the first time i saw toshi reagon perform was at the Black Lily Festival in Philadelphia and fell in love with her music. she’s an incredible musician with a beautiful voice.
so i’m super excited about opening our sunstar festival with a night dedicated to women in hop…it’s an homage to the days of female mc’s on the video waves (Yo MTV Raps or Rap City). i asked my nine year old stepson if he listened to female MCs and he said, “yes” with lots of confidence. so i asked him to name one, just one. his response, “Beyonce.” i’ve got a lot of work to do.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq2L2RRByuE]
its nice to get positive response to a production. its a kind of affirmation that what I’m doing as a presenter sort of make sense and resonates with audiences. here’s one review from Bonita Penn at SoulPitt.com.
what can i say about kyle abraham and abraham.in.motion? i love his movement ideas and the quality of the movement is so impressive. at the risk of sounding terribly old fashioned, dance ought to be beautiful. and Kyle’s movement has what NYTimes Dance Critic, Claudia LaRocco calls a “silky” quality. there’s a swagger, what some call “hip-hop bravado” in his style.
in the post show discussion, choreographer Willi Dorner, asked Kyle to share his concept of dance with the audience, to which Kyle responded, “its a language.” for some, that’s a sort of standard answer.
i wonder though…is dance really a language? can we (the audience) learn to read or understand it? in a way i suppose yes, if we all studied dance history and movement vocabulary for many different styles. over time, i suppose, we’d herpes yeast infection come to read certain gestures, postures, phrases, etc. but i’m not so sure that makes it a language. it may not matter. perhaps all that matters in the end is that the performance feels good, or interesting, or fun, or any number of emotional responses we desire from art we experience.