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Celebrated American dance-theater icon David Roussève has created his first full-length solo performance in more than 20 years. Becoming Daddy AF will have its west coast premiere at the Nimoy Theater, UCLA's Center for Art of Performance on October 17-18, 2025.
Becoming Daddy AF is an intimate theatrical meditation on life's purpose, and the very meaning of love. Written, created, and performed by Roussève, the full evening dance theater piece draws upon Roussève's seminal works created for his company REALITY, embedding emotional and formal innovations into a new narrative that bridges past and present. Through the lens of his acclaimed legacy, Roussève revisits recurring themes of identity, race, queerness, and resilience—reimagined and reframed, in the face of the urgency of today's sociopolitical climate.
Returning to Roussève's early grounding in theater, Becoming Daddy AF is centered around a time-jumping text, while pushing him forward in kinetic exploration with an all-new movement vocabulary—created and performed by a queer African American acutely aware of the finite time he has left on the planet. This powerful production gathers a visionary team of stage artists to support Roussève—whose deeply personal and politically resonant works have redefined contemporary performance for over three decades. The production is enriched with an emotional terrain created through Charlotte Brathwaite's incisive dramaturgy, with input from Julie Tolentino. Meena Murugesan's vividly collaged video design, d. Sabela grimes' textured soundscape, Christopher Kuhl's sculptural lighting, and Leah Piehl's costuming. The result is a layered, multi-sensory experience that both honors and reimagines Roussève's groundbreaking body of work.
Like strands of DNA, it connects elements encoded in his body, including 600 years of genealogy (with strands from France, Portugal Germany, Mali, Senegal, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba), a roller coaster journey with HIV, and the shattering loss of a husband of 26 years—while revisiting movement from 35 years of dance-making to explore the meaning of virtuosity for a 64-year-old body.
Becoming Daddy AF is the portrait of a man defying death, but somehow unable to unabashedly embrace life.
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Good Night, Oscar North Coast Repertory (9/16-10/11) |
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Much Ado About Nothing McCadden Place Theatre (8/07-8/16) |
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6 Out of 10 Theatre 68 (8/20-8/20) |
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After the Blast The Broadwater Second Stage (8/05-8/13) |
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Catch Me If You Can Colony Theatre (9/17-10/18) |
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Emily Skinner: In Concert Feinstein's at the Nikko (8/14-8/15) |
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Gershwin and the Golden Age Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts (The Soraya) (10/11-10/11) |
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John Lloyd Young Feinstein's at the Nikko (8/21-8/22) |
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Love, Loss and What I Wore Sawyer's Playhouse (8/08-8/30) |
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Our Man in Santiago by Mark Wilding Odyssey Theatre Ensemble (9/10-9/20) |