photo by Tony Turner
Project description
Against Gravity: Flying Afrikans + Other Urban Legends is a solo choreopoem that begins as Black diasporic boyhood in 1980-90’s Chicago intersects with three legendary figures: Fred Hampton, Ben (Benji) Wilson and Harold Washington — a revolutionary, an athletic phenomenon and a post-Civil Rights era politician, all viewed in their primes as messiahs. Guided in part by the oracular voice of Chicago ancestor laureate Gwendolyn Brooks, the performer grapples with Black masculinity through history, memory, text, poetry, and geography.
Conceived by Renegade Performance Group’s Artistic Director and renowned choreographer André M. Zachery, & developed in collaboration with Ayinde Jean-Baptiste for DuSable City, with original scoring by Chicago’s inaugural Poet Laureate, avery r. young, the immersive evening-length work incorporates film, responsive projection & live sound. A series of live pre-run engagements, Community Fly Zones, extend the performance’s core questions beyond the stage and invite community participants to reckon with inherited histories and reimagine their paths forward.
Conceived by Renegade Performance Group’s Artistic Director and renowned choreographer André M. Zachery, & developed in collaboration with Ayinde Jean-Baptiste for DuSable City, with original scoring by Chicago’s inaugural Poet Laureate, avery r. young, the immersive evening-length work incorporates film, responsive projection & live sound. A series of live pre-run engagements, Community Fly Zones, extend the performance’s core questions beyond the stage and invite community participants to reckon with inherited histories and reimagine their paths forward.
CREATIVE TEAM
ANDRÉ M. ZACHERY| co-CREATOR + CHOREOGRAPHER + PROJECTION DESIGNER
photo by Tony Turner
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André M. Zachery (he/him) is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist of Haitian and African American descent, and is a scholar, researcher and technologist with a BFA from Ailey/Fordham University and MFA in Performance & Interactive Media Arts from CUNY/Brooklyn College. As the artistic director of Renegade Performance Group his practice, research and community engagement artistically focuses on merging choreography, technology and Black cultural practices through multimedia work. André is a 2016 New York Foundation for the Arts Gregory Millard Fellow in Choreography and 2019 Jerome Hill Foundation Fellow in Choreography. André has worked on major projects across artistic mediums as a choreographer, media designer and consultant with artists such as Daniel Bernard Roumain, Cynthia Hopkins, Davalois Fearon, Dance Caribbean COLLECTIVE, Arin Maya, Rags & Ribbons, The Clever Agency, Kendra Foster, Manhattan School of Music, Burwell & Sasser and Spike Lee. André is an Assistant Arts Professor in the Department of Dance at Tisch School of the Arts - New York University.
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AYINDE JEAN-BAPTISTE (SKO) | co-CREATOR + PRODUCING DIRECTOR
photo credit: Katina Parker
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3rd culture seed of two Caribbeans --- one born in the 1st surviving republic in the Western Hemisphere to throw off the yoke of slavery, the other in a colony, Ayinde Jean-Baptiste (Ayinsko: he\they\li) does what it takes, using voice to shift culture, engaging with communities of listening, memory-making, + movement.
Disciple of Kamau Brathwaite, Ayinsko is a sanba/keeper of memory, whose modal practice shifts as needed -- the participatory media project DuSable City, the online creative sousou Someplace Like Home, the experi(m)ent(i)al podcapsule trance-mission DrumLanguage (2013-16), occasional acts of journalism. Over the past decade this work has been supported by City Lore, Chicago Community Trust, Black Metropolis Research Consortium, THREAD at Yale, City Bureau, CCCADI, Voqal, + the Center for Cultural Power. Ayinsko has also served as multiformat arts presenter with The Brooklyn Museum, Haiti Cultural Exchange, City Lore, the DuSable Museum, Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music, The Bowery Poetry Club, The Franke Center for the Arts + more, as well as in advisory + solidarity roles with Let Us Breathe Collective & Honey Pot Performance. Entering Against Gravity first as dramaturg, before shepherding its continued evolution as co-creator, Ayinsko has deployed the frames+ aesthetic of DrumLanguage --drum/re-memory/ media solidarity; extreme lyric, groove, loop, found sound, field+ archival recording; to help André re-voice their parallel pasts. @Ayinsko, anywhere @DuSableCity, right here |
avery r. young | Composer
photo by Sulyiman Stokes
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Chicago’s inaugural Poet Laureate, interdisciplinary artist avery r. young [him, him, his] is an inaugural Walder’s Foundation Platform awardee, and recipient of the American Poet Laureate Fellow. A co-director of The Floating Museum, his poetry, performance and composition have been featured and/or commissioned in several journals, exhibitions and operas. He is the composer and librettist for a new commissioned work from The Lyrics Opera of Chicago titled safronia. His full length recording tubman. is the soundtrack to his collection of poetry, neckbone: visual verses.
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DANCE FILM
NARRATIVE
Armed with memory, an Ancestor emerges from the waters of Michigami to address calls for redemption from denizens of Black Chicago. Shapeshifting to traverse the city, the Ancestor deploys the ritual of dance within and upon sacred spaces to invoke the spirit of the people and land. In this way, the Ancestor reminds the people who they are and where they are yet to go, and transforms their grief for Chairman Fred Hampton, Mayor Harold Washington, and Ben Wilson - opening new paths for Black manhood.
SYNOPSIS
“Against Gravity: Flying Afrikans + Other Urban Legends” dance film is the cinematic companion piece to the evening-length performance. Filmed on location in Chicago in 2023, the piece literally and figuratively lifts the narrative of the project off the Chicago streets through the choreography of body-mapping among historical landscapes, framed and platformed by original visual and musical compositions. “Against Gravity” dance film takes audiences on a journey through movement at the source of the work, where the city of Chicago itself becomes a character whose life and interiority expand with each step of the dance.
Armed with memory, an Ancestor emerges from the waters of Michigami to address calls for redemption from denizens of Black Chicago. Shapeshifting to traverse the city, the Ancestor deploys the ritual of dance within and upon sacred spaces to invoke the spirit of the people and land. In this way, the Ancestor reminds the people who they are and where they are yet to go, and transforms their grief for Chairman Fred Hampton, Mayor Harold Washington, and Ben Wilson - opening new paths for Black manhood.
SYNOPSIS
“Against Gravity: Flying Afrikans + Other Urban Legends” dance film is the cinematic companion piece to the evening-length performance. Filmed on location in Chicago in 2023, the piece literally and figuratively lifts the narrative of the project off the Chicago streets through the choreography of body-mapping among historical landscapes, framed and platformed by original visual and musical compositions. “Against Gravity” dance film takes audiences on a journey through movement at the source of the work, where the city of Chicago itself becomes a character whose life and interiority expand with each step of the dance.
MIKE DAVID T. | Director of Photography
Neil Shukla
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Mike David T. is a Southside of Chicago-based director, cinematographer, and photographer with Haitian roots. His perspective has consistently inspired audiences, communicating his passion for collaborating across networks, cultures, and geography. He is the founder of The Formula Don't Change, a film production and design studio with organic collaborations across Chicago, New York, Atlanta, and Los Angeles.
His collaborations across experimental, documentary, narrative, and editorial arenas within these communities have most recently culminated with contributions to projects Black Owned (2021 Webby and Tribeca X award winner) and Bedtime Stories (2021 Cannes Silver Award winner), as well as a Roger Ebert Fellowship nomination (2020 Sundance Institute). |
PAUL ARAKI ELLIOT | Cinematic Editor
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Paul Araki Elliott is a filmmaker, photographer, and editor from Chicago, Illinois. His work often explores music and movement, and utilizes multiple forms of media. His work has appeared in publications such as Vibe, TimeOut, Complex, and the Chicago Reader, and he has worked with artists such as Tinashe and Vic Mensa. He is the co-founder of the multimedia production company, thankyou.inc.
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Kala Bradford | Assistant Camera
Elsa Medhin | Production Assistant
Elsa Medhin | Production Assistant
LIVE PERFORMANCE
OKAI MUSIK | Live Sound Artist
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Okai is a vocalist/percussionist who embodies all the music of the African Diaspora. Born with Haitian descent, young Okai was beating on anything that he could get his hands on to help his imagination grow. Okai began his path of percussion on the trap set playing for various churches, played Congas for his high school band and has concentrated on West African Djembe for more than 10yrs.
Okai is an accomplished Emcee and producer that has worked with various Artists and has a couple of solo albums "Deconstruction of the Mind" produced by Ayatollah and "Okai's Odyssey". He is Currently the lead singer and percussionist of Brown Rice Family who won “The Battle of the Boroughs” in NYC in 2012. Okai is co-founder of Strings N Skins and has performed at the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Academy of Music(BAM), the legendary African art auction exhibition at Sotheby's, Madison Square Garden, Carnegie Hall and venues throughout the States. Internationally Haiti, Canada, Tanzania, Ivory Coast, Colombia, Brazil, Australia, and Japan, have been showered with his sounds and soon the rest of the world will. |
CARLOS JOHNS-DÁVILA | Visual Projection Engineer + Programmer
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Carlos Johns-Dávila is a Peruvian American multimedia artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Johns-Dávila collaborates with choreographers and performers to create interactive work by using infrared technology to map the human body to self generated video / audio design and projection. He is most interested in developing inclusive workflows for immersive performance and public art installations by building resources for artists to expand their creative potential with low technology barriers.
Johns-Dávila graduated from Temple University in Philadelphia, PA with a Bachelors in Music Composition. He’s advanced his studies at The New School - College of Performing Arts with his Masters in Arts Management & Entrepreneurship. He has since collaborated with choreographer Navarra Novy-Williams to create site-specific 360º video dance performance installations as part of a community building project with support from the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone (UMEZ) and Community Engagement grants by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC). His original composition and sound design premiered at Sundance New Frontiers 2022 with the volumetric dance performance Suga’ by Valencia James. He is currently a co-owner of Black Heart, a BIPOC worker owned cooperative, and founder of Way Too Far XR, a creative technology studio that builds exhibits and performances around cultural heritage and education. |
Full Crew
Executive Producers: Andrè M. Zachery (AMZ) + Ayinde Jean-Baptiste (Sko) | Choreography + Performance: AMZ | co-Directors: AMZ & Sko | Script: AMZ+ Sko | Art direction: Sko | Soundtrack: Sko | Sound design: AMZ, Sko+ Sadah Espii Proctor | Score: avery r. young | Live Sound Textures: Okai Musik | Lighting Design: Andre Segar | Audio Engineering: Sko+ Joel Bobby | Costume Designers: Sko, Joy Havens | Costume Consultant: Jelena Antanasijevic | Project Graphic Design: Darin Gilliam | Projection Designer: AMZ + Carlos Johns Dávila | Projection-Mapping + System Design: Carlos Johns Dávila
Additional development support from Hi-ARTS, National Choreographic Center - University of Akron, MPM, Eat Little/ Live Long (New Waves), Music Moves Chicago, Red Clay Dance Company, Dance-in-Process (Gibney), Black Metropolis Research Consortium, New York University Media Commons, Tisch Dean’s Research Grant
Executive Producers: Andrè M. Zachery (AMZ) + Ayinde Jean-Baptiste (Sko) | Choreography + Performance: AMZ | co-Directors: AMZ & Sko | Script: AMZ+ Sko | Art direction: Sko | Soundtrack: Sko | Sound design: AMZ, Sko+ Sadah Espii Proctor | Score: avery r. young | Live Sound Textures: Okai Musik | Lighting Design: Andre Segar | Audio Engineering: Sko+ Joel Bobby | Costume Designers: Sko, Joy Havens | Costume Consultant: Jelena Antanasijevic | Project Graphic Design: Darin Gilliam | Projection Designer: AMZ + Carlos Johns Dávila | Projection-Mapping + System Design: Carlos Johns Dávila
Additional development support from Hi-ARTS, National Choreographic Center - University of Akron, MPM, Eat Little/ Live Long (New Waves), Music Moves Chicago, Red Clay Dance Company, Dance-in-Process (Gibney), Black Metropolis Research Consortium, New York University Media Commons, Tisch Dean’s Research Grant
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community fly zone workshops + press material
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black revival: A Movement Healing Ritual for Men is a movement-based intergenerational workshop for Black men, boys, and masculine identified people. This workshop is Part One of Community Fly Zone Workshops, a series of workshops in collaboration with André M. Zachery, Artistic Director of Renegade Performance Group & Ayinde Jean-Baptiste, Lead Architect of DuSable City. Following the movement portion, there will be group reflection & discussion. |
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chimeful poemhood: A Literary Circle + Poetry Workshop is a literary workshop exploring the profound writings of Gwendolyn Brooks and reflect on how her work remains relevant today. Participants are led by an experienced writer/facilitator to compose and share poetry of their own. This workshop offers space for Black expressive resistance and imagination, exploring how Black poetry and literature bring new perspectives to narratives and stories relevant to the community.
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Screening of ESPN’s 30 for 30 presentation Benji (2012). Directed by Chicago natives Coodie and Chike, the powerful film recalls the life and impact of rising Chicago basketball star Ben “Benji” Wilson, who was ranked as the number 1 player in the country in the Summer of 1984 and was deemed to be the one who would make it to the league and put Chicago on the map, but whose life was cut tragically short at the age of 17 years old. The screening will be followed by an artist conversation. |
Renegade Performance Group is a fiscally sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a 501©3 umbrella organization.
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All rights reserved © 2024 Renegade Performance Group
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