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.
Screening of dance films
with introductions and post-show conversation led by Kirven Douhtit-Boyd, Artistic Director of Big Muddy Dance Co.
June 22, 2023
8-9:30pm
Outside in the courtyard between CAM and The Pulitzer.
Space limited, FREE with registration required at pulitzerarts.org
"a clearing" apart of the FLY | DROWN series
Co-Directors: Jennifer Harge and Devin Drake
MASTER CLASSES
Sat., June 17, 2023 & Sat., June 24, 2023
Space limited, FREE with registration, full class listings at www.theblackrep.org.