Tamar-kali, ASE Dance Theatre Collective and More Set for SummerStage This Month

Tamar-kali with ASE Dance Theatre Collective and nathantrice/RITUALS dance theater will perform as part of SummerStage @ Central Park, MN on Wednesday, August 10. Doors 7pm / Show 8pm. Free show!

Tamar-kali: Website

Brooklyn born and bred vocalist and composer Tamar-kali is a 2nd-generation musician with roots in the coastal Sea Islands of South Carolina. Her 5 piece outfit enchants you with its melody, while delivering a swift kick to the gut with its incisive emotional core. As a songwriter and vocalist Tamar-kali has defied boundaries and blended styles to craft her own unique sound. The uninitiaTed May have caught a glimpse of her artistry in the documentary AfroPunk or In Focus Features' award winning film Pariah, with incendiary performances and contributions to their soundtracks introducing viewers to a rare and unique talent. A Tamar-kali performance is a study in a soul yearning to break free of its earthly bounds. There are moments, when her voice soars amidst a flurry of hardcore riffs and earth shaking rhythms, that you believe you may just witness its escape. Her eclectic sound and versatility has allowed her to perform on variety of domestic and international stages with a diverse list of artists from Paramore and Fishbone to Jean Grae and The Roots. This performance will include excerpts from Demon Fruit Blues, a collaborative work featuring Adia Whitaker's Ase Dance Collective.

ASE Dance Theatre Collective: Website

Adia Tamar Whitaker, Artistic Director of ASE Dance Theatre Collective, has performed contemporary vernacular movement, modern dance, and Afro-Haitian dance in the U.S. and abroad for 16 years. Adia completed a BA at San Francisco State University, the Independent Studies Program at The Ailey School, was an Urban Bush Women Apprentice and a Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography at FSU Choreographic Fellow. She received an Isadora Duncan Award for performance in Ampey!, a choreopoem she wrote, directed and choreographed, along with grants from the Puffin Foundation, Hip-Hop Theater Festival, and Jerome Foundation. Her work has been presented at Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Academy Of Music, El Museo del Barrio, Queens Museum, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Museum of Art and Design, Harlem Stage and The Whitney. Adia has traveled to Cuba, Haiti, Brazil, Ghana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago to study contemporary and traditional African dance.

For SummerStage 2016, composer and vocalist Tamar-kali's performance will include excerpts from "Demon Fruit Blues," a multidisciplinary collaboration with Adia Whitaker's ASE Dance Theatre Collective and visual artist Sarah Olson. Sweet and bitter, crisp and brooding, "Demon Fruit Blues" is a collaboration steeped in meaning, music, and movement. Undertaken by two Brooklyn-based innovators, these excerpts give viewers a glimpse into a work-in-progress that composer Tamar-kali and choreographer Adia Whitaker are shaping, honing, and melding from their considerable, yet distinct, experiences. Featuring music from Tamar-kali's 5 piece rock repertoire (prominently featured in the independent films "Afro-Punk" and "Pariah"), paired with Adia's signature neo-folkloric movement that links contemporary dance, original vernacular movement and traditional dance theater from the African Diaspora, "Demon Fruit Blues" will show what's possible when two dynamic voices tell the same compelling story.

nathantrice/RITUALS dance theater: Website

Nathan Trice is the artistic director/founder of nathantrice/RITUALS dance theater, a project-by-project dance theater company based in New York City since 1998. Project's to date include The Recognizing Women Project, an inter-disciplinary research and performance initiative aim to explore various contributions and experiences of women; Strange Love: EPISODES, a serialized episodic performance exploring the invisible structures of courtship, intimacy and love, amidst the music of John Coltrane and MiLes Davis; and, The Summer Intensive Project a 3-week collaborative exploration that develop future societal frameworks to transform contemporary concerns into relevant forward thinking dance theater. Trice and his company have toured throughout the United States, Bermuda, Aruba, Japan, Argentina and Hong Kong. Over the past fourteen years, the company has performed in some of the world's most prestigious festivals and venues, including Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, 92nd Street Y's Harkness Dance Festival, City Center's Fall For Dance, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Judson Memorial Church's (DADD) series, International Association of Blacks in Dance, Hiroshima City Museum, Aruba Arts Festival and the Hong Kong Hip-Hop Festival.

For SummerStage 2016, nathantrice/RITUALS dance theater will present one work that has a number of sections and is an excerpt of a episodic work. The title of the work is "Strange Love," a visual, audio, sensory, theatrical dance performance exploring the anatomy and beauty of courtship, intimacy and love, amidst the music of John Coltrane and MiLes Davis. The work features 8 dancer/singers and a live jazz trio who explore a combination of themes (stereotype, resistance, terror, eroticism, violence, memory and embarrassment) to develop a number of scenes expressing complex layered perspectives on courtship, intimacy and love.

About SummerStage:

SummerStage, a program of City Parks Foundation, is New York's largest free performing arts festival. SummerStage annually presents over 100 performances in sixteen parks throughout the five boroughs. With performances ranging from American pop, Latin and world music to dance, spoken word and theater, SummerStage fills a vital niche in New York City's summer arts festival landscape. Since its inception thirty years ago, more than six million people from New York City and around the world have enjoyed SummerStage.

SummerStage shows are RAIN OR SHINE and are only cancelled in the event of what the venue staff judges to be dangerous wind or lightning. All schedules of events and performer lineup is subject to change. The following cannot be brought into the Central Park venue: glass bottles, cans, coolers, folding chairs, bikes, rollerblades, skateboards, beach umbrellas, video cameras, selfie sticks, professional camera gear, tripods or pets. The venue is not responsible for prohibited items left outside the venue. Bags and patrons are subject to search upon entering the venue. Beer and wine are on sale at the Central Park venue for onsite consumption only; alcoholic beverages are otherwise forbidden in NYC Parks. Smoking is prohibited in all NYC parks. The distribution and / or sale of unauthorized media or materials on park grounds is banned. Select shows in Central Park offer first-come, first-served limited seating. The venue will close doors at capacity; arrive early to guarantee entry, get the best available seats and to secure space near the stage.

City Parks Foundation is the only independent, nonprofit organization whose mission is to offer programs in public parks throughout the five boroughs of New York City. At City Parks Foundation, we are dedicated to invigorating and transforming parks into dynamic, vibrant centers of urban life through sports, arts, community development, and education programs for all New Yorkers. Our programs and community building initiatives -- located in more than 300 parks, recreation centers, and public schools across the city -- reach 425,000 people each year. Our ethos is simple: we believe thriving parks reflect thriving communities.