SAVE THE DATE
651 ARTS and RestorationART / The Billie Holiday Theatre present No Boundaries April 6 & 7, 2018, in Brooklyn, NY.

One last time…
651 ARTS will partner with Gesel Mason Performance Projects to present the final performance of No Boundaries: Dancing the Visions of Contemporary Black Choreographers.Over 15 years in the making, No Boundaries existed as an evolving repertoire of solos choreographed by the nation’s leading contemporary African American choreographers that I performed in one evening. The performance project featured works by Robert Battle, Rennie Harris, Dianne McIntyre, Bebe Miller, Donald McKayle, Reggie Wilson, Andrea E. Woods Valdéz, David Roussève, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. After collecting more than seven decades of choreographic vision in my body, GMPP and Digabyte Production Company  are transforming No Boundaries into a versatile, online platform to fit the growing need for an archive of prominent African American choreographers.

This April, I will perform the complete evening of No Boundaries for the last time. The night will feature solos choreographed by McKayle, Roussève, Miller, Zollar, Harris, and a newly commissioned work by Kyle Abraham. The performance will be captured by a high quality multi-camera shoot in order to preserve and share America’s dance heritage for a forthcoming digital humanities archive. More than a documentation of choreography, the dance is a point of entry to understanding a distinctly African American theme of resilience in spite of a history of silencing and erasure of African American cultural contributions. By expanding the genre of Black dance and interrupting the systematic erasure of names lost to the archive, No Boundaries reveals the tenacity of resilience and the diversity of Black performance.

This is where you come in…
The project has received a National Endowment for the Arts grant of $30,000 that requires at 1:1 cash match. We are $8,000 shy of matching our NEA grant and meeting our production budget. We need your help to raise the final portion of our budget, match the NEA grant, and present the final performance of No Boundaries.

The time is now...
In part, I created the No Boundaries project, because I felt Black dance was quickly categorized and limited in expression that diminished the range of work by, for, and about African Americans. Now, No Boundaries has become a bridge between the past and the present. In this field that is always about the “next” or the newest work, I believe there is something vital about embracing our legacies and our stories to learn from as we forge new paths into the future work. These choreographies reveal the poignant and deeply personal strategies of survival in America while noting the wide-range of aesthetics and techniques that are a reflection of our current times.

This is your story too…
I invite you to join the No Boundaries network. The legacy and impact of these artists is far reaching. There is probably less than six degrees of separation between your story and theirs. Please add your own anecdote of your connection with these choreographers. With your help No Boundaries will be an evolving, breathing archive that embraces more voices, more visions, and more choreographers. 

To add to the network, visit GMPP Tumblr to submit a story, photo, video, or quote. 

Meet the artists...
Gesel Mason is Assistant Professor of Dance at University of Colorado Boulder and Artistic Director of Gesel Mason Performance Projects (GMPP), a project-based dance company that uses art as a vehicle to encourage compassion and inquiry. One of her primary creative and research objectives is to perform, document, preserve, and disseminate dances by prominent and influential African American choreographers. The live performance of No Boundaries received support from the National Endowment for the Arts and New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project. Recently, Mason received a Map Fund grant for her project antithesis, which premiered at Dance Place in 2017. In 2011, she was one of six choreographers selected by the Joyce Theater for a Rockefeller Residency Initiative. In 2007, Mason received the Millennium Stage Local Dance Commissioning Project from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Washington Performing Arts Society’s Pola Nirenska Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance in 2009.   

Kyle Abraham, Artistic Director of Abraham.In.Motion, is both a MacArthur fellow and Doris Duke Artist Award recipient. He has been establishing a singular choreographic style and creative vision for exploring important contemporary issues with a clarity and beauty that resonates with a wide range of audiences. His work reflects a fusion of Hip Hop influences with postmodern aesthetics and the urgency of the Black Lives Matter movement. In 2012, Abraham was named the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award recipient and a USA Ford Fellow. Abraham has also received a prestigious Bessie Award for Outstanding Performance in Dance for his work in “The Radio Show,” and a Princess Grace Award for Choreography in 2010.

Lorenzo (Rennie) Harris is the Artist-in-Residence at University of Colorado Boulder and Artistic Director and Choreographer of Rennie Harris Puremovement, a hip-hop dance company dedicated to preserving and disseminating hip-hop culture through workshops, classes, hip-hop history lecture demonstrations, long term residencies, mentoring programs and public performances. Born and raised in North Philadelphia, Harris has been teaching workshops and classes at universities around the country and is a powerful spokesperson for the significance of “street” origins in any dance style. Harris is featured in Rose Eichenbaum’s Masters of Movement-Portraits of America’s Great Choreographers with dance legends such as Carmen de Lavallade, Judith Jamison, Fayard Nicolas and Gregory Hines. In addition, he was awarded a medal from the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts as a master of African American Choreography, the United States Artist Fellowship award, and the Harman Shakespeare Theater award for his adaptation of West Side Story and Romeo & Juliet.
 
Donald McKayle, recipient of honors and awards in every aspect of his illustrious career, has been named by the Dance Heritage Coalition as “one of America’s Irreplaceable Dance Treasures: the First 100.” His choreographic masterworks, considered modern dance classics, Games, Rainbow Round My Shoulder, District Storyville, and Songs of the Disinherited are performed around the world. He has choreographed over ninety works for dance companies in the United States, Canada, Israel, Europe and South America. The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, Ballet San Jose Silicon Valley, the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, and the Lula Washington Dance Theatre serve as repositories for his works. He is the Artistic Mentor for the Limón Dance Company. Ten retrospectives have honored his choreography. In April 2005, Donald McKayle was honored at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and presented with a medal as a Master of African American Choreography.

Bebe Miller, a native New Yorker, first performed her choreography at NYC’s Dance Theater Workshop in 1978, after receiving her MA in Dance from OSU in 1975; she formed Bebe Miller Company in 1985. Known for its mix of virtuosic dancing and fundamental humanity, her choreography has been produced at major dance centers across the country and internationally in Europe and the African continent. Her work has been commissioned by Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, Oregon Ballet Theater, Boston Ballet, Philadanco, Ailey II, and the UK’s Phoenix Dance Company, among others. She has been honored with four New York Dance and Performance “Bessie’s,” fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Ohio Arts Council and the Guggenheim Foundation, and was named a United States Artists Ford Fellow in 2010. A Professor in Dance at The Ohio State University since 2000, Bebe is a Distinguished Professor in OSU’s College of Arts and Humanities and received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Ursinus College in 2009. In 2012 she was designated as one of the inaugural class of Doris Duke Artists, a program of the Doris Duke Foundation’s Performing Artist Awards. Most recently, she was honored by New York Live Arts who presented her with the 2013 David White Award.

David Roussève (choreographer, writer, director and performer) is a magna cum laude graduate of Princeton University (Politics, Theater and Dance, and Africa Studies) and a 2004 Guggenheim Fellow. Roussève is Artistic Director/Choreographer for David Roussève/REALITY, a dance/theater company of seven performers that has toured extensively throughout the US. Europe, and South America, including three commissions for the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival. In addition to the Guggenheim, David’s awards include the Cal Arts/Alpert Award in Dance, “First Place Screen Choreography” at the IMZ Int’l Dance Film Festival, a Creative Capital Fellowship, a New York Dance and Performance (Bessie) Award, three L.A. Horton (dance) Awards, two Irvine Fellowships in Dance, a California Arts Council Choreography Fellowship, seven consecutive fellowships from the NEA, and the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Association of Black Princeton Alumni. In 1996 David Roussève joined UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance.  David served as Department Chair 2003-6 and is currently Professor of Choreography. 

Jawole Willa Jo Zollar founded Urban Bush Women (UBW) in 1984 as a performance ensemble dedicated to exploring the use of cultural expression as a catalyst for social change. In addition to thirty-four works for UBW, she has created works for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Philadanco, University of Maryland, Virginia Commonwealth University and others; and with collaborators including Compagnie Jant-Bi from Senegal and Nora Chipaumire. In 2006 Jawole received a New York Dance and Performance Award (Bessie) for her work as choreographer/creator of Walking With Pearl…Southern Diaries. Featured in the PBS documentary, “Free to Dance,” which chronicles the African American influence on modern dance, Jawole was designated a Master of Choreography by the John F. Kennedy Performing Arts Center in 2005. Her company has toured five continents and has performed at venues including Brooklyn Academy of Music, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and The Kennedy Center. UBW was selected as one of three U.S. dance companies to inaugurate a cultural diplomacy program for the U.S. Department of State in 2010.

Gesel Mason Performance Projects is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of Gesel Mason Performance Projects must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law