Pentacle


R E P E R T O R Y

		The Tale: Npinpee Nckutchie and the Tail of the Golden Dek 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.

		The Salon Pieces 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.

		The Good Dance (Congo Congo and His Search for the Good Dance) 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

		The piece premiered in the US at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN, in the Fall of 2009. The NYC premiere of the work took place at the BAM Next Wave Festival in December of 2009. The Good Dance received a National Dance Project Production Touring Grant for the 09/10 season.

I N D E V E L O P M E N T

		(project) Moseses Project NDP touring support available for 13/14 (project) Moseses Project is the working title of the new performance piece by Reggie Wilson with his Fist and Heel Performance Group. It explores our relationships to leadership and the effects of migration on beliefs and customs. Grounded in Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Moses, Man of the Mountain and with exploratory travels to Israel, Egypt, Turkey and Mali, the work is progressing to look at the migration of peoples and culture out of Africa and into the rest of the world. Conversations, Interviews, Research (kinesthetic and academic) and aesthetic crafting are all contributing to the shaping of a dynamic new evening length work. History The thinking of the (project) Moseses Project began after Wilson was preparing for 651 Arts’ Moving Words series with students of the Paul Robeson High School (Brooklyn) in April 2010. Wilson chose a work by Zora Neale Hurston, which led him to rediscover another one of her works, Moses, Man of the Mountain, the Moses story told as a Southern folk tale in Southern African-American vernacular. In June 2010, Wilson traveled to Israel as a part of a delegation of artists, sponsored by the Foundation for Jewish Culture and Mishkenot Sha’ananim. In addition to participating in and teaching master classes, he had several meetings with a world renowned Moses scholar, Professor Avigdor Shinan and reconnected with his former boss, choreographer and mentor Ohad Naharin. While in the region he also traveled to Cairo, Egypt where he visited the Egyptian Center for Culture and Art-The Makan, and attended a number of performances, many of them “Zar” music by the performance ensemble Mazahar (Zar is an Islamic women’s mystical tradition). In October, Wilson’s next leg of cultural research took him to Istanbul, Turkey to perform. There he became acquainted with the history of the Ottoman Empire – and its legends of being the location of the Garden of Eden, Noah’s Ark, and the first human temple. And in November, to Bamako, Mali (the Sahel region) where he began thinking about the migration of Nubian populations over the centuries to East Africa (Kibera, outside of Nairobi) and to West Africa (with connections to the Ancient West African kingdoms of Mali, Ghana, Songhai, and Manding via slave and salt caravan routes). Wilson has potential travel plans (for research and teaching) to Beirut, Lebanon; Ramallah, Palestine; Niamey, Niger; Chad (in the Sudanese refugee camps) and return Visits to Israel, Egypt and Turkey. Fist and Heel has an on-going concern and response to the marginalization of Africa and its many faces. The business is the illumination of the reality and the experience of how “un-marginal” Africa really is. As well as how it has been pivotal to world history, religion and with (project) Moseses Project the origin of monotheism. Also, there is an investigation on how much of what was coming out of Africa affected and influenced world evolution. And questioning, is that so today? The piece will have its world premiere in 2013. Its New York premiere will be on the BAM Next Wave Festival 2013 (Fall). (project) Moseses Project has received a National Dance Project Production grant. The piece will tour in the 13/14 season.

W O R K S H O P S

		Community Shouts 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)

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

		Open Rehersal Post-Performance Discussions 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.

PHOTOS Julieta Cervantes, Antoine Tempe