August in Perspective Kick Off: Dancing While Black Performs "Run Mary Run"

Rashida Bumbray has been performing the ring shout – a spiritual dance developed during slavery – for about a decade. For the newest installment of this work, Run Mary Run, she considers the harmonic ideas and tonal vocabulary of the McIntosh County Shouters – master ring shout artists – as a point of departure. Creating an active ritual for the ceremony of the ring shout, the performers go on a ride through the cosmologies of the Low Country, Geechie Sea Islands, Tennessee Blues, P Funk, and Hip Hop – relating the shout to the history of Black music. Run Mary Run is developed in collaboration with a large ensemble, the Dance Diaspora Collective and special guest master dancer, Adenike Sharpley, Professor, Oberlin College. Costumes by Gingie McLeod, Dindi Designs. 

“Motion and music and memory entwined” - The New York Times Best Concerts of 2012

“It was an enduring blood memory…we were in the waters of William Henry Johnson’s I Baptize Thee.” - 2014: The Year According To LaTasha N. NeVada Diggs, Walker Arts Center 

Nominated for a 2014 BESSIE: Outstanding Emerging Choreographer 

2014 Recipient: Harlem Stage Fund For New Work

The performance will be followed by an informal talkback session and panel with Paloma McGregor, Director of Angela’s Pulse and Founder of Dancing While Black, Rashida Bumbray, Adenike Sharpley, and local artists, students, and faculty. 

About the Artists
Rashida Bumbray’s choreography draws from traditional African American vernacular and folk forms including ring shouts, hoofing, and blues improvisation in order to interrogate society and initiate healing. Bumbray was nominated for the prestigious Bessie Award in 2014 for “Outstanding Emerging Choreographer.” Her performance Run Mary Run in collaboration with Jason Moran and Dance Diaspora Collective was named among Best Concerts of 2012 by the New York Times’ Ben Ratliff. Bumbray recieved the 2014 Harlem Stage Fund for New Work. Her work has been presented by Columbia University, Caribbean Cultural Center, Dancing While Black, Harlem Stage, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New Museum, Project Row Houses, SummerStage, Tate Modern and Weeksville Heritage Center. Bumbray received her MA in Africana Studies from New York University and her BA in African American Studies and Theater & Dance from Oberlin College where she studied Jazz, Blues and Afro dance forms with Adenike Sharpley and collaborated with the late Wendell Logan’s Oberlin Jazz Ensemble. 

Since 2012, Dancing While Black has worked to bring the voices of Black movement artists from the periphery to the center. A New York-based initiative with national reach, DWB supports dialogue, documentation, process and performance, particularly among Black artists whose practices do not fit neatly into the boxes created for us. Over the past five years, DWB has produced the work of more than a dozen Black dance makers, supported 22 Fellowship artists in the developing of their practice and networks and gathered scholars, writers and artists to participate in diverse platforms that center their voices and build community. Our work is done in partnership with individuals, institutions and communities committed to creating a more equitable landscape. Now celebrating its Fifth Anniversary Season, DWB will host a three-day festival at Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance in May 2018 and is developing a new digital journal that will launch in Fall 2018. 

Angela’s Pulse creates and produces collaborative performance work dedicated to building community and illuminating bold, new stories. We provide a home for interdisciplinary collaborations that thrive on both politics and play, and we are committed to developing timely performance works that provoke, inform and inspire. Co-founded by Paloma and Patricia McGregor, Angela’s Pulse was named for their mother Angela, an artist, teacher and activist who continues to inspire their work. 

Dancing While Black/Angela's Pulse is supported by the Surdna Foundation and Dance/NYC’s Dance Advancement Fund, made possible by the Ford Foundation. 

This event was made possible by the support of the Arts & Sciences Collective Response: Moving Forward Fund, UVA’s Department of Drama and its Dance Program, The Carter G. Woodson Institute, Citizen Justice Initiative, and the University of Virginia Arts Council. 

Admission is free, but tickets are required. The maximum number of tickets that may be reserved is two (2).All tickets will be held in will-call for pickup at the door. The UVA Arts Box Office will open at 7 pm for will-call pickup and any unreserved tickets will be available at that time. Any reserved tickets not picked up by 7:45 pm, 15-minutes prior to curtain, will be released.