Reggie Wilson
T H E C O M P A N Y
Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group is a Brooklyn based dance company which blends contemporary dance with African traditions. The company makes brilliant new performance from the spiritual traditions of the African Diaspora. Wilson draws on the movement idioms of Blues, Slave and Worship cultures to create what he calls "Post-African Neo Hoodoo Modern dance". Accompanied by their own driving rhythms--body percussion, aspirated breath, singing and shouts--Fist & Heel blends deep ritual into potent, beautiful and energizing contemporary dance.
The Story of "Fist and Heel"
"Fist and heel is clapping and stomping, shouting and hollerin' - and the manipulation of energies" explains Reggie Wilson. "Drums denied and confiscated, enslaved Africans reinvented their spiritual tradition in the Americas as a soulful art form white authorities dismissed as merely "fist and heel worshipping."
DIRECTOR
Reggie Wilson (Performer and Artistic Director) founded his company, Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group, in 1989. Wilson draws from the movement languages of the blues, slave and spiritual cultures of Africans in the Americas and combines them with post-modern elements and his own personal movement style to create what he calls "post-African/Neo-HooDoo Modern dances." His choreography has been presented both nationally and internationally on the Company and other prominent contemporary dance companies such as Dayton Contemporary Dance. Wilson is an artist advisor for the National Dance Project and Board Member of Dance Theater Workshop. He is the recipient of a McKnight National Fellowship and John Guggenheim Fellowship as well as a 2002 BESSIE Award for New York Dance and Performance.
Click here to listen to Reggie discuss
The Good Dance
