by Martha Sherman
Reggie Wilson is a teacher, a preacher, a researcher, a curator, as well as singer, mover, stand-up comic, and a deeply engaging choreographer. For Wilson, the founder and choreographer of the Fist & Heel troupe, it’s not enough to capture attention with movement. Unless the audience is all in – hearts and minds – he’s not satisfied. What a wealth of opportunity he found, curating and choreographing for a month-long Danspace Platform focused on a swirl of his inspirations: “Praying Grounds: Blackness, Churches, and Downtown Dance.”
The closing performance of this month of performance, lectures, walking tours and dialogues was Wilson’s premiere of “they stood shaking while others began to shout,” a work inspired in part by his interest in the Black Shaker movement. As is Wilson’s way, he opened the work by introducing himself and his personal history, insisting on a rousing “hello” from audience members to guarantee their attention and engagement. And then he began to teach. In a slide and video lecture and participatory demonstration, Wilson introduced African and modern dance movement that was familiar to his eclectic but mainly white American audience. We clapped mixed rhythms that we knew, but heard as exotic, unless raised in the embrace of African-American churches and traditions.
As circles of “volunteer(ed)” audience members learned the “shuffle and hitch” movement – a spiritual practice, not a dance step, we were reminded – the rest of the room clapped the percussion, and Wilson sang melodic shouts that accompanied these traditional steps. In another dependable pattern, this opening segment took quite a while, but by the time the performance began, Wilson’s audience was part of the show. (He had us at Hello.)
In the dark, a shout was heard. Wilson, the elder, paraded down a corridor of light along the center of the church floor, carrying a suitcase, like the baggage of history. He left the bag at the top of the stairs of the altar niche. One by one, the other dancers followed, each in some form of traditional African wear, each moving in their own pace and form. As they reached the niche, they each discarded their scarves and patterned outfits, to pull out their modern costumes from the suitcase: casual clothing, neutral and comfortable. They transformed as if they had crossed an ocean and a few centuries in that walk, but the traditions of the movement survived the change of outerwear, just as Wilson suggested our dance carries along with it much more than what is on the surface.
In the context of its antecedents in African (and Wilson’s) history, the movement made sense. The dancers’ wriggling hips, thrust arms, and swirling heads wrapped around each languorous or frantic pace, tune, and lyric. Wilson directed throughout from a perch at the edge of the space, as he sang, clapped, chanted and called out to the cast to alert them to switch patterns between songs. An African version of “Kumbaya” led to a half-ironic mash up of “Memories” and “Try to Remember,” as messages and meanings were expanded by the dance. The gestural repetitions all evoked ritual, some of it traditional, all of it filtered through Wilson’s vocabulary and sensibilities.
In the work’s central scene, a dance pattern that was familiar from the shuffle and hitch dance we’d learned earlier, the ten dancers formed two concentric circles. Women were on the outside and men on the inside, moving in opposite directions in a ritualized folk dance. Their arms thrust up and rotated with shoulders shaking, lunging legs, and hands flailing as they rose to heaven. To Wilson’s clapping, ever faster, the pace quickened as hips, backs, shoulders became more expressive and – yes – more ecstatic.
As the ritualized group dance whirled, the two dancers who are Fist & Heel elders along with Wilson, peeled off. Lawrence Harding and Rhetta Aleong have both danced with Wilson for over 25 years; they are part of the company’s heartbeat. After whirling with the others, they slid offstage, re-emerging in golden light on the upper-level of the church – the area Wilson discovered was once known at the Slave’s Gallery. Harding and Aleong swayed gently in the light, their hands moving as if sowing, a pair of guardian angels above the still-whirling company below.
The dance shifted from the ritual into shifting energized duets, diamonds, and mixed patterns. In one scene, the dancers fell to the floor, using the shift of their hips to propel them in quick shifts. Gabriela Silva raced around the breadth of St. Mark’s floor, touching each supporting column as if offering a protective talisman; later Hadar Ahuvia joined her as the two flailed together at the altar niche, bringing the ecstasy of the group’s ritual to every far corner of the space. Each dancer’s movement was formed in the tradition and in Wilson’s direction, but every member of this group offered a unique window into those shared roots.
In a final scene, the company’s movement got larger, wilder, the jumps higher, even a cartwheel springing out. One by one, as if wearing out, the dancers melted from the stage and joined Harding and Aleong on the balcony. The final pair of extravagant movers, Raja Feather Kelly and Yeman Brown, were the last left standing, energized brothers and competitors whirling wildly. Finally, they too, joined the dancers above.
In the narrow space of the balcony under sun-bright lights, the ten formed their circles and returned to the ritualized central pattern, shuffling and hitching, hands on hips. The apt accompanying final song, “Gonna Be a Bright Shiny Day,” mirrored the dance which grew bolder and more energized. The dancers smiled at each other, throwing themselves into this ecstatic worship and beloved community. Looking up at them, it felt like a glimpse of heaven.
Photos: “…they stood shaking while others began to shout.” Photo © Ian Douglas.
Copyright ©2018 by Martha Sherman
“…they stood shaking while others began to shout” – Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group
Danspace Project
St. Mark’s Church
New York, NY
March 24, 2018
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