehearsal space for the E-Moves artists.

Black Arts Movement: Examined is supported by the Mellon Foundation. Additional support for E-Moves from the Mertz-Gilmore Foundation and Harkness Foundation for Dance.

BIOGRAPHIES CURATOR STATEMENT It is an honor to have been asked to curate E-Moves. Harlem Stage has been a space of transformation for me throughout my life as spectator, performer, and maker. It brings me deep gratitude that the space feels I can bring something in terms of ensuring new faces and makers are also housed and honed in its heritage.

Inside of the interrogation of the Black Arts Movement of which I’m a child of, due in part of my lineage to my father’s work in jazz and atonal compositional spaces, I find the invitation here that I am excited to engage with is centered in hybridity. As the Black Arts Movement for me was a mixing of genres and peoples, the movement that comes from that moment is still being researched.

African Americans, hybrid in composition already, are constantly navigating making methods that are expressed through past and present geographical constructs. The more I can support makers through theatrical movement expression, the more I can honor E-Moves. Our shift is away from the phasic curatorial structure of makers in their beginning, middle, and arrived definitions, and shifting into what I think is unique to all art at Harlem Stage.

The three makers whom I’ve chosen are in deep experimentation, exposure, and experiential conversations in their current practice.

I’m thrilled that Jamal Abrams, Kayla Farrish, and Ogemdi Ude said “yes” to this call.

—Stefanie Batten Bland

BIOGRAPHIES STEFANIE BATTEN BLAND CURATOR

Jerome Robbins awardee Stefanie Batten Bland, a global maker, and 2022 BAM NEXT WAVE commissioned artist, exhibits a unique blend of African American flamboyance and European sensibility. She situates her work at the intersection of immersive, dance-theatre in live and cinematic settings. Based in New York City, she founded Company SBB in France in 2008 and is a longstanding Baryshnikov Arts Center artist in residence.

KOLONIAL, her 2021 dance film, has won 8 film festival awards and was nominated for three Bessies.

SBB is Casting and Movement Director for Emursive Productions newest production, serves as Performance and Identity Consultant for Sleep No More, Movement Director Eve’s Song, Public Theater, and Choreographer for American Ballet Theatre’s inaugural Women’s Movement Initiative. SBB is an assistant professor at Montclair State University for Theatre & Dance, received her MFA in interdisciplinary arts from Goddard College and lives in SoHo with her family, where she grew up as the daughter of artists. As a performer Batten Bland has danced for Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, Compagnie Georges Momboye, Compagnie Linga, Pal Frenak, Pina Bausch Tanztheater Wüppertal and PunchDrunk’s New York Production of Sleep No More.

SBB received her MFA in interdisciplinary arts from Goddard College, is Assistant Professor at Montclair State University’s Department of Theatre and Dance, and lives in SoHo with her family.

ABOUT THE WORK OK, LET’S TRY THIS AGAIN

BY OGEMDI UDE

DESCRIPTION

In this solo, dance and interdisciplinary artist Ogemdi Ude adapts remnants of past works addressing grief and loss to create a character existing both internally and externally. This character offers an outlet for reckoning with who you become when your personal life and creative life become about death.

OGEMDI UDE CHOREOGRAPHER

Ogemdi Ude is a Nigerian-American dance and interdisciplinary artist, educator, and doula based in Brooklyn.

Her performance work focuses on Black femme legacies and futures, grief, and memory. Her work has been presented at Danspace Project, Abrons Arts Center, BRIC, ISSUE Project Room, Recess Art, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Center for Performance Research, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Streb Lab for Action Mechanics, La Mama Courthouse, and for BAM’s DanceAfrica festival. As an educator, she serves as Head of Movement for Theater at Professional Performing Arts School and has taught at Princeton University, Sarah Lawrence College, MIT, and University of the Arts. In collaboration with Rochelle Jamila Wilbun she facilitates AfroPeach, a series of free dance workshops for Black postpartum people in Brooklyn. She is a 2022-2023 Smack Mellon Studio Artist, 2022-2024 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence, and 2022 Center for Performance Research Artist-in-Residence. She has been a 2021 danceWEB Scholar, 2021 Laundromat Project Create Change Artist-in-Residence, and a 2019-2020 Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU Resident Fellow. In January 2022 she appeared on the cover of Dance Magazine for their annual “25 to Watch” issue. Her upcoming work includes a commission for Gibney. She graduated Magna Cum Laude with a degree in English, Dance, and Theater from Princeton University.

ABOUT THE WORK SAB & THE GATEKEEPER

BY JAMAL ABRAMS

ARTIST STATEMENT

SAB & The Gatekeeper is a solo performance that explores the origin story of SAB. SAB is light, truth, and acceptance. Within this solo we experience the development of SAB as they become the Sabo****. Through fantastical world making and experimental play.

We get to the root of SAB’s biggest dilemma.

Did I do this…….or did you?

DESCRIPTION

SAB & The Gatekeeper honors the continuous conflict with self.

Extracting our shadow from self and allowing its own origin story to develop. Thinking of my shadow self (SAB) as my protector. A guide that was sent to help me navigate. Those relationships are only successful if all participants are working in alignment. When there’s discourse with self and sab, someone is at great risk. Through this fantastical world making and sense of play we learn what’s at risk, Who is at risk, and ultimately what’s there to gain.

BIOGRAPHIES JAMAL ABRAMS CHOREOGRAPHER

Jamal Abrams is an interdisciplinary artist born and raised in Baltimore, MD. He received his BFA in dance from The University of the Arts. He has worked with Tariq Darell + The UNUM Dance Collective, haus of bambi, as well as Punchdrunk in Sleep No More NYC. He is currently in his first season with Company SBB. As a maker he has received the 2018 New Releases Commission at Dance Place. He has also been selected as a 2020 fellow at Halcyon Arts Lab. As well as being presented at The Blacklight Summit hosted by The Clarice in 2021.

As an educator he has had the opportunity to teach at Dance Fest in Shanghai, and most recently he has served as guest faculty at The University of the Arts in the fall of 2021. Jamal is currently working on new world and play building as he is the recipient of the NextLOOK commission presented by The Clarice.

ABOUT THE WORK MYTHS UNTIL YOU HOLD ME

BY KAYLA FARRISH

ARTIST STATEMENT

With the language and study of movement forms, experience of people, and eye of the camera, my work activates and realizes spaces within us and beyond ourselves where we can exist. I utilize the power of radical imagination, play, questions that challenge societal structures to allow for belief, transformation, empowerment, and liberation. I hope to take care of our identity by offering ways into the perspectives that are limited and minimized. I give life through these perspectives, and empower our many ways of storytelling. Reimagining what we could be, I clash forms together, play with relationships and scene, and build new characters of unsung heroes. I speak through movement studies, film, sound score, voice, dance theater, and portraiture. Through cinematic vision, visceral full-bodied physicality, partnering, and narrative, my work is gritty, candid, explosive, vulnerable, and questions and feels openly.

Holding roots as a Black American Woman from the South, I reflect through our fragmented history, artist’s crafts, and personal lineage in order to uncover myself. The camera allowed me to frame myself, and narrative flooded out of movement, dance theater, and voice/song. My curiosity is a tool of rebellion as I aspire to build tools for BIPOC communities to radically imagine, archive, and live. With urgency, power, and transparency, the work delves into socio-political structures, the guts of our experiences as people, and addressing American lineage that affects our current state. As the work radiates new landscapes, and reveals the hidden pictures of those underrepresented, oppressed, or erased, the work becomes activism. It becomes a way of processing and release, transpiring empowerment, access, and change. I hope to inspire BIPOC people to find value in themselves, and to help build our community through transformation.

DESCRIPTION

Myths until you hold me imagines and brings into resolution myself as a Black Woman to become visceral, solid, and human. With my own narrative in hand, I hold my eyes towards the stars. To echo the voices of history from lineage, community, and crafting folks (artists) while sharpening my power. Taking the pen to this narrative of my own making to disrupt the erasure and reduction of Black American Womanhood. I look at interior daily life, to reflections and rebellion, and onwards to the lusciousness of dreaming and love. I collage this work expanding from To Dream a Lifetime and recent solo works to continue this story and truth.

BIOGRAPHIES KAYLA FARRISH

CHOREOGRAPHER

Kayla Farrish/Decent Structures Arts is an emerging company combining filmmaking, storytelling, dance theater performance, and sound score. The company has been commissioned by Gibney Dance (2020-2021), Louis Armstrong House Museum (2020), Danspace Project Inc (2019), Pepatian and BAAD! (2018), and beyond. Farrish has been supported by creative residencies including Gallim Women + Residency (2021), Gibney Spotlight: New Voices, Barysnikov Arts Center, Arts On Site (2020), Keshet Makers Space Experience, BAX Space Grant (2019), Pepatian Dance Your Future (2018), and Chez Bushwick (2017). Pieces sprouted outwards including Black Bodies Sonata, The New Frontier (my dear America) evening length and film, With grit From, Grace, Spectacle Film and Live Production evening length work, and anticipated Martyr’s Fiction (2021) that continued to push boundaries of form, voice, scene, narrative in an array of cinematic mediums.

In 2020-2021, she has been commissioned for choreographing and directing a range of films and live performance hybrids. Her work has been performed at venues like Judson Church, Danspace, Jacob’s Pillow, New York Live Arts, Joe’s Pub, BAAD!, film festivals, and beyond. In 2021 she created sitespecific immersive, Broken Record duet commission, with Brandon Coleman for Little Island Festival, Rinsing short dance film, co-directed Melanie Charles Y’ll D’nt Care Abt Black Women Film, Saul Williams’ People Above the Moon Solo for The Motherboard Suites at NYLA, Roster Outdoor Concert Performance collaboration Four/Four Open Air Series with Melanie Charles, and Martyr’s Fiction Feature Film. In 2022, she will be releasing her feature film Martyr’s Fiction, creating new solo works with Belinda McGuire and herself, collaborating with Kenyon Adams/Fusebox Festival, Blacklight Summit at the Clarice, Symphony Space, and creating commissions for companies.

In Fall 2022, she shared her work at Lincoln Center with Kyle Abraham/AIM Reunions Concert, choreographed for Little Amal at Lincoln Center with Director Tea Alagic, and produced and choreographed numerous new works in progress at her Triskelion Performance Series.

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THU–SAT, MAY 18–20 We are thrilled to announce that legendary activist, scholar, and writer, Angela Davis, joins rock-goddess Nona Hendryx and award-winning singer/songwriter and activist Toshi Reagon in DAY 2 of our three-day conference to discuss music and struggle.

Learn more about this and all events and participants including Sonia Sanchez, A.B. Spellman, Felipe Luciano, and more, plus performances featuring Henry Threadgill, Dafnis Prieto, Craig Taborn, Vernon Reid, and more! You don’t want to miss a single day so get your tickets now.

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OUR SUPPORTERS

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council.

Harlem Stage’s Programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

ABOUT HARLEM STAGE Harlem Stage is the performing arts center that bridges Harlem’s cultural legacy to contemporary artists of color and dares to provide the artistic freedom that gives birth to new ideas.

For nearly 40 years our singular mission has been to perpetuate and celebrate the unique and diverse artistic legacy of Harlem and the indelible impression it has made on American culture.

We provide opportunity, commissioning, and support for artists of color, make performances easily accessible to all audiences, and introduce children to the rich diversity, excitement, and inspiration of the performing arts.

We fulfill our mission through commissioning, incubating, and presenting innovative and vital work that responds to the historical and contemporary conditions that shape our lives and the communities we serve.

Board of Directors Courtney F. Lee-Mitchell, President Jamie Cannon, Vice President Michael Young, Secretary Mark Thomas, Treasurer Angela Glover Blackwell Jenna Bond Jamila Ponton Bragg

JoAnn K. Chase Patricia Cruz Hugh Dancy and Claire Danes Jenette Kahn Rebecca Robertson LaChanze Sapp-Gooding Tamara Tunie

Staff Patricia Cruz, Artistic Director & CEO MANAGEMENT Eric Oberstein, Managing Director DEVELOPMENT Shamar Hill, Director of Development Shanté Skyers, Associate Director of Development Julianna Friedman, Development Manager PROGRAMMING Carl Hancock Rux, Associate Artistic Director/Curator-in-Residence Sarah McCaffery, Programming Manager and Associate Curator Maurice Ivy, Programming Associate MARKETING Deirdre May, Senior Director of Digital Content and Marketing Andre Padayhag, Marketing Manager and Graphic Designer EDUCATION Jordan Carter, Education & Community Engagement Manager BOX OFFICE Eddy Perez, Box Office Manager PRODUCTION Amanda K. Ringger, Director of Production Randi Rivera, Production Stage Manager Clarence Taylor, Lighting Operator Orlando Alvarado, House Audio Engineer David Barrett, Julio Collado, Saul Ulerio, Deck, Lighting, and Audio Crew

OPERATIONS Rodney Bissessar, Director of Operations Lamont Askins, Operations Associate Acey Anderson Sr., Maintenance ADMINISTRATION & FINANCE NCheng LLC, Accountants/Advisors Jake Lee, Partner Aaron Lam, Supervising Senior Accountant CONSULTANTS Aon/Albert G. Ruben Company (NY) —Claudia Kaufman, Insurance DAS Services, IT Consultant Digital Video Services—BriGuel Lutz & Carr/Chris Bellando, Accountants Madison Consulting Group—Matt Laurence Manchester Benefits—Greg Martin Marc Millman Photography Digital Video Services—Jess Medenbach RL Stein Group—Robyn L. Stein Snugg Studios—Derrick Saint Pierre Development Consultant The Whelan Group Incorporated —Charles Whelan Blake Zidell & Associates, Public Relations & Marketing USHERS Nobar De leon, Toma Carthens, Marlon Moncrieffe, Julian Norales, Robert Gibbons, Zarif Shabazz