Film Screening and Conversation with Ephrat Asherie and dancer Archie Burnett
Check Your Body At The Door brings to light the 1990s house dance culture that has largely been in the dark. The film includes underground footage culled from the past thirty years, with focuses on shared relationships and histories of some of its major players and master free-stylists. The virtuosity of eclectic urban dance styles and the personalities of the people who created these moves are revealed. Ephrat Asherie’s newest work UnderScored—which can be seen on November 19, in-progress—employs testimonials and unbridled dancing to capture the work of her artistic forbearers in the safety and freedom of New York’s downtown clubs. After the screening, join the film’s griot/guiding star Archie Burnett in conversation with Asherie as they discuss the golden decade of dancing and its continuing resonance today in popular shows like Pose, Legendary, and The Get Down.
Download Program Note (PDF file)
SuperPOWERED Pricing
SuperPOWERED pricing is listed for all our virtual events. It’s the the average price you would’ve paid to see the event live. Thank you for being our superhero!
Elite commercial clubs like Studio 54 were mainstays in the news media of the mid-’70s and ’80s, but underground parties like David Mancuso’s Loft and Larry Levan’s Paradise Garage were the real spaces that shaped musical tastes, fashion trends, and paved the way for movement revolutions. UnderScored is a multi-faceted project rooted in the intergenerational stories and memories of underground club heads. Created in collaboration with legendary elders from the New York City underground dance community including Archie Burnett and Michele Saunders, the cast ranges in age from 25–77. This project was originally envisioned to take shape as a series of performances, community based events, and in the creation of an oral history archive. To discover how UnderScored has developed to adapt to our new reality, join us for a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the virtual creative process of the work. Dancing, stories, archival photographs and footage will be shared, along with EAD’s latest video iteration of UnderScored, filmed at Lincoln Center.
UnderScored is commissioned by ArtPower at UC San Diego along with Works & Process at the Guggenheim, the Momentary at Crystal Bridges and the Yard. The full-evening length work will be performed as part of ArtPower’s 2021-22 season.
SuperPOWERED Pricing
SuperPOWERED pricing is listed for all our virtual events. It’s the the average price you would’ve paid to see the event live. Thank you for being our superhero!
Adapting History is an oral telling of American music through history and American history through music. From gospel to blues, jazz to R&B, America has produced some of the most innovative music of the 20th century. Although the songs are easy on the ears, their inception occurred in cultural climates that were often discordant. In Adapting History, musical artist Dahlak uses spoken word poetry to narrate the complex history of our nation. His musical chronicle shows that despite conflict and misunderstanding, we can still be brilliantly creative.
Adapting History was created in collaboration with and commissioned by Montalvo Arts Center’s Education Department, OneBeat via the U.S. State Department, ArtPower at UC San Diego, and the Mondavi Center at UC Davis.
SuperPOWERED Pricing
SuperPOWERED pricing is listed for all our virtual events. It’s the the average price you would’ve paid to see the event live. Thank you for being our superhero!
“Rev. Sekou delivers the spiritual performance we need now.”—Paste Magazine
Noted activist, theologian, author, documentary filmmaker, and musician, Reverend Osagyefo Sekou was born in St. Louis, Missouri and raised in the rural Arkansas Delta. Rev. Sekou’s music is a unique combination of Arkansas Delta Blues, Memphis Soul 1970s funk, and Gospel. His single from his first album, “We Comin”—was named the new anthem for the modern Civil Rights movement by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In May 2017 he released In Times Like These, produced by the six-time Grammy-nominated North Mississippi Allstars. His latest release from 2019, When We Fight, We Win—Live from Memphis, features new music as well as songs from the first two albums.
SuperPOWERED Pricing
SuperPOWERED pricing is listed for all our virtual events. It’s the the average price you would’ve paid to see the event live. Thank you for being our superhero!
Featuring two of the most vivid voices in “modern-Delta” (Rolling Stone) blues—Corey Harris and Cedric Watson—team up for this special show. Hosted by Corey Harris, a MacArthur Grant recipient, along with Cedric Watson one of Louisiana’s foremost purveyors of Creole music and culture. True Blues chronicles the extraordinary living culture of the blues in an evening of music and conversation. A True Blues concert vividly brings to life this crucial wellspring of American music.
Guitarist, vocalist, songwriter, bandleader, and MacArthur fellow Corey Harris has carved out his own in blues. He has performed, recorded, and toured with many of the top names in music such as BB King, Taj Mahal, Buddy Guy, R.L.Burnside, Dave Matthews Band, Tracy Chapman, Wilco, among others, and was a featured artist and narrator of the Martin Scorcese 2003 film, Feel Like Going Home, which traced the evolution of blues from West Africa to the southern U.S. Harris shares the stage with one of the brightest young talents to emerge in Cajun, Creole and Zydeco (Louisiana French) music over the last decade, Cedric Watson—a four-time Grammy-nominated fiddler, singer, accordionist, and songwriter with seemingly unlimited potential.
Campus Partner:
This program was made possible by a grant from the office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at UC San Diego
Join members of Ariel String Quartet in conversation as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven’s birth.The quartet will share stories of how they approach the composer’s music and why it is still as vital today as it was two centuries ago.
