RED CLAY DANCE’S “TURNING POINTS” SHOWCASES COMPANY, GUEST CHOREOGRAPHERS

RED CLAY DANCE’S “TURNING POINTS” SHOWCASES COMPANY, GUEST CHOREOGRAPHERS

Red Clay Dance Company launches its 16th season with “Turning Points,” a program featuring the work of three choreographers. Performances take place October 25 and 26 at 7:30 p.m. at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, 915 East 60th Street, in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood.

“In our 16-year history, we have commissioned work by only four choreographers; two of those will be on this program,” said Founding Artistic Director Vershawn Sanders-Ward. “Both choreographers value research as a part of their creative process, and they center the lived experience of Blackness in their work.” She continued, “This concert features dynamic movement and compelling narratives that showcase the diversity and innovation within Afro-contemporary dance.”

The program includes Sanders-Ward’s Unconditional Conditions, a work for eight dancers that premiered as part of Red Clay Dance’s La Femme Dance Festival in March, inspired by Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s poem “We Wear the Mask.” Music is by Missy Elliott, Ran Bango, and Moses Sumney.

In its live premiere, We all ’gon die: into revivals, choreographed by Lela Aisha Jones, was first performed as part of Red Clay Dance Company’s online “Visions and Voices” concert during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. The work for six dancers is set to “Black Truck” by Mereba and an original musical composition and a poem by Jones. Based in Philadelphia, Jones shared that the work’s inspiration came from “an effort to try to get to this healing practice — work that allowed me to think about an Afro future, allowed me to think more deeply about our relationship with the natural environment as Black folk, trying to help us touch the otherworldly … What if we imagined ourselves as particles in the landscape of the earth … how we connect and disconnect, how we come together and release one another, being collective and being individual? This work was inspired by not moving on from racial trauma…but how you re-land and relocate yourself in that struggle in a vibrancy that allows you to live while you’re walking with traumatic happenings.”

Red Clay Dance premiered DevelopMino, set to “Fugama Unamathe” (Culoe de Song Serenity Mix) by Qness, in November 2015 at the Center for Performing Arts in Richton Park, Illinois, the first of two works choreographed by Amansu Eason for the company. Inspired by accounts of the Mino warriors of Dahomey and their stories, the three dancers explored the different layers of these complex warrior women as they prepared this work. “Hopefully, this piece will spark more conversations about these historic figures,” said Sanders-Ward.

Red Clay Dance Company’s season continues in spring 2025 with “16,” in partnership with the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago. The program features a world premiere by Bebe Miller, set on Red Clay Dance Company, and a restaging of Sanders-Ward’s Written on the Flesh. Performances are April 17–19 at the Dance Center, 1306 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago. For tickets and information, visit dance.colum.edu.

Red Clay Dance Company presents “Turning Points”

Friday and Saturday, October 25 and 26, 2024 at 7:30 p.m.

at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts,

915 East 60th Street, Chicago.

Tickets are $35–45, available at tickets.uchicago.edu.

All programming is subject to change.

For information, visit redclaydance.com.

Red Clay Dance Company, Chicago’s premier Afro-contemporary dance company, lives to awaken “glocal” Artivism through creating, performing, and teaching dances of the African Diaspora. Named in 2021 as one of Chicago’s Cultural Treasures, Red Clay Dance Company, through its Artivism, not only transforms cultural and socioeconomic inequities in our “glocal” community, but it also shares stories we know to be true about who we are as a people. Through this work, Red Clay Dance Company amplifies voices of the African Diaspora, seeks remuneration equity for artists, supports Black women, and creates accessible excellence.

For more information, visit redclaydance.com.

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