Be sure to sign up early for your spot at the next show in the series, Najib Shaheen and Friends with special guests Rabbi Rolando Matalon and Deacon Naji Yousuf.
On Friday, November 1, Rashida Bumbray & Dance Diaspora Collective will perform RUN MARY RUN at The Glicker-Milstein Theatre. RUN MARY RUN is a Ring Shout, a ritual of dance and music created by African-Americans during slavery. It is the ring shout where early forms of African-American music like the spiritual were created.
Following the performance, stay for a discussion with the lead performers and scholars in various fields about the cultural and social significance of the Ring Shout.
Rashida Bumbray & Dance Diaspora Collective
With special guest master dancer Adenike Sharpley
Matthew Hill, percussion
Courtney Bryan, piano
Featuring:
Dominique Atchison
Krystal Boyd
Cecily Bumbray
Francisca "Kika" Chaidez-Gutierrez
LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs
Lisa E. Harris
Carl Hewitt
Matthew Hill
Joseph Klein
Ayanna Lee
Serena "Muthi" Reed
Rachel Schaffran
Kantara Souffrant
Curator and choreographer Rashida Bumbray has been performing the ring shout—a spiritual dance developed during slavery—for about a decade. For the newest installment of this work, RUN MARY RUN, she considers the harmonic ideas and tonal vocabulary of the McIntosh County Shouters—master ring shout artists—as a point of departure. Creating an active ritual for the ceremony of the ring shout, the performers go on a ride through the cosmologies of the Low Country, Geechie Sea Islands, Tennessee Blues, P Funk, and Hip Hop—relating the shout to the history of Black music.
Most recently performed during Alicia and Jason Moran’s BLEED—a five-day residency for the Whitney Biennial 2012, for which RUN MARY RUN was included in Ben Ratliff's New York Times
Best Concerts of 2012, this iteration of RUN MARY RUN is developed in collaboration with a large ensemble, the Dance Diaspora Collective and special guest master dancer, Adenike Sharpley, Professor, Oberlin College. Costumes by Gingie McLeod, Dindi Designs.
Discussion participants will include:
Rashida Bumbray, choreographer, currator, founder of Dance Diaspora Collective
Ebony Golden, director, Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative
Adenike Sharpley, director and founder of Dance DiasporaImani Uzuri, composer, vocalist, Interfaith minister
Jawole Zollar, founder, Urban Bush Women dance company
Moderator - Matthew Morrison, PhD candidate in Historical Musicology at Columbia
Event Curator - Courtney Bryan, composer, pianist, and DMA Student in Composition at Columbia