Spectrum Dance Theater to Present A RAP ON RACE

Spectrum Dance Theater, in association with Seattle Repertory Theatre, presents the "genre obliterating" world premiere dance theater production A Rap On Racebased on the iconic 1970 conversation on race between James Baldwin and Margaret Mead. Co-created by TONY-nominated and Bessie Award-winning director/choreographer Donald Byrd and Pulitzer-nominated and MacArthur Award-winning actress/playwright Anna Deavere Smith, A Rap on Race enlivens the current conversation around race and equity, mixing dance and theatre to create a fully original, groundbreaking artistic work. Tickets are on sale now through the Seattle Rep Box Office at (206) 443-2222 and online at SeattleRep.org.

In 1970, these two towering personalities of American intelligentsia sat together and recorded a conversation about the defining subject of the American experience: race. Mead, 68 years old, white and liberal, was the most famous anthropologist of the 20th Century. Baldwin, 46, black, living in exile in France, was one of the most prominent novelists. The two had never met before. Their conversation, carried out in three long sessions over two long days, was tape recorded, transcribed, and published as a book. Now over 40 years later, two contemporary artistic icons, Smith (best known for her documentary theater style in plays such as "Fires in the Mirror" and "Twilight: Los Angeles") and legendary, local choreographer Donald Byrd, re-imagine this monumental moment in history through an evening of devised dance and theater.

In this innovative production featuring the world-renowned dancers of Spectrum Dance Theater, Julie Briskman (The Seagull Project) as Mead, and Donald Byrd as Baldwin, Smith and Byrd excavate the truths buried in the facts of this cultural artifact. But this cultural artifact, though over 40 years old, is far from archaic. "What is heartbreaking for me, is when you listen to these tapes that were recorded in 1970, the conversation is the same," states Briskman. "It has not evolved in the way that James Baldwin and Margaret Mead might have imagined that it would. It has not evolved to the point that I imagine most of humanity would thought it might have." A Rap On Race will reinvigorate this conversation, providing a forum for honest, non-self-censored conversation -- a theme present in all of Spectrum's 2015-16 #RACEish season.

"Within the current dominant aesthetics of performance, virtuosity is often dismissed as empty display," Byrd comments. "In this new work it is used as a means to communicate the complexities involved when talking about race, a topic that is decidedly necessary yet often deemed too difficult to address." The work will take the form of a series of choreographed 'physical duets' played in tandem or juxtaposed with verbal duets gleaned from the Baldwin/Mead tapes. The physical duets are not fact but rather the explorations and search for truth that cannot be found within the limitations of language. "I think what we are doing in terms of our dance theater is really sort of genre obliterating. For A Rap On Race, dancing and physical theater play together in a unique way that truly reaches people and in essence defines a new sort of theater for the 21st Century," Byrd concludes.

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