Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE returns to the Joyce for fortieth anniversary celebration
Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE, a Dance Company
Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
February 25 – March 1 (Curtain Chat February 25), $32-$82
212-645-2904
www.joyce.org
evidencedance.com
Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE celebrates its past while looking toward the future in its annual winter season at the Joyce, running February 25 through March 1. Because of the blizzard, opening night, February 24, has been canceled, but a 7:00 show has just been added, and great seats are available if you hurry.
The Brooklyn-based company will be presenting two exciting programs as part of its fortieth anniversary. The first honors longtime collaborator Wunmi Olaiya, a composer, costume designer, dancer, and visual artist who has been working with Brown since 1992, while the second pays tribute to TU Dance cofounding artistic director Toni Pierce-Sands, who danced with Alvin Ailey and EVIDENCE and would begin every TU Dance production with the Ulysses Dove mantra “Nothing to prove, only to share”; Pierce-Sands passed away in November at the age of sixty-three.
“Celebrating Wunmi” — born in London and raised in Lagos, she goes by one name — begins with Ebony Magazine: To a Village, a 1996 piece for Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble that EVIDENCE debuted in March 1998, featuring music and costumes by Wunmi centered around the repeated phrase “do you see what I see.” Clear as Tear Water is a 2006 solo originally choreographed for Pierce-Sands; at the Joyce, six different dancers will perform the work, which will be set to Wunmi’s “Woman Child” in Program A and Meshell Ndegeocello’s “Heaven” in Program B. Next is 1999’s Gatekeepers, a piece originally for Philadanco that delves into Native American mythology and African traditions, with music and costumes by Wunmi. Following intermission, the evening concludes with the rousing, nonstop Upside Down, an exhilarating excerpt from Brown’s 1998 Destiny, in which the company cuts loose to music by Wunmi, which she will play live with two drummers.
“With the trust Ron affords me, I dare to dream and visualize what the work he is creating is speaking on,” Wunmi explains in a Joyce interview. “Ron tells stories of human beings making their way . . . and, in there, I create costumes to make them visible. Thankful, trust is alive and well.”
Ronald K. Brown, Wunmi Olaiya, and Arcell Cabuag at the 2024 Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater gala
Planned prior to Pierce-Sanders’s death from cancer, “A Celebration of the Life and Legacy of Toni Pierce-Sands” kicks off with 2012’s Torch, a touching tribute to former Brown student and dance enthusiast Beth Young, who passed away in January 2012, followed by Clear as Tear Water. The company premiere of 2017’s Where The Light Shines Through, originally commissioned for TU at the Ordway, is choreographed by Brown and his partner, Arcell Cabuag, and set to music by Ndegeocello, Susana Baca, Ballet Folklórico Cutumba de Santiago, and Black Motion. The finale is the spectacular 1999 favorite Grace, originally choreographed for Alvin Ailey, which features twelve dancers moving, in costumes by Wunmi, to a melding of modern dance and West African idioms as only Brown and Cabuag can do, with music by Duke Ellington, Roy Davis Jr., and Fela Aníkúlápó Kuti and live vocals by Gordon Chambers; the beats will stay with you long after the show is over.
“This celebration is long overdue and I am happy the time is now,” Brown says in a program note.
The time is always now to see this extraordinary company, still going strong after forty marvelous years.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]