Brooklyn’s Urban Bush Women and the all-male Senegalese collective Compagnie Jant-Bi will explore themes of struggle, suffering and African-American identity through dance on Feb. 22 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The two companies collaborated to create the new work, “Les Écailles de la Mémoire” (“The Scales of Memory”), which peers through the lens of the African Diaspora. Carolina Performing Arts will present the performance at 8 p.m. in UNC’s Memorial Hall.
“Urban Bush Women is one of the most unique and engrossing modern dance groups in America, and Compagnie Jant-Bi represents the best of African dance,” said Emil Kang, executive director for the arts at UNC. “That they can blend the conventional with the modern to create this explosive new piece is a testament to their artistic originality.”
Urban Bush Women, an all-female modern dance ensemble, uses contemporary dance, music and text to produce bold, life-affirming works about the African-American tradition, Kang said. The mission of Compagnie Jant-Bi is to collaborate with dance companies around the world to infuse other cultures with the essence of African dance.
The companies began working together in 2004, when dancers from each group met with each other and their artistic directors. In 2005, the companies worked and studied together for three weeks at Ecole des Sables’ International Center for Traditional and Contemporary African Dance, located in a fishing village south of Dakar. In summer 2007, they came together for a residency in the United States. Thus, “Les Écailles de la Mémoire” was born.
“Les Écailles de la Mémoire” is the second offering of the 2007-08 Carolina Performing Arts dance series. The series opened with the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan in September and will conclude with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company on April 18.
Tickets to “Les Écailles de la Mémoire,” $20 to $40, are available at the Memorial Hall Box Office, (919) 843-3333, on Cameron Avenue, open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays, and at www.carolinaperformingarts.org. Tickets for Carolina students are $10. Tickets for all other performances in the 2007-08 Carolina Performing Arts season also are on sale.
Note: For photos and media kits, visit http://www.carolinaperformingarts.org/media/
Carolina Performing Arts contact: Kara Larson, (919) 966-3834, kara.larson@unc.edu
News Services contact: LJ Toler, (919) 962-8589