Walker Art Center, Pillsbury House Theatre, and Pangea World Theater present
Leslie Parker Dance Project’s
Divination Tools: imagine home
Thursday–Saturday, May 11–13, 2023
8:00 pm
McGuire Theater
Divination Tools: imagine home
Directed by LESLIE PARKER
Dramaturg
SHARON BRIDGFORTH
Dancers
LESLIE PARKER
TENISHA GEORGE
MAME DIARRA (SAMANTHA) SPEIS
Sound Designers
MICHAEL WIMBERLY
NIOKA WORKMAN
DAMEUN STRANGE
FARAI MALIANGA
Costume Designers
MAGGIE DAYTON
JORDAN HAMILTON
MASANARI KAWAHARA
Visual Artists
JEMILA MacEWAN
JORDAN HAMILTON
BAYOU BAY
Builder
KELLIE LARSON
Stage Design
SEITU JONES
JORDAN HAMILTON
Priestess (Processional)
KHUSABA SEKA
Light Design
HEIDI ECKWALL
Projection Design
MEENA MANGALVEDHEKAR
love conjure/blues
ALTAR FILM
Written by SHARON BRIDGFORTH
The “love conjure/blues Altar Film” text is excerpted from the “love conjure/blues” performance novel.
Producers
SHARON BRIDGFORTH & KRISSY MAHAN
Cinematography & Editing
KRISSY MAHAN
Director/Writer
SHARON BRIDGFORTH
Visual Sculpting
WURA NATASHA OGUNJI
Featuring
OMI OSUN JONI L. JONES
Voices
LAURIE CARLOS & SHARON BRIDGFORTH
For more go to: sharonbridgforth.com
WITH APPRECIATION
Thanks to all who have contributed, supported, and participated in Call to Remember, including: Laurie Carlos, Mike Wangan, Marion McClinton, Pillsbury House + Theatre, Pangea World Theatre, Walker Art Center, Danspace Project, CounterPulse, Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, Minnesota State Arts Board, National Dance Project/NEFA, National Performance Network (NPN), Fractured Atlas, Springboard for the Arts, Compton Foundation, June Wilson, Noel Raymond, Sharon Bridgforth, Omi Osun Joni L. Jones, Naimah Pétigny, Khusaba Seka, Nia Love, Marlies Yearby, Douglas Ewart, Jemila MacEwan, Brian Parker, Oseye Mchawi, Edisa Weeks, Lydia Bell, TU Dance, University of Minnesota Theatre Arts & Dance, Cowles Center for Performing Arts, McKnight Artist Fellowships for Choreographers, Peter Morrow, A.K Wright, Andrea Manolov, Maxine Yamazaki, Liam McLaughlin, Francine Sheffield Wasson, Loris Bradley, Joshua B. Alafia, and Adrianna Foreman.
A special dedication goes to Margaret Patricia Parker Hughes and Walter Leslie Hughes.
Peace, Love, Light, and Progress.
Big hugs and kisses!
Curator's Note
Leslie Parker is a natural leader, a truth teller, and a teacher. In spring 2020 the Walker joined forces to co-commission and codevelop Parker’s massive Call to Remember (CtR) project with Minneapolis’ Pangea World Theater (PWT) and Pillsbury House + Theatre (PHT) (CtR’s first supporter). While the duel pandemics of COVID-19 and the overdue racial reckoning following the murder of George Floyd would stretch the process from two to three years, it only allowed us to more deeply appreciate and learn from Parker’s many values: humility; honoring and trusting process; understanding and fighting against endemic inequity and (white) privilege; the need to slow down in the arts, remain curious, and flexible; appreciation for deep archival project research; trusting the body’s truth; honoring Black femme improvisation; and supporting the leadership of our local CtR community partners. Within that first year, new national partners like National Performance Network, Danspace Project (NYC), CounterPulse (San Francisco), and MANCC (Tallahassee, Florida) came on board, drawn in by Parker’s expansive vision.
New tributaries regularly flowed out of Call to Remember, enriching and deepening the project: a new publication; CtR classes by national master dance improvisers Nia Love (at Pillsbury House + Theatre) and Marlies Yearby (at the Walker Art Center); a heartfelt artist-staff roundtable during a weeklong Walker residency; a key PWT residency full of learning and development; an affiliated festival of Black solo dance improvisation co-produced by PWT and PHT; and a rare Walker Performing Arts and PELI (Education) Department collaboration to forge a free celebratory processional/installation on the opening night of Parker’s Walker run. While collaborators have come and gone over the years, Parker’s focus, confidence, and fierce commitment to upholding Black femme improvisation never wavered. Given this is a world premiere grounded in improvisation, I’m not entirely sure what tonight may be, yet I am certain Divination Tools: imagine home will brim with deep healing, resonance, and full-on collaborative energy between the inspired dance, visual art, and music artists involved. Following the work’s national tour, I’m sure we’ll continue to see Parker embrace and frame Black culture, Black dance, and Black femme improvisation in exciting, important new ways for years into the future.
—Philip Bither, Director and Senior Curator of Performing Arts
Threshold of Change
In advance of each night's performance in the McGuire, Leslie Parker and collaborators will perform a processional, Threshold of Change, on the Walker campus.
On Thursday, May 11, the processional will start at 7 pm. It will begin across the street from the Walker’s main entrance, at the top of the stairs to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, on Vineland Place.
On Friday and Saturday, May 12-13, the performances begin with a processional from the Hennepin Lounge at 7:15 pm.
Learn More
The performance on Friday, May 12 will be followed by a Q&A with Leslie Parker.
Call to Remember Methodologies: Reflections
In a recent essay for MnArtists, Naimah Pétigny and Leslie Parker discuss methods for conjuring Black Space and dance improvisation as a way to access collective memory and ancestral wisdom.
On the Threshold: A Conversation with Leslie Parker
Amanda Hunt, the Walker’s head of Public Engagement, Learning, and Impact, sat down with Leslie Parker to discuss the potential for change that lies within one’s environment, community, and collaborations.
Accessibility notes
ASL is planned for Threshold of Change on Thursday, May 11.
love conjure/blues Alter film, featured in the performance in the McGuire Theater, contains multiple overlapping tracks of dialogue. Audience members who are deaf or hard of hearing can request a transcript of the dialogue for the film at the Box Office.
For more information about accessibility at the Walker, visit our Access page.
About the Artists
LESLIE PARKER was born on occupied land with deep roots in the territory also known as St. Paul, in the Rondo community. She is a dance artist with home-art bases in Brooklyn and in the Twin Cities. As a dance artist/maker, improviser, performer, director, collaborator, and educator, she emphasizes an organic aesthetic in experimental movement derived from the Black and African diaspora. Growing up in the Rondo community rooted Parker in socially engaged art, leading her to earn a BFA in choreography and modern dance technique from Esther Boyer College of Music & Dance (Temple University) and an MFA in dance from Hollins University in partnership with the Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts, and the Dresden Frankfurt Company in Frankfurt, Germany. As a guest assistant professor and full-time faculty member at University of Minnesota Department of Theatre Arts & Dance program, Parker set works for the Carleton College Dance Program, Sunken, and the University Dance Theatre, In Search of Colors. Parker’s original works have been presented by New York Live Arts, HarlemStages EMoves13, Thelma Hill Performing Arts Center, Tribeca Performing Art Center, Southern Theater, Pillsbury House + Theatre, Pangea World Theater, Walker Art Center, and Painted Bride Arts Center. Parker co-directed the annual 44th In the Heart of the Beast Puppet Theatre MayDay Tree of Life Ceremony 2018. She was choreographer for Jimmy & Lorraine: A Musing by Talvin Wilkes and Collidescope 4.0: Adventures in Pre- and Post-Racial America by Ping Chong and Talvin Wilkes; Penumbra Theatre’s 45th production of Black Nativity; and History Theatre’s Parks, a portrait of a young artist. More recently, her original work was recognized by the McKnight Foundation, where she was named a Choreographer Fellow (2022); National Dance Project (2021), National Performance Network Development fund (2021), and National Performance Network Creation Fund (2020). She is an Outstanding Performance Bessie Award recipient and was an inaugural Jerome Hill Foundation Artist Fellow (2019–21). Parker premieres Divination Tools: imagine home at Walker Art Center, May 11–13, 2023, with generous residency support from Danspace Project, N.Y.; Pangea World Theater, Pillsbury House + Theatre, and Maggie Allesse National Center for Choreography.
MAME DIARRA (SAMANTHA) SPEIS (she/her) is a mother and movement improviser intrigued with play, risk, rigor, and experimentation. She is a performer and co-artistic director of the critically acclaimed Urban Bush Women (UBW). Speis has worked with Gesel Mason, The Dance Exchange, Jumatatu Poe, Deborah Hay (as part of Some sweet day curated by Ralph Lemon at the MoMA), Baba Israel, Marjani Forte-Saunders, and Liz Lerman. In 2021, she performed as a guest artist with MBDance in the Motherboard Suite with artist Saul Williams, under the direction of Bill T. Jones. The recipient of the Alvin Ailey New Directions Choreography Lab, Speis was awarded a Bessie for Outstanding Performer in 2017. Her work has been featured at the Kennedy Center, Long Island University, Joyce SoHo, Hollins University, BAAD, Danspace Project, BAM, Dixon Place, BRIC, Dance Place, and The Kelly Strayhorn Theater. Speis has developed a movement and teaching practice that explores pelvic mobility as the root of powerful locomotion and as a point of connection to the stories, experiences, and lineages that reside in each of us. She has been a guest artist and teacher throughout the United States, South America, Senegal, and Europe. Speis has also taught at Princeton University and Montclair State University as a lecturer in Dance. She maintains a strong relationship with her alma mater, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), and was the commencement speaker for the VCUarts graduating class of 2020–21. In recent years, Speis has co-choreographed multiple new works with Jawole Willa Jo Zollar in collaboration with the UBW Dance Company, including Cannabis! A Viper Vaudeville, created by Baba Israel and directed by Talvin Wilks. Speis is developing UBW’s new site-responsive piece Haint Blu with Chanon Judson, which premieres in 2023.
TENISHA GEORGE is an interdisciplinary artist, choreographer, and aspiring teacher and cultural anthropologist. She is a Trinbagonian with an interest in Caribbean culture, which has influenced her current research study. She is completing an MA in Studio and Related Studies at Florida State University; her studies focus on the dance traditions of the Caribbean. Her work examines how nostalgia can be utilized to heal social segregation in traditional Trinidadian dances while exploring the various forgotten or disregarded practices that she would like to reinstate. George has a BFA in performing arts (with a specialization in dance) from the University of Trinidad and Tobago, where she trained in ballet, contemporary, Kathak, Odissi, Caribbean folk, and many other dance forms. George refers to herself as an aesthete, as she finds pleasure in both music and dance and the harmonious beauty that it exhibits. Her artistic path is fueled by the ability to build community and connection through traditional music and dance, and she aspires to produce work which reflects that.
SHARON BRIDGFORTH is a 2023 United States Artists Fellow, 2022 Winner of Yale’s Windham Campbell Prize in Drama, 2020–23 Playwrights’ Center Core Member, 2022–23 McKnight National Fellow, and a New Dramatists alumnae. She has received support from the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, Creative Capital, MAP Fund, and the National Performance Network. Her work is featured in The Yale Review, Teaching Black: The Craft of Teaching on Black Life and Literature (University of Pittsburgh) and Mouths of Rain: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Thought, Feminist Studies (The New Press) honoring 40 years of This Bridge Called My Back and But Some of Us Are Brave! Bridgforth’s new book, bull-jean & dem/dey back (53rd State Press 10, 2022) features two performance/novels that will be produced by Pillsbury House + Theatre in Minneapolis during its 2022–23 season. Bridgforth has been in residence at MANCC with Marjani Forté-Saunders and Ananya Dance Theatre and is proud to return with Leslie Parker. More at sharonbridgforth.com.
NAIMAH ZULMADELLE PÉTIGNY is a Black feminist scholar, dancer, and educator. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Literary Arts and Studies at the Rhode Island School of Design and holds the Schiller Family Assistant Professorship in Race in Art and Design. Pétigny’s research and teaching are shaped by her experiences as a youth organizer, racial justice facilitator, and dancer in professional ensembles. Pétigny holds a BA in Women’s Studies and Sociology from Vassar College and a PhD in Feminist Studies in the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota in 2021. Pétigny’s research and writing is multimodal and exists at the intersections of Black feminist theory, gender studies, and performance studies. She writes from, and toward, expansive and experimental spaces of Blackness. Her current research centers Black women’s contemporary dance theater performance and rethinks the linkages between coloniality, performance, erotics, and Black liberation. Her work has been published in Commoning Ethnography, the Walker Art Center magazine, Agitate! Unsettling Knowledges Journal, and the Routledge International Handbook of Gender and Feminist Geographies. In 2021 Pétigny began working with Leslie Parker Dance Project as a writer and developer of Black Space. As a Call to Remember collaborator, she has been deeply animated by the question of how to document and archive CtR’s many embodiments and wide-ranging practices of remembrance. She’s honored to support the Black creative research elements of CtR. Pétigny lives and works in Providence, R.I.
NIOKA WORKMAN is an artist, composer, and curator with numerous credits in dance, theater, music, and film. Her recent highlights include appearances at Carnegie Hall in tribute to Paul McCartney (Steve Jordan, music director); with Def Poetry Jam co-producer, Danny Simmons; Wordsmith at Newark Symphony Hall; Nioka Workman Trio featuring Kayo; string features with the Black Rock Coalition Orchestra; and in Bird Calls, a celebration of Charlie Parker by Jazz Foundation of America. Her arrangement of the title track for Blackbirds, by Betty LaVette/Verve, was nominated for a Grammy. Workman is part of ongoing dance projects by Leslie Parker Dance and Nia Love’s g1 (HOST):LOSTATSEA, which received a Bessie Award for music/sound design in 2020. Her own independently produced CD, That’s What She Said by Firey String Sistas, receives rave reviews worldwide. Workman received the 2023 South Arts Jazz Roads Tour Grant for tours with the Firey String Sistas through the U.S. Her European and U.S. tours include appearances at Greater Hartford Jazz Festival, Summer Stage Jazz Fest at the Billie, Springfield Jazz & Roots Festival, Race Street Live/Valley Jazz Informances, Baby Grand Jazz, International African Arts Festival, Sugar Hill Music Festival, Montreal Jazz Festival, Electronic Music Festival, and Sons d’Hiver Festival in Paris.
MICHAEL WIMBERLY’s commissioned compositions have appeared in the repertory of dance companies Urban Bush Women, Joffrey Ballet II, Alvin Ailey, Ailey II, Philadanco, Forces of Nature Dance Theatre, Joan Millers DancePlayers, Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Ballet Noir, Alpha Omega, Purelements, and the National Song and Dance Company of Mozambique. Film scores include As an Act of Protest by Dennis Leroy Moore, and Atlantic City Lights by Brent Owens for HBO. Sound design for theater includes Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Classical Theatre of Harlem, Saint Lucy’s Eyes by Bridgette Wimberly for the Women’s Project & Cherry Lane Theatre; Sarah Sings a Love Story by Stephanie Berry, produced by Crossroads Theatre; and Iced Out, Shackled and Chained for the National Black Theatre, for which Wimberly received two Audelco nominations. A veteran percussionist and composer, Wimberly has performed with dozens of luminous artists, including Steve Coleman, Greg Osby, India Arie, D.J. Rogers, and Joe.
DAMEUN STRANGE is a sound artist, multi-instrumentalist, and award-winning composer of conceptual electronic and improvised electro-acoustic works focusing on the African diaspora’s stories and themes, often exploring surrealist and afro-futurist ideas with unique impressionism. He is compelled to express through sound and poetry the beauty and resilience of the Black experience, digging into a pantheon of ancestors to tell stories of triumph while connecting the past, present, and future. Strange has worked with such artists as Leslie Parker, Ananya Chatterjea, J. Otis Powell, and Sha Cage and has been a featured performer in concerts celebrating the work of George Lewis, Thurston Moore, and Henry Threadgill. He is a 2018 recipient of the ACF | Create Award and 2019 Jerome Hill Fellowship. He lives in St. Paul with his wife, Corina, and their 4-year-old, Ezra. Like any good nerd, he enjoys a good sci-fi story and has a soft spot for anything related to cosmology.
FARAI MALIANGA (musician/composer/videographer) was born and raised in Zimbabwe and began his career in African dance in Colorado with Letitia Williams’ Harambee African Dance Ensemble and their Musical Director Judy “Fatu” Henderson. Upon arriving in New York, he began studying dance and drum with pioneers Youssouf Koumbassa, M’bemba Bangoura, and Ronald K. Brown. Performing with masters such as Chuck Davis in BAM’s Dance Africa and Reginald Yates and Heritage O.P. for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater for their 40th Anniversary. In theater with the Off-Broadway production of Darker Faces of the Earth directed by Trezana Beverley and on Broadway in the Fela! musical. In film for International Domestic Violence Series produced by Joe Rodman as well as Kasi Lemmons’ film Black Nativity. Also performing for the Public Theater in 2021 for their Shakespeare in the Park reimagining of Merry Wives of Windsor set in Harlem and consequently appearing in the HBO documentary Reopening Night cataloguing the return to Central Park. Malianga’s composition credits include commissioned works for Camille Brown, Karen Loves’ Umoja, Christal Browns’ Inspirit Dance Company, and Jenaguru an African Creation Myth for the Smithsonian. Recently scoring music for the dance documentaries Black Stains and Kehinde Ishangi’s Not My Enemy produced and edited by Tiffany Rhynard. Farai Malianga is a Professor at Florida State University with a focus on Music for dance and choreography; this year teaching Rhythmic Analysis, Music for Choreography, and Digital Audio Recording while also providing music support for African, Dunham, and Contemporary classes.
ALSO THIS WEEKEND
TU DANCE THE 3 WOMEN PROJECT
Friday and Saturday, May 12 & 13, 7:30 pm
The O'Shaughnessy, St. Paul
The 3-Women Project features choreographic works from three internationally renowned black female artists, Stefanie Batten Bland, Alanna Morris, and Yusha-Marie Sorzano, who have created work individually, while simultaneously seeking to explore and discover synergistic and unifying themes. These three dynamic and award-winning dance artists share their distinctly strong voices and their deep investment and investigations into their own artistic practice and identity as black women. TU Dance is excited to engage with our community and to share and celebrate the perspectives of these three incredibly talented women. For tickets and more information, visit the O'Shaughnessy website.
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