LDCP: Project ChArma Apr. 13, 2024 Digital Program

Fri. Apr. 12, 2024 7:30p.m.

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Sat. Apr. 13, 2024 7:30p.m.

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Artist Statement

PROJECT CHARMA (pronounced “Karma” as it guides our lives) is a project-based dance theater company who showcase movement as a community-engaged and historically-informed practice. Our performances explore themes of social justice, intergenerational connections, movement intersections, and being grounded in the present. We encourage audiences to see dance as a tool to actively engage in uncomfortable conversations as a critical praxis central to the everyday lives of the diverse communities we belong to.

Patrons are requested to silence cell phones and other electronic devices during performances.

The taking of photographs and the use of recording equipment are not allowed in this venue.
Program order and artists are subject to change.

All events and artists subject to change without prior notice.

PLEASE NOTE: This performance contains haze. Performers will utilize aisles and crossover. Patrons with accessibility concerns should notify an usher at time of seating.

This performance is made possible with support from The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as part of the Social Impact’s Office Hours Residency program as well as resources from the Maya Brin Institute for New Performance at the University of Maryland College Park.

Program Note

Nina Simone’s Songs of the Civil Rights Movement
Inspire Project ChArma To Move
By Lisa Traiger

“This is the world you have made yourself, now you have to live in it.” — Nina Simone

Nina Simone’s incomparable voice sounds like whiskey and honey, or as the incomparable vocalist and musician once said, “Sometimes I sound like gravel, and sometimes I sound like coffee and cream.” The North Carolina-born singer, songwriter, classically trained pianist and Civil Rights activist died in 2003 at just 70, yet she continues to inspire performing artists and music lovers alike. Both her groundbreaking politically relevant musical compositions—“Four Women,” “To Be Young, Gifted and Black,” and “Revolution,” to name a few—and her memorable covers—“Mississippi Goddam,” “I Put a Spell on You” and “Feelings,” among others—remain impactful signature renditions.

The Maryland-based dance company Project ChArma has taken Simone’s artful jazz, pop, and blues as a mission and a message. Choreographer/dancers Ama and Chris Law tap into Simone’s resonant and relevant voice as inspiration for their evening-length work, Chronicles of Nina … What Now? “Nina Simone actually is a figure who transcended the times,” Chris Law said. “She encompasses all of these elements…all of these battles she went through, then vocalized in her work in a way that resonated with people cross generationally,” he added, referring to the blatant racism and sexism she faced as a child, and while growing into her prodigious talent.

Chronicles, Ama Law pointed out, is not intended as a biographical treatise on the singer/songwriter’s story. Rather, it’s a distillation of her struggles and of the capacity of artistic expression to push forward fundamental principles of freedom, justice, and equality in an American society that was slow to change. The piece, which includes some of Simone’s most personal and meaningful songs interspersed with recorded reminiscences from select Project ChArma dancers and Law family members, body percussionist Emerald Holman, and accompaniment on the djembe drum by percussionist Malari Moore, is a meditation in movement on being a Black artist—and human—in the United States.

“To Be Young, Gifted and Black” – Nina Simone

Growing up in the Washington, D.C. region, Ama Law was fully immersed in African and other dance forms. Both her parents—Marjorie Lawrence-Sargeant and Kombo Omolara—performed with KanKouran West African Dance Company, which Senegalese dancer/choreographer Assane Konte created 40 years ago. Omolara attained renown as a Mocko Jumbie, a stilt dancer in the tradition of the Virgin Islands. “My mother was literally dancing with me while pregnant,” Ama said, adding, “[KanKouran] was the foundation of a lot of my movement and a lot of the community feeling that I try to create in my movement. I did dance with the [KanKouran] children’s company for a short while.” She also took both gymnastics and karate lessons, feeding her childhood love of moving.

While Chris Law shared that his family wasn’t deeply rooted in a dance community, he also grew up in the DMV area, where, he said, “Dance was more something at family reunions….I would do line dances like the Electric Slide. I think that’s my earliest memory of dance, along with my love for Michael Jackson. I watched his videos a lot as a youngster.” And like everyone else, he wanted to dance like the King of Pop. He also credits his mother, Sherry Law, for his interest in dancing. “My mother used to bring me to the [roller] skating rinks in the DMV at Seabrook, Laurel, even in D.C. We also used to go to Crystal Palace. That’s where I started associating the circle with dance.” That circle is the unifying factor in many African dance forms as it is in hip hop, where it’s called the cypher. At University of Maryland, he joined the Gymkana exhibition gymnastics and acrobatic troupe. That’s where dancer/choreographer Alvin Mayes, a University of Maryland College Park dance principal lecturer, noticed Chris’s fearless physicality. “I suggested he take a modern dance class.”

Ama and Chris had met a few years earlier at Parkdale High School in Riverdale, MD, when both were members of the Colours Performing Arts Program for Prince Georges County 5th through 12th graders. Ama recalled her first assignment in the youth company: choreograph a duet with Chris. The song: Stevie Wonder’s “Knock Me Off My Feet.” “Here we were—two teenagers—dancing a duet to a love song,” Ama said. “We barely knew each other. That was pretty interesting finding our rhythm then.” But that initial assignment grew into something more. Today they are both artistic and life partners, as well as parents of two young daughters.

They continued developing a collaborative-driven process that begins with music that speaks to their zeitgeist. For Chronicles, this process invited community response through personal stories, drew on African and Black embodied cultural practices, and fused dance across genres. That included social and urban street dances Chris leaned into in high school and college, along with the modern and contemporary dance they both studied at U. of Md. College Park, and the West African forms Ama was immersed in as a child.

“If I look at what was happening with Nina Simone, her music, and her classical training, and then take that crack classical training and doing something very different, I see the same [process] with both Ama and Chris,” observed Mayes, who taught and mentored both artists at U. of Md., and has seen their work evolve over the years. “They both have a very specific technique and then do something very different with it. When seeing their works, you’re not just looking at African dance. You’re not just looking at hip hop. You’re not just looking at urban dance. You’re looking at those roots underneath, but what’s flowering on the top is something completely new and unique.”

“It is an artist’s duty to reflect the times.” ― Nina Simone

The name Project ChArma came about early in Ama and Chris’s partnership, when they were battling in the local urban dance scene. Ama explained: “The spelling of Chris is C H and then Ama is embedded. We pronounce it karma because it’s a philosophy that we live by.”

Karma, the sum of one’s action or more vernacularly, destiny, indeed, grounds their work. “We liked wearing that energy and going into [dance] battles,” Chris reflected, “where we demanded people exchange with us rather than be on this vibe of trying to [beat] us. Because we did it that way, our way, our battles were very entertaining…and we educated people about the exchange of dance. Dance could be competitive, but it could also serve as an outlet to drive us to interact and communicate with each other through movement.”

Simone sung from her heart, her soul, her very sinews. And she voiced the pain and anger Black Americans felt living in a segregated and unequal conditions. She was not only a voice of her time, singing for her people. Her very words and music were meant to inspire, even incite revolution. Project ChArma’s Chronicles, too, aims to effect change.

“Nina was our seed of inspiration,” Ama explained. “The piece has evolved into this journey of self-inquiry. We’ve dealt with a lot of grief and death….Some of that influences the piece. Nina’s music, for me at least, is beautiful, but it also has that sorrow and the grieving. You can feel it and you can hear it, and even if you’re not Black or you don’t identify with some of the struggles that she was talking about, I think you can still feel and hear the pain in her voice. Both Chris and I are going through grieving processes. I’ve lost both my parents and Chris recently lost his father. In a way, this production is about our grieving process, to be quite honest.”

“Slavery has never been abolished from America’s way of thinking.” — Nina Simone

“Nina’s music,” Chris added, “just speaks so deeply to the Black experience that really inspired this self-inquiry. It’s a review of the Black experience through the lens of Nina’s words.” At the same time, it’s a charge from the artists to the audience to ponder the words and ideas Simone set forth. The Laws hope it will prompt viewers to consider the effects injustice and racism continue to have on the political and social systems of the nation. Chronicles, then, is not only an entertainment reflecting the past, it’s a charge, a call to act, to answer the question: “What now?”

As for the opportunity to create and perform a work at the Kennedy Center, Chris said, “We’re a small company, not like Alvin Ailey [American Dance Theater] that audiences are very familiar with. The Local Dance Commissioning Project gives us a chance to see how union rules work, problem solve, and inject our process into this institution. We’re teaching them about us as well as learning about them. Performing at the Kennedy Center comes with a high-end sort of feel. But I really do believe that we’re deserving of being in this venue.

“And,” he said, “we’re very grateful for the opportunity to inject Black culture on a local level into the Kennedy Center. We’re appreciative that the Kennedy Center is acknowledging this.”

An award-winning arts journalist, Lisa Traiger writes about dance, theater, and the arts in the Washington, D.C. area.

Collaborators

Co-Directors, Concept, Choreographers — Ama and Chris Law

Performing Artists — Emerald Holman, Ama Law, Chris Law and Malari Moore

Rhythmic Exploration Coordinators — Emerald Holman and Malari Moore

Dramaturgy — Patrick Crowley

Stage Manager — Tarythe Albrecht

Lighting Design — Peter Leibold

Video Design — Kylee Loera

Costume and Fabrics team — Greg David and Faryn Kelly

Sound Design — Ama Law and Sam Crawford

Musical Direction —Kingsley Jarrett Jr.

Vocals — Jamie Carter, Kimberly Dowdie, Louis Law Jr., Keitha Shepherd, Jennifer Wade, Logan Wade, and Tyson Wade

Interviews — Theresa Saddler, Sherry Law, Cynthia Saddler, Nyla Law and Nia Law

Business Manager — Jameelah Morris

Production Assistant — Anja Voges

Flyer Art — Alyssa Stimpson

Graphic Design and Flyer Manipulation — TreVaughn Ellis

Artist Note

Nina Simone was a deep inspiration for this offering. Her music transcends generations and has shaped the landscape of artists we admire today. Artists like Lauryn Hill, Bisa Butler, J.Cole, Erykah Badu, Kendrick Lamar, and many more. These artists speak for us when words are hard to find. This work is deeply personal and candid.

We interviewed our grandmother, Theresa Saddler, who was coincidentally born on the same day and year as Nina Simone. At 91 years old, we thought it was important to include her perspective in our story of remembrance. Ama is grieving both her mother Marjorie Lawrence Sargeant and her father Kombo Omolara. Chris recently lost his father, Louis Law Sr. Our collaborators shared stories and reflected on names of their ancestors too. Thank you to each of you for being vulnerable with us and trusting our vision. As we come to terms with the loss of these loved ones, and the turmoil in our world today, this offering gives us the opportunity to share, rediscover, and connect with African practices that allow honoring and remembrance.

Dramaturg’s Note

A Dance with Death

Death is clarifying. It strips away our illusions and reminds us of what is truly important. It is one of the few immutable facts of life, yet in the prevailing culture of the United States, death is feared, we work to deny it by worshiping youth, we sanitize it and compartmentalize it. We rarely face death, until that is, it grips a loved one.

Both choreographers of tonight's experience have dealt with the death of parents in recent years. I have witnessed both wrestle with their grief and express profound desire to stay connected to their dearly departed. Yet on the path to continued communion and communication with their loved ones that have passed over, Chris and Ama have been forced to confront another death: the loss of African spiritual knowledge and practices through the process of enslavement. This loss is not total, African spiritual practice has survived the diaspora and spread and thrived in incredibly resilient ways. But as Black Americans turn to ancient African knowledge systems such as Ifa–to name just one tradition–with its belief in the ongoing presence of ancestors and one’s duty to revere them, they often get stigmatized. This stigma comes from society writ large, but also Black communities, and most painfully from family members, friends, and lovers. In their desire to reach across death’s threshold they risk another death: social alienation from the living.

Chronicles of Nina is a dance with death. The steps skim the middle passage in reverse. The movement embodies Sankofa, the principle of going back to get what is vital and was lost. The motion across the ocean invites communion with the departed, fuses skill with spirit, and holds the hope of deepening relations with the living. It unwinds colonial traumas as it grounds the dancers in their roots. This rooting allows them to honor those whose shoulders they stand on, to carry their legacy with pride, and to branch into untold joys and beauties and futures.

The only way to rebirth is through death, so how will you dance with it?

Welcome to Chronicles of Nina… What Now?

–Patrick Crowley, PhD

Track List

Altar Preparation - soundscape by Sam Crawford and Ama Law with “Water No Get Enemy” by Fela Aníkúlápó Kuti (used with permission from The Kuti Estate and Sony Music Publishing)
Call and Response - soundscape by Emerald Holman and Malari Moore
Funkier - soundscape by Malari Moore (inspired by “Funkier than a mosquito’s Tweeter" by Nina Simone)
Interlude: What’s in a name? - interview with Sherry Law, Nyla Law, and Nia Law
Four Women - vocals by Kimberly Dowdie, Jamie Carter, Jennifer Wade, and Keitha Shepherd ; arrangement by Kingsley Jarrett Jr. (inspired by “Four Women” by Nina Simone)
The Second Calling - soundscape by Emerald Holman and Malari Moore; with Sam Crawford and Ama Law; prayer/offering by Louis Law Jr.
Telephone - vocals by Jennifer Wade and Keitha Shepherd; arrangement by Kingsley Jarrett Jr. with Logan Wade and Tyson Wade (inspired by “Telephone” by Erykah Badu)
Interlude: Sherry Wine - interview with Theresa Saddler and Cynthia Saddler
What now? - arrangement by Kingsley Jarrett Jr. (inspired by “Crown” by Kendrick Lamar)
Libation - soundscape by Malari Moore; with Sam Crawford and Ama Law

Special Thanks

Thank you to all our family, friends, and our village that constantly lifts us up… especially “Nonnie," “Mimi," “Grama,” and our beautiful daughters Nyla and Nia for allowing us to interview you and share your voices. Emerald and Malari, thank you for grieving with us and allowing our vision to come to life through you. To our mentors MK Abadoo and Tariq O’Meally for guiding and encouraging us. To our community for checking in on us and giving us feedback. Thank you to Idrissa Diakhate for supporting Malari’s costume build. To Calla Venma and TreVaughn Ellis for supporting us throughout this entire process. To the team who helped us put together our fundraiser event, and to everyone who supported including but not limited to Jameelah Morris; Niani and Clyde Stimpson; The Image Band; Haus of Bambi and all those who donated items! To the team who helped us put together the Great Person’s Ball back in October, we had a blast! To our artist friends and Project ChArma collective who inspire us to keep going: Chitra Subramanian, Greg David, Angad Kalsi, Talia Hamiel, Raphael Villacrusis, Johnii Revlon Ninja Raven Nevermore as well as the casts of Full Circle: Bridging the Gap and Tides.

Special Thanks to the vocalists “the sisters," our brother and musical arrangement team Kingsley Jarret Jr. and Sam Crawford for balancing the tracks. We are also grateful to Howard Community College and Elizabeth Higgins for providing the home in which this piece was birthed. Special thanks to our inspirations Kendrick Lamar and Nina Simone. We wouldn’t be here without our ancestors who survived and strived to pave a new path in this strange land. Lastly, we want to thank the Kennedy Center Dance Programming department for allowing us the opportunity to showcase and develop this work.

Staff

Kennedy Center Dance Programming Staff

Director, Dance Programming

Jane Raleigh
Assistant Manager, Dance Programming

Malik Burnett
Assistant Manager, Dance Programming

Mallory Miller
Intern, Dance Programming

Tierney Solmo
Senior Press Representative, Non-Classical

Brittany Laeger
Public Relations Coordinator, Non-Classical

Miles Newton
Vice President, Marketing

Derek Johnson
Manager, Marketing

Chenay Newton

Kennedy Center Executive Leadership

President, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing ArtsDeborah F. Rutter

Vice President, Public RelationsEileen Andrews

Chief Information Officer Ralph Bellandi

Interim Vice President of Human Resources LaTa'sha M. Bowens

Senior Vice President, MarketingKimberly J. Cooper

Executive Director, National Symphony OrchestraJean Davidson

Senior Vice President, Artistic PlanningMonica Holt

Chief Financial OfficerStacey Johnson

Vice President, EducationJordan LaSalle

Vice President, Government Relations and ProtocolLaurie McKay

Senior Vice President, DevelopmentLeslie Miller

General Director, Washington National OperaTimothy O’Leary

Vice President, FacilitiesMatt Floca

Executive Vice President & General CounselAsh Zachariah

Staff for the Terrace Theater

Theater Manager Xiomara Mercado*

Head Usher Randy Howes

Production Manager Rich Ching

Master Technicians Dustin Dunsmore and Susan Kelleher

Box Office Treasurer Ron Payne

*Represented by ATPAM, the Association of Theatrical Press Agents and Managers.

Steinway Piano Gallery is the exclusive area representative of Steinway & Sons and Boston pianos, the official pianos of the Kennedy Center.

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The box office at the Kennedy Center is represented by I.A.T.S.E, Local #868.

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The technicians at the Kennedy Center are represented by Local #22, Local #772, and Local #798 I.A.T.S.E., AFL-CIO-CLC, the professional union of theatrical technicians.