27
Jun/18

BRIC CELEBRATE BROOKLYN! FESTIVAL: THE BLUES PROJECT FEATURING DORRANCE DANCE WITH TOSHI REAGON & BIGLovely

27
Jun/18
(photo by Christopher Duggan)

Dorrance Dance will be joined by Toshi Reagon & BIGLovely at Prospect Park Bandshell June 28 (photo by Christopher Duggan)

Prospect Park Bandshell
Prospect Park
Ninth St. & Prospect Park West
Thursday, June 28, free, 7:00
www.bricartsmedia.org

In 2011, North Carolina–raised tap-dancer, choreographer, director, and teacher Michelle Dorrance founded the New York City–based Dorrance Dance, focusing on the past, present, and future of tap dancing, pushing the limits of the discipline in such works as Myelination, ETM: Double Down, and SOUNDspace. For more than three decades, Atlanta-born, DC-raised, longtime Brooklynite Toshi Reagon has been performing her unique mix of folk, blues, gospel, rock, and funk, joined by her band, BIGLovely, since 1996. Dorrance, a MacArthur Genius, onetime STOMP cast member, and former bassist with Darwin Deez, and Reagon, an activist whose mother is Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon and father was Cordell Hull Reagon, both founders of the Freedom Singers of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and whose godfather is Pete Seeger, joined forces in 2013 to create The Blues Project, a sixty-five-minute piece for nine dancers and five musicians, choreographed by Dorrance, Derick K. Grant, and Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards and featuring original music composed by Reagon, who has previously written music for the Jane Comfort Dance Company and Urban Bush Women.

The work is being presented for free June 28 at the Prospect Park Bandshell as part of the BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival, with Toshi Reagon & BIGLovely performing the score live. After the show, there will be a special reception with New York–based Peruvian artist Grimanesa Amorós, whose light sculpture, Hedera, was recently unveiled on the grass at the bandshell, commissioned by BRIC specifically for the fortieth anniversary of the Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival. Amorós will talk about her work with BRIC contemporary art VP Elizabeth Ferrer, followed by an audience Q&A.