PERFORMANCE SERIES

Presented by the Whitaker Foundation

The Black Rep Joins Forces

With The National Blues Museum & The Pulitzer Arts Foundation to Present

Denise Thimes: Celebrating the Artistry of Bessie Smith

and Movement in Conversation with Landscape

The PHOENIX RISING SERIES honors The Black Rep’s original name on its founding in 1976 and is designed to create a platform for creative expression from an African American perspective in alternative spaces for new audiences. This program is part of the Phoenix Rising Performance Series presented with support by the Whitaker Foundation.

Special thanks to Big Muddy Dance, COCA-Center of Creative Arts, Lamar Harris, and Keith Tyrone Williams.

For a complete schedule of this summer’s SERIES see below.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Movement in Conversation with Landscape at

The Pulitzer Arts Foundation

Location:
3716 Washington Boulevard
St. Louis, MO 63108 (Map)

June 16-18: Fri. 6-7pm followed by a reception with the artists from 7-8pm; Sat. 5-6pm; Sun. 5-6pm

June 23-25: Fri. 5-6pm; Sat. 5-6pm; Sun. 5-6pm

The Seventh Floor Repertory Dance Collective

Four African Women

June 16-18, 2023

Performances will be presented sequentially, both inside and outside the galleries using Park Like and Spring Church.

Choreography: Keith Tyrone Williams

Performer: Heather Beal

Music: Somi

Costume Design: Marissa Perry

Four African Women speaks poignantly to the issues universal to African women, shining a spotlight on the women on the continent. Choreographer Keith Tyrone Williams is a committed contributor to excellence in arts and practices empowerment through education, and social justice locally, nationally, and internationally. Keith uses his artistic voice to inspire change that transforms our St. Louis community and the world.

surrender: a homecoming ritual

June 16-18, 2023

Performances will be presented sequentially, both inside and outside the galleries using Park Like and Spring Church.

surrender:a homecoming ritual is an entrypoint into a larger developing work: Black Breath. Black Breath is a performance ritual and world built from Black love. How can Black love be embraced as a liberation politics and practice?

Black on Earth

June 16-18, 2023

Performances will be presented sequentially, both inside and outside the galleries using Park Like and Spring Church.

Black on Earth! (excerpt) is a movement meditation, a call to action, and an illustration of Black people reclaiming ancestral environmental and agricultural practices.

Choreographies of Return

June 23-25, 2023

Performances will be presented sequentially, outside the galleries using Tree Grove, Park Like and the courtyard between the Contemporary Art Museum (CAM) and The Pulitzer.

Harge will present a section from her ongoing archival project, choreographies of return, which draws from movement scores, maps, and citations that were called in during the making of FLY | DROWN. Harge will go back into the archive to listen to what these materials say across time and what she has to say back to the materials.

Out the Mud: Embodied Pursuit of Liberatory Salvation and Black Sovereignty

June 23-25, 2023

Performances will be presented sequentially, outside the galleries using Tree Grove, Park Like and the courtyard between the Contemporary Art Museum (CAM) and The Pulitzer.

Brittany recognizes the body as a place of memory, resistance, and rebellion. This project recognizes the body as a source that carries centuries of unconditional joy, love, solidarity, and unity within the blood, bones, and gut. This work is part fugitive, part reality, it is a mapping of ritual, and explores deep possibility for sovereignty in our lifetime.

The Ancestral Funk of Strange Fruit

June 23-25, 2023

Performances will be presented sequentially, outside the galleries using Tree Grove, Park Like and the courtyard between the Contemporary Art Museum (CAM) and The Pulitzer.