Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group Offers Chicago Premiere

American choreographer Reggie Wilson's collaboration with Congolese choreographer Andréya Ouamba comes to The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, 1306 S. Michigan Ave., when Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group performs March 31, April 1 and 2.

The Good Dance - dakar/brooklyn is the result of Wilson's multi-year collaboration with Ouamba and his company 1er Temps based in Dakar, Senegal. The full-evening work explores the influence of Central African culture on world performance forms and the metaphoric, historic, real-world parallels of the Mississippi and Congo rivers and their cultures. A native of Milwaukee, Wilson's family migrated up from the Mississippi Delta, and its history informs the work, as well as Ouamba's, who until recently called himself a Congolese refugee. The set and décor includes about 300 plastic water bottles.

RESIDENCY ACTIVITIES
As part of Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group's residency, there will be a post-performance conversation with the artists following the Thursday, March 31 performancE. Wilson and Ouamba also will lead a DanceMasters class Tuesday, March 29 at 6 p.m. at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago Ave. DanceMasters is a series of community master classes presented by The Dance Center's division of Community Outreach and Education (COE), in partnership with the Lou Conte Dance Studio at the Hubbard Street Dance Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art. Classes are for dancers at the intermediate level or higher.

On Saturday, April 2 at 4 p.m., Wilson and Ouamba will participate in "Cross-Continental Collaboration," exploring their partnership and the effects of distance, time and culture on their separate and shared processes. Susan Manning, a Professor of English, Theatre and Performance Studies at Northwestern University with a studied knowledge of African-American concert dance, will moderate this discussion, which is free and open to the public.

REGGIE WILSON/FIST & HEEL PERFORMANCE GROUP
Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group, founded in 1989, is a Brooklyn-based dance company that blends contemporary dance with African traditions. The company makes brilliant new performance from the spiritual traditions of the African DiasporA. Wilson draws on the movement idioms of blues, slave and worship cultures to create what he calls "Post-African Neo Hoodoo Modern dance." Accompanied by their own driving rhythms-body percussion, aspirated breath, singing and shouts-Fist & Heel blends deep ritual into potent, beautiful and energizing contemporary dance.

2010-11 SEASON
The Dance Center's season concludes with The Llanarth Group (May 20-21), in collaboration with the Columbia College Chicago Theater Department.

THE DANCE CENTER
The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, named "Chicago's Best Dance Theatre" by Chicago magazine and "Best Dance Venue" by the Chicago Reader, is the city's leading presenter of contemporary dance, showcasing artists of regional, national and international significance. Programs of The Dance Center are supported, in part, by Alphawood Foundation, The Joyce Foundation, The MacArthur Fund for Arts and Culture at Prince, New England Foundation for the Arts, The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation, The Irving Harris Foundation and Arts Midwest. Additional funding is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council. Special thanks to Friends of The Dance Center.

FUNDING
The Dance Center's presentation of Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

TICKET INFORMATION
Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group appears March 31, April 1 and 2 at The Dance Center, 1306 S. Michigan Avenue. Performances are Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets are $26-30; subscribers ordering tickets for at least three different performances throughout the season save 20 percent. The DanceMasters class with Reggie Wilson and Andréya Ouamba at 6 p.m. at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago Avenue, is $15, $10 for students; space is limited. "Cross-Continental Collaboration," a discussion with Reggie Wilson and Andreya Ouamba, moderated by Susan Manning on Saturday, April 2 at 4 p.m. at The Dance Center, is free and open to the public. All programming is subject to change. The theatre is accessible to people with disabilities. For more information, call 312-369-8330 or visit colum.edu/dancecenter.

 

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