Acclaimed choreographer Reggie Wilson explores intimacy and devotion, libido and love in a seamless collage of music and dance. Eight performers explore the complicated rituals of coupling, the ancient sensual dances of lovers. Stepping, stomping, shouting, and strutting - embodying the elegant invitations and rejections of the sexes, Wilson and company draw on traditions that range from the earliest fist and heel styles developed during the slaving era to the step dances that gave rise to urban dance sensations like the Big Apple, Lindy Hop, Electric Slide, and Chicago-Style Stepping.

 

Salon Pieces are an alternative to full Company presentations. A full evening of short works from Wilson's repertoire that are performed by one to three performers are offered for presentation, including pieces such as Tales from the Creek, Introduction, Untitled, and The Dew Wet.

 

 

Wilson's research combined with a multi-year exchange and collaboration of Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group and Congolese choreographer Andreya Ouamba and his company 1er Temps (based in Dakar , Senegal ) will be contextualized and incorporated into the performance work The Good Dance. Through this work, he is examining the influence of Central African culture on world performance forms, investigating the metaphoric, historic and real world parallels of the Mississippi and Congo rivers and their cultures. The choreography is developed and informed by Wilson 's research/fieldwork/exchange experience, and with The Good Dance has come full circle beginning with the Mississippi Delta, then the Caribbean, Southern Africa, West Africa, and now Central Africa juxtaposed with the Delta. A native of Milwaukee , Wilson 's family migrated up from the Mississippi Delta. Anthropological data collected to inform the new work will include Wilson 's own family history (2nd  generation from the Mississippi Delta to Milwaukee ), as well as Mr. Ouamba's, who until recently called himself a Congolese refugee (1st generation from the Congo to Senegal ). 

 

Click here for Reggie discussing The Good Dance

 

Rejuvinating transformative sing-a-longs. Participants restore and strengthen their own rhythmic voices and learn about the origins and functions of songs through tales and songs from Africa and the African Diaspora (The Caribbean and American South)

 

 

Fist & Heel company members lead creative writing, and movement workshops for children and seniors.

 

 

Audience members and performers connect on an intimate level. The opportunity enhances the audience member's understanding of what they have seen and heard on stage.

 

MASTER CLASSES & WORKSHOPS

Reggie Wilson teaches teaches master classes in his own movement idiom, bringing contemporary technique and post-modern structure to rhythmic folk traditions. Wilson also leads workshops in Dance Composition.

 

LECTURES

 

Reggie Wilson delivers engaging lectures on his career arc, research and the various cultures and communities of the African Diaspora.