Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (Langston Hughes Auditorium) New York, NY
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The Counterpoint Project
The Counterpoint Project is a multimedia live performance, exhibition, and panel that seeks to reframe the discussion regarding black ballerinas contributions to dance and visual culture by confronting racial disparities and institutional discrimination that have endured in American ballet for more than seventy years. The Counterpoint Project seeks to democratize an art form that has traditionally heralded young white bodies and sameness as its most treasured aesthetics by addressing several areas of otherness within the balletic aesthetic including: brownness, muscularity, physical disability, and accomplishment in the field.
The project creates a platform that educates communities about the historical and present day accomplishments of groundbreaking black ballerinas in hopes of invigorating the consideration of ballet as a viable professional venture for black and brown youths. Seeing women with similar cultural, social, and economic histories dancing through barriers of biases broadens the perception of what is acceptable and fair in the world of ballet, and challenges the field to investigate the potential for intersectionality in the future.
The Counterpoint Project is comprised of five components; Original artwork- By contemporary artist Patrick Hammie whose paintings will feature a mixture of grand portraiture and allegories, and blur the boundaries between traditional and contemporary modes of representation.
Live Performance- an evening of powerful solo works will include historical or pivotal works in addition to original work choreographed by Endalyn Taylor and Darrell Grand Moultrie. These powerful dances join the dancers personal truths into a metaphoric embodiment of their imagined self selves, featuring national and international artists Ingrid Silva (Dance Theatre of Harlem, New York City), Cira Robinson (Ballet Black, London) as well as three other intergenerational ballerinas.
Post performance discussion- Moderated by MoBBallet (Memoirs of Blacks in Ballet) Founder and Writer Theresa Ruth Howard
Counterpoint project website- (counterpointprojectballet.com) which will contain audio and visual recordings of the process, performance and additional support information
Location
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (Langston Hughes Auditorium) (View)
515 Malcom X Boulevard
New York, NY 10037
United States
