THE PARABLES OF MUTANTS AND MADMEN CYCLE
(2006-2014)
TAR. EVIDENCES OF THINGS UNSAID/WORLD HEADQUARTERS. RESTLESS NATIVES.
Developed to tour as individual repertory works or as an evening length community engagement platform, The Parables of Mutants and Madmen Cycle are a set of historically disparate but inter-related testimonies interrogating the concepts of history, race/racism, and the human condition in 20th and 21st century America. Started in 2006, The Parables of Mutants and Madmen Cycle examines and ‘riffs off’ of specific allegorical tales that illuminate the foibles of the Euro-American aesthetic tradition in the U.S., through the revealing of certain truths about ‘Black/White’ co-existence. Each work in the cycle gives unique voice and word to the inward hunger we all have for some kind of spiritual connection and transformative experience. It is a collection of kinetic stories (i.e. speculative dance theatre fiction) inspired by the concept of race in America-a fiction within a fiction. I am challenging myself, my dancers, design collaborators and my audiences to look into ourselves — even into those parts of our psyche and soul where we haven’t dared to travel for some time. Through African-derived movement and aesthetics, I am interested in inverting audience’s expectations, challenging them to examine their own assumptions and instincts (about African Diasporic dance, about society, about how race functions in their understanding of the world, etc.), to perceive how they might identify with and even become the alienator, dominator, and oppressor even when they subscribe to the idea of freedom and democracy. With The Parables of Mutants and Madmen Cycle I am challenging the audience and myself to consider hope and possibilities in societal contexts that devalue and actively deny diverse expressions of hope and possibility.