Brooklyn Ballet Announces New Collaboration With Poet Jasmine Mans

Brooklyn Ballet, a unique and interdisciplinary dance company that confronts convention and defies expectation, presents Sonic Relief, an unprecedented evening of dance that bridges ballet and street dance with culture, activism and history, March 24-27 at The Mark O'Donnell Theater at The Actors Fund Arts Center in downtown Brooklyn.

A program of collaborative works that welcome poet Jasmine Mans, most recently published in New York Times Magazine's award winning The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, the inclusive company explores the Black narrative from the past, present and future under the direction and artistic vision of Lynn Parkerson.

On the heels of successfully executing another season of New York's first and only wholly culturally authentic Nutcracker production, Parkerson's directorial interests of equity and inclusion continue to be woven into the company's winter season. Her latest work, Unnatural Surrounding brings 9 dancers working in the mediums of ballet, modern, street, vogueing and middle eastern dance to the same stage with original score by composer Malcom Parson and poetry by Jasmine Mans who will appear live throughout the work. Layered with movement and music, Mans will recite her poem Greenwood, which made its stage debut last November with Brooklyn Ballet at the Brooklyn Academy of Music to celebrate the launch of The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. Telling the unthinkable tale in American History that left a flourishing Black community ravaged by flames and violence at the hands of a White mob, the collaboration pairs movement to her impactful prose included in the award-winning book that reframes slavery and racism at the center of a national narrative. In its first musings throughout the Spring and Summer, the piece was motivated by the ensemble and their experiences, creating, and adapting phrases and dynamics, finding differences and similarities in their movement vocabularies, and connecting with each other in a real way.

"Brooklyn Ballet turns 20 this year," notes Lynn Parkerson, Founder and Director of Brooklyn Ballet. "The journey of Unnatural Surrounding from the studio to the street, to the High Line Nine Gallery, to The 1619 Project at BAM speaks to Brooklyn Ballet's creative process, it's relevance, adaptability, and a growing audience," she continues. "We provide access to new audiences with our work and the very process by which we create allows new voices to express themselves. One critic, at the end of a performance, said our work leaves a new vibration in the room. Merging classical and modern elements together in meaning and aesthetic truly leaves an impression and an open door to create real change in the artform and in our communities on a larger scale."

Other works on the program include a reprise of Close to You (2011), the company's first mixed movement pas de deux that brought contact improvisation and basic partnering to a ballet and hip hop dancer, and the world premiere of Ocean, Big Mike and Anime. A collaboration between three street dancers, the work is a portrait of the feelings they carry with them about the state of the world right now as painted through movement. Using elements of street dance like Pop and Lock, Gliding and Breakdancing, Ocean, Big Mike and Anime is a narrative of the right now, through the eyes of three men living through the COVID-19 pandemic and heightened racial injustice.

Following the Saturday evening performance, Alison Mixon, Brooklyn Ballet's Faculty Director moderates a panel discussion with the creatives and collaborators of Unnatural Surroundings.

Tickets available for purchase at https://ci.ovationtix.com/34418 or at 718-246-0146.

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