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Just mentioning the dance type can set off a fierce debate.
While some might dismiss it as a booty-popping, hips-gyrating dance craze finest relegated to the dance ground, for Michelle Grant-Murray, there may be extra to it than meets the attention.
The choreographer, educator, and inventive director of Olujimi Dance Collective will discover this and extra via the lens of 4 performances on the Dennis C. Moss Cultural Arts Center in Cutler Bay. The occasion shall be held from Friday, January 20, via Sunday, January 22.
“We’ll have a dwell musician. We have some video parts, and we have now some vocalization happening via the spoken phrase,” Grant-Murray says.
Dancers will carry out towards the backdrop of one thing else that’s identified for motion: a prepare, she says.
“Four girls all get on this prepare for various causes, however all of them have a connection via their tales,” Grant-Murray explains. “What occurs on the prepare is that they are time-hopping, in order that they’re coming from totally different locations and areas in time. We’re taking a look at tradition, historical past, and philosophy over a time interval in telling these 4 particular person tales.”
Grant-Murray says the presentation has developed as half of a bigger dialog she has been having on twerking. She tackled the subject in depth two years in the past at a Black Artist Talk occasion at Deering Estate. The topic, she says, is value exploring.
“It is a really deep dialog,” Grant-Murray provides. “I’ve been desirous about this since 2014.”
She remembers that on the time, she was seated on the porch of the Oloffson Hotel in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Surrounding her was an eclectic group that included a historian, a life coach, and an artist (and a New Orleans second-line reveler) when the topic of twerking bubbled up as they belted out a string of gospel songs.
She realized that many see the dance type as hypersexual and even vulgar; she, however, sees a dancer. A dancer whose hips are steeped in custom and whose pelvic thrusts reply the decision of the Congo.
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Olujimi Dance Collective picture
Carole Boyce-Davies, a featured speaker for the Black Artist Talk occasion and professor of Africana research and literature in English at Cornell University, explains that twerking historically served a particular goal.
“[It’s now on] Tik Tok and all the assorted social media, Instagram and so forth, and it is one thing that individuals are doing in a flagrant means to make use of their sexuality and their physique with out realizing that traditionally, many of those dance patterns had a really particular that means, Whether they have been fertility dances or dances for agricultural functions [or other] causes, simply shaking the physique was not a part of the intent.”
Grant-Murray stated that one other alternative allowed her the liberty to pursue the problem additional.
“I’d already began to deconstruct the phrase T.W.E.R.Okay. [as] ‘Transnational Dance Works and Practices that Evoke Revolutionary Kinship.’ That was already part of the dialog, deconstructing the phrase and what it really appears like and the way this motion, this follow, brings so many individuals collectively and so from that time, I used to be provided a residency on the South Miami-Dade Cultural Center, and I used to be like, This is ideal. I can work on T.W.E.R.Okay.“
Her investigation finally culminated in a collection of packages that included a T.WE.R.Okay. summer season dance intensive and collaborations with famous dancers and choreographers, together with Dr. Yanique Hume, head of the cultural research division on the University of the West Indies.
“We invited dance artists from totally different genres of the African diasporic motion type. So we had conventional West African, and we had one thing referred to as Umfundalali dance method, which is a fusion of African dance types that come from the continent and that was created by [the late] Dr. Karimu Welsh, [an early scholar of African diaspora dance].”
With a wealth of information beneath her belt, Grant-Murray views her newest occasion on the Dennis C. Moss Cultural Arts Center because the end result and celebration of her earlier work mixed. It additionally serves as the proper alternative to go away her viewers with a bigger message.
“I would really like for them to stroll away with a broader perspective of how motion has traveled over house and time and the way we dwell with that info within our physique and the way precious that info is,” she says. “The wealth of that information and that degree of energy, we supply that in our physique. And what I would really like for them to stroll away with is empowerment.”
– Sergy Odiduro, ArtburstMiami.com
Olujimi Dance Collective presents “T.W.E.R.Okay. (Transnational Dance Works and Practices that Evoke Revolutionary Kinship).” 8:30 p.m. Friday, January 20, 3:30 and eight:30 p.m. Saturday, January 21, and three:30 p.m. Sunday, January 22, on the Dennis C. Moss Cultural Arts Center, 10950 SW 211 St., Cutler Bay; 786-573-5300; mosscenter.org. Tickets value $35.