ODC Theater Presents Àse Dance Theatre Collective, Have K(NO!)w Fear: A Bluessical

ODC Theater Presents
Àse Dance Theatre Collective
Have K(NO!)w Fear: A Bluessical

October 17-19, 8 PM

Purchase Tickets

Have K(NO!)w Fear: A Bluessical is an undoing spell that wants to untie all the knots that choke the future. It’s a kinesthetic reimagining of ritual dance theater as an action of protest, prayer, and healing. Bridging the impact that natural disasters, systematic oppression, brutality, forced migration, dislocation, power, and privilege continue to have on the minds, hearts, and voices of so many with the “talk”, this twelve-chapter story tale waxes and wanes between the satirical and serious. Àse Dance Theatre Collective petitions ancestors and invites audiences to witness a world where embodied culture speaks, sings and moves without fear.

The evening's multidisciplinary, immersive program of Have K(NO!)w Fear: A Bluessical features 80 minutes of ritual dance theater, live music, and film including adaptations of two performances, A Brake 4 the 5 (ODC Premiere, 2008) and Have K(NO!)w Fear: A Bluessical (Virginia, 2018), interlaced with a short documentary revealing an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at Àse’s creative process, Have No Fear (NYC, 2017).

Àse Dance Theatre Collective is a neo-folkloric performance ensemble that specializes in Dance Theater from the African Diaspora. Under the artistic direction of Adia Tamar Whitaker, a dancer/choreographer and vocalist from San Francisco, this Brooklyn based collective links contemporary and traditional dance theater to conceptual ideas in the human experience.

Please note, Thursday October 17 and Saturday October 19 will be filmed performances. Because the performance is roving and involves the audience, your purchase and attendance to those performances constitutes your consent to be photographed, filmed and/or otherwise
recorded.

The performance on Friday, October 18 will NOT be recorded.

On October 18 at 6:30pm join us pre-show in the theater for a discussion on presenting strategies that adapt to artist practices. This conversation, co-presented by the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance, will be held at the ODC Theater and include artists and performing arts curators including Adia Tamar Whitaker, and Dena Beard.

Biography | Adia Tamar Whitaker

Adia Tamar Whitaker, Artistic Director of the 19-year old Brooklyn based dance theater ensemble Àse Dance Theatre Collective, has performed contemporary dance, vernacular movement, Afro-Haitian, and Haitian dance in the U.S. and abroad for seventeen years. Whitaker has traveled to Haiti, Cuba, France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Ghana, Jamaica, and Trinidad, to study and teach dance. Whitaker received an MFA in Dance from Hollins University, a BA in Dance from San Francisco State University, and completed the Professional Division U.S. Independent Studies Program at The Ailey School. She was also an Urban Bush Women Apprentice, a Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography @ FSU Creative Entry Point Choreographic Fellow, a Jerome Foundation grantee and Isadora Duncan Award recipient. Most recently, Whitaker received the highly competitive  NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship Award in Choreography and completed her second year of her Dunham Technique Certification.

Biography | Àse Dance Theatre Collective

Named for the Yoruba word that describes every living being’s power to make things happen, Àṣẹ Dance Theatre Collective is a “Neo-Folkloric” performance ensemble that specializes in traditional and contemporary dance and music theater from the African diaspora. Under the artistic direction of Adia Tamar Whitaker, a dancer/choreographer and vocalist from San Francisco, this Brooklyn based collective links contemporary and traditional dance theater to conceptual ideas in the human experience. In addition to the east coast ensemble that Whitaker founded in New York City (2000), she formed a west coast ensemble in the bay area (2009). In 2010, ASE East and West performed together for the first time at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Performing Arts. In 2011, ASE West won an Isadora Duncan Award for outstanding performance. The current performance ensemble consists of dancers, musicians, and spoken word artists from both coasts.

Photo by Orfeas Skutelis