14
Apr/19

IN PERPETUAL FLIGHT: THE MIGRATION OF THE BLACK BODY

14
Apr/19
(photo by Steve Vaccariello)

Alvin Ailey dancer and choreographer Hope Boykin will perform at “In Perpetual Flight: The Migration of the Black Body” presentation at Schomburg Center (photo by Steve Vaccariello)

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
Langston Hughes Auditorium
515 Malcolm X Blvd.
Tuesday, April 16, free with advance registration, 6:30
www.nypl.org

Carnegie Hall’s wide-ranging, multidisciplinary Migrations: The Making of America festival comes to the Langston Hughes Auditorium at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture on April 16 for “In Perpetual Flight: The Migration of the Black Body.” Through dance, music, and theater, the program traces the journey toward liberation of the black body across time in the US, from the slave trade and the Great Migration to the Civil War and the Back to Africa movement, exploring its impact on contemporary American culture. The evening, held in conjunction with the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. Barbara Ann Teer’s National Black Theatre and its current NBT Beyond Walls initiative, features four live performances and presentations by Alvin Ailey dancer and choreographer Hope Boykin, screenwriter, playwright, and director Keith Josef Adkins, Obie-winning actress and singer Kenita R. Miller, composer and sound designer Justin Hicks, NBT CEO Sade Lythcott, and NBT artistic director Jonathan McCrory, utilizing works from the Schomburg Center archives from such seminal figures as James Baldwin, Harriet Powers, Marcus Garvey, Harriet Tubman, and Jacob Lawrence. “This event is allowing us to acknowledge the consistent flight, movement, and navigation black people have been engaged in within this country ever since the black body was ripped from the shores of Africa — human bodies stripped from home and forced into slavery,” McCrory said in a statement. “That perpetual flight has produced four hundred years of migration that have generated moments of agitation, acceleration, acclimation, and aspiration.” Admission is free; advance registration is strongly recommended.