Co-Presented by Leslie Parker Dance Project, The Cedar, Twin Cities Jazz Festival, and Northrop
an experiment: with LESLIE PARKER and Collaborators
Saturday, June 22, 2024
Welcoming performance: 4:30 pm continues to an evening-length work inside the concert hall until 6:30
All Ages
Mixed Seated and Standing
Free Admission
Please note that the event will begin outdoors on The Cedar plaza with a welcoming performance at 4:30 pm and continue to an evening length work inside the concert hall at 5:00 pm. We will admit all patrons into the show on a first-come, first-served basis until the venue reaches capacity.
This is a seated and standing show with general admission, first-come-first-served seating. The Cedar is happy to reserve seats for patrons who require special seating accommodations. To request seating or other access accommodations, please go to our Access page.
Prospective attendees can RSVP to this event online.
ABOUT THIS SHOW
Leslie Parker Dance Project brings together improvisers in the Twin Cities who practice various models of improvisation from around the world to participate in three weeks of practice (June 3 - June 20, 2024). The intensive will culminate with a free admission, open public sharing of Black Improvisation in dance and music at The Cedar Cultural Center.
This public sharing features the following dancers from the 2024 intensive:
Leslie Parker - dancer, performer, director
Paloma McGregor - dancer, performer
Heaven Sha'Rae - dancer, performer
Keyon Gaskins - dancer, performer
Rahila Coates - dancer, performer
Imaging Joy - dancer, performer
Ashe Jaafaru - dancer, performer
The Black Dance Improvisation summer intensive is a no-cost opportunity to study with Parker as well as Ishmael Houston-Jones, Merián Soto, and Cynthia Oliver. Sessions will take place in three different studio locations on the University of Minnesota campus and in the St. Paul community. Black Dance Improvisation, BDI, Intensive 2024 is an extension of the Call to Remember methodology, centering the embodied stories and lived experiences of Black, Native, Indigenous, and People Of Color. This opportunity is for but not limited to dance creatives steeped in performance practices.
BDI Intensive 2024 welcomes all bodies to participate in deepening awareness of Improvisation. Artists, organizers, activists, and co-conspirators of varied dance experiences are strongly encouraged to attend.
Join us for the culminating BDI Intensive event:
an experiment:
With performances by: Black Dance Improvisation Intensive participants & Music Collaborative: Michael Wimberly, Farai Malianga, Dameun Strange, and DeCarlo Jackson.
A public event in partnership with Leslie Parker Dance Project, The Cedar Cultural Center, Twin Cities Jazz Festival, and Northrop. Please note that the event will begin outdoors on The Cedar Plaza with a welcoming performance at 4:30pm and continue to an evening length work inside the concert hall at 5:00pm.
To learn more:
Leslie Parker
Leslie Parker is a dance artist, director, choreographer, improviser, and performer born in the traditional homeland of Indigenous people, mostly the Dakhóta and Ojibwe people, also known as the Twin Cities, Minnesota. She has home art bases in both Brooklyn, NY(traditional homeland of Lenapehoking people) and in St. Paul, MN. Her deep roots in the territory also known as the St. Paul, Rondo community led her to a dance practice that emphasizes an organic aesthetic in experimental movement derived from the Black and African diaspora. Parker’s informal training began with learning from local organizers and activists. Parker holds a BFA from Esther Boyer College of Music and Dance, a MFA in Dance from Hollins University in partnership with the Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts and the Dresden Frankfurt Company in Frankfurt, Germany. She studied Senegalese dance forms at the Centre Culturel Blaise Senghor de Dakar in Senegal, West Africa.
Parker, as a dance creative, highlights unique individual contributions, digs into collective memory to engage with the world more imaginatively and embodies an aesthetic that encompasses an organic physical/movement including Traditional W. African, Black/African American vernacular/social dance, Improvisation, and Contemporary/Modern technique derived from and exchanged across multiple continents. Parker has collaborated with Skeleton Architecture, Marlies Yearby, Laurie Carlos, Nia Love, Freedom From Freedom to at Elastic Arts, and has performed works by Ron K Brown, Reggie Wilson, Dr. Kariamu Welsh, Chuck Davis and more. Parker has led master dance classes for major dance programs at colleges and Universities across the US including Point Park University, Florida State University, Temple University, and University of Michigan. Her past and current works have been presented by Danspace Project NY, Walker, New York Live Arts, Movement Research at Judson, Center for Performance Research, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Pillsbury House Theatre, Painted Bride Arts Center, and Pangea World Theatre. She has received the 2022 McKnight Choreographers Fellow, 2021 Nefa/NDP award, 2023 Foundation for Contemporary Arts award, Jerome Hill Artist Fellow 2019 - 2021, Bessie award recipient for Outstanding performer 2017, and is a Jerome@Camargo 2023-26 resident.
To learn more about Leslie Parker:
Black Dance Improvisation Intensive Participants
HEAVEN SHA’RAE:
Heaven Sha’Rae, a Minnesota/Twin Cities native, has been consumed with her love for dance since the early age of 2. Sha’Rae started dancing as a praise dancer at her family’s church, River of Life, in St. Paul, Minnesota. She then started a life of competition dance in 2011 at Art Of Dance studio. Sha’Rae grew as a dancer there for about 4 years then transitioned to TU Dance in 2015. Sha’Rae grew through TU Dance’s Pre-Professional Program until the middle of 2019 when she decided to dedicate time to explore all of her artistic abilities. Sha’Rae then started a modeling and spoken word career and gained a dance mentor, Erin Brown, who brought Sha’Rae into Southwest High School in 2022 to set her first professional piece on dancers as well as some workshop classes. This experience resulted in Sha’Rae being admitted into Southwest’s Dance Hall of Fame in the beginning of 2023! And lastly as of May 2024 Sha’Rae has since completed her first year of TU Dance’s Cultivate trainee program!
DEMETRIUS MCCLENDON AKA IMAGINEJOY:
Born and raised in the south side of Chicago, Demetrius McClendon (aka ImagineJoy), began dancing with street hip-hop at the age of 15 and has traveled nationally and internationally as a dancer, teacher, and choreographer sharing their passion for the arts. Since graduating from Northern Illinois University in 2011, they have danced professionally with DanceWorks Chicago, TU Dance, Owen/Cox DanceGroup and as a guest artist with Lyric Opera of Chicago, Twin Cities Ballet, Deeply Rooted DanceTheater, and Minnesota Opera, among numerous other companies. ImagineJoy is a 2023 McKnight Dancer Fellow and a newly certified instructor of the Gyrotonic and Gyrokinesis Methods. As a community organizer and facilitator that believes wholeheARTedly in the power of radical imagination, political education, and spiritual practice, they co-create with others to build experiences that heal and empower BIPOC & Queer communities.
RAHILA COATS:
Rahila is a movement artist based in the Midwest. She has performed new works and repertoire by Abigail Sena Atugah, Kofi Anthonio, Judith Brin Ingber, Karen Charles, Marciano Dos Silva Santos, Drew Lewis (House of DOV), Carl Flink, Kevin Iega Jeff, Ohad Naharin, Andrea Miller, Robert Moses, Leslie Parker, Uri Sands, Chris Schlicting, Erin Kilmurray, Anna Martine Whitehead, and Tali Wertheim- Agranionik and more in and outside the US dance community. Her works have been shown through the support of Chicago DanceMakers Forum, Synapse Arts, Co.mpany Projects, Twenty Percent Productions, Jerusalem Jazz Festival, and the University of Ghana- Legon. In 2021 she received Chicago’s 3Art’s Make A Wave Award along with 120 Chicago based artists. Currently, she tours nationally with Red Clay Dance Company and Anna Martine Whitehead’s FORCE! An Opera in 3 Acts, and performs with the music collective Family Junket.
PALOMA MCGREGOR:
Paloma McGregor is a Caribbean-born, New York-based choreographer who makes Black work with Black folks for Black space. McGregor is currently developing A’we deh ya, a multi-year, interdisciplinary performance project that activates a choreographic call-and-response between the US mainland and her homeland, St. Croix. She is a 2020 Soros Arts Fellowship recipient, and an inaugural recipient of several major awards, including: Dance/USA’s Fellowship to Artists; Creatives Rebuild New York; Urban Bush Women’s Choreographic Center Institute Fellowship; Surdna Foundation’s Artists Engaging in Social Change. In 2017, she won a “Bessie” Award for performance with skeleton architecture, a collective of Black women(+) improvisers. She is Artistic Director of Angela’s Pulse and founder of Dancing While Black.
ASHE JAAFARU:
Ashembaga (Ashe) Jaafaru is an actor + dancer + writer + creative/arts director. She has been involved in theatre + film + movement + voiceover work in the Twin Cities + beyond since 2009. Ashe creates art for liberation of the mind, body and SPIRIT + will continue to produce imaginative stories.
MONET SLADE:
Monet Slade (they/them),originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin is currently a student in their 4th year at the University of Minnesota working towards completing their dance BFA. During their time at the university Monet has been so lucky as to work with amazing artists such as, Elayna Waxse, Maria Bauman, Soulemayne Badolo, Taja Will, and Jordan Demetrius Lloyd. Monet has always found joy in improvisation and is thankful to have developed a deeper understanding of this art form within and striding their blackness. They’re honored to be able to share their joy and passion with Leslie Parker and the other amazing movers.
Michael Wimberly
Michael Wimberly’s commissioned compositions have appeared in the repertory of dance companies Urban Bush Women, Joffrey Ballet II, Alvin Ailey, Ailey II, Philadanco, Forces of Nature Dance Theatre, Joan Millers DancePlayers, Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Ballet Noir, Alpha Omega, Purelements, and the National Song and Dance Company of Mozambique. Film scores include As an Act of Protest by Dennis Leroy Moore, and Atlantic City Lights by Brent Owens for HBO. Sound design for theater includes Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Classical Theatre of Harlem, Saint Lucy’s Eyes by Bridgette Wimberly for the Women’s Project & Cherry Lane Theatre; Sarah Sings a Love Story by Stephanie Berry, produced by Crossroads Theatre; and Iced Out, Shackled and Chained for the National Black Theatre, for which Wimberly received two Audelco nominations. A veteran percussionist and composer, Wimberly has performed with dozens of luminous artists, including Steve Coleman, Greg Osby, India Arie, D.J. Rogers, and Joe.
Dameun Strange
Dameun Strange is a sound artist, multi-instrumentalist, and award-winning composer of conceptual electronic and improvised electro-acoustic works focusing on the African diaspora's stories and themes, often exploring surrealist and afro-futurist ideas. Dameun aims to express through sound and poetry, the beauty and resilience of the Black experience, digging into a pantheon of ancestors to tell stories of triumph while connecting the past, present, and future.
Dameun has composed music with such artists as Leslie Parker, Ananya Chatterjea, Joanna Lees, Pramila Vasudevan and has been a featured performer in concerts celebrating the work of George Lewis, Thurston Moore, and Henry Threadgill. He is a 2018 recipient of the ACF | Create Award and 2019 Jerome Hill Fellowship. Most recently, he was the recipient of a 2022 BMI Foundation Carlos Surinach Fund Commission for renowned flutist Adam Sadberry, _not running. (The Life of L. Alex Wilson) for flute and electronics which was premiered at Merkin Hall, Kaufman Music Center in March 2023.
Dameun lives in Saint Paul, MN with his wife, Corina, and their daughter, Ezra. Like any good nerd, he enjoys a good sci-fi story and has a soft spot for anything related to cosmology.
FARAI MALIANGA
Videographer/Composer/Musician
Farai Malianga, born and raised in Zimbabwe, began his career in African Dance in Colorado with Leticia Williams’ Harambee and Musical Director Judy “Fatu” Henderson.
Upon arriving in New York he began studying dance and drum with pioneers Yousouf Koumbasa, Mbemba Bangoura and Ronald K. Brown.
Performing with the Masters; Chuck Davis in BAMs ‘Dance Africa’, Reginald Yates and Heritage O.P. for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre for their 40th Anniversary.
In Theatre; with the Off Broadway production of “Darker Faces of the Earth” directed by Trezana Beverley and on the Broadway Stage in the musical 'Fela!'
In Film; International Domestic Violence Series produced by Joe Rodman as well as Kasi Lemmon’s film “Black Nativity”.
Also Performing for the Public Theater in 2021 for their Shakespeare in the Park reimagining of “Merry Wives of Windsor” set in Harlem and consequently appearing in the HBO documentary “Reopening Night” cataloguing the return to Central Park.
Malianga's composition credits include commissioned works for Camille Brown, Karen Loves’ Umoja, Christal Browns’ Inspirit Dance Companies and "Jenaguru" An African Creation Myth for the Smithsonian. Recently scoring music for the the Dance Documentarys “Black Stains” and Kehinde Ishangi’s “Not My Enemy” produced and edited by Tiffany Rhynard.
Farai Malianga is honored to be joining FSU as a tenure track Proffesor with a focus on Music for dance and choreography. This year teaching Rhythmic Analysis, Music for Choreography, Digital Audio Recording while also providing music support for African, Dunham and Contemporary classes.
DeCarlo Jackson
DeCarlo Jackson is a versatile multi-instrumentalist deeply rooted in the rich tradition of Black American improvisation. Drawing inspiration from generations of musical innovators, he brings his spirit and intuition to every musical endeavor. With a seamless blend of techniques and genres spanning decades of Black expression, DeCarlo's music resonates with authenticity and vitality.
Hailing from St. Paul, DeCarlo is an alumnus of both Walker West and SPCPA, where his passion for music education and performance began to flourish sixteen years ago. As a member of the Minnesota-based indie rock band Hippo Campus, DeCarlo has graced stages both domestically and internationally, performing at iconic venues such as Red Rocks and the Greek Theater. His musical journey has also taken him to major music festivals and television appearances, including Lollapalooza, Gov Ball NYC, and esteemed late-night shows hosted by Conan O'Brien, Stephen Colbert, and James Corden.