April 13 at Harlem Stage Gatehouse, the evening-length MODO FUSION: Truth For Sale makes its U.S. premiere featuring The Francesca Harper Project led by singer/dancer/ choreographer Francesca Harper. Joined on stage by five dancers and composer/pianist Wynne Bennett, Harper performs a ground-breaking, provocative work that oscillates from theater to rock concert and contemporary dance performance. Fusing original music, choreography and video, MODO FUSION: Truth For Sale explores the internal struggles that performers face, including personal rage, social consciousness and the line between commercial art and true artistic expression.
After wrapping up a successful 45-city U.S. tour, Ailey II will once again grace the stage of the legendary Joyce Theater in New York City, as part of the celebrated 1.2.3 Festival, for six performances, April 30–May 8. These exciting performances will include four New York City premieres choreographed exclusively for Ailey II, including: Fragile by French choreographer Stephane Boko, The External Knot by Ailey II’s Associate Artistic Director Troy Powell, AAADT Alumnus Christopher Huggins’ When Dawn Comes and Requiem by Chang Yong Sung, a fellowship student at the Ailey School and an Ailey II apprentice.
Acclaimed director Young Jean Lee presents a workshop performance of her new play, THE SHIPMENT at BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange, April 18–19. Continuing Young Jean’s (who is Korean-American) tradition of working with subject matter that makes her uncomfortable, the play is a hip-hop African-American identity politics piece. THE SHIPMENT employs hip-hop dance, African dance and rapping to create a purposefully awkward celebration of black identity—a spectacle of hip-hop virtuosity framed by genuine cultural cluelessness. Like Lee’s own process, THE SHIPMENT will have the feel of a show trying to destroy itself from within, offering up aesthetic maneuvers and narrative turns and ideas called into question and disrupted the moment everyone starts feeling sure of themselves.
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