A Movement Odyssey Celebrating The Life And Legacy Of Muhammad Ali
"I came. I saw. I loved" - Marlies Yearby
Tony Award winning choreographer of RENT on Broadway
CAST
Danté Brown began his dance training at Wesleyan University, which led him to The Ohio State University to receive his MFA in Choreography and Performance. As a performer, Danté has worked with artists such as Esther Baker-Tarpaga, Christal Brown, David Dorfman, Kendra Portier, and Noa Zuk, among others. After founding Dante Brown|Warehouse Dance in 2010, DB|WD has had the opportunity to show work at Columbus Dance Theater, Dance Gallery Festival, Dixon Place, GAP Green Building, LaMaMa Moves Festival, Movement Research at Judson Church, The New Museum, Sam Houston State University, Triskelion Arts, The Wild Project, Wexner Center for the Arts, and YourMove Dance Festival.
Timothy Edwards
Tim is a Dancer, Choreographer and Teacher. Timothy Edwards, a Hawaii native, began his journey into dance at the age of fourteen when he stepped in his first dance class, African dance. From that day on his teacher, Desiree Kramer, would give him the tools and inspiration to pursue his new found dance dream.
Timothy received his B.A. in Dance at Hunter College and is now working with Camille A. Brown and Dancers, David Dorfman Dance Company, Christal Brown and John Zullo Raw Movements as well as other NYC based companies and choreographers. Timothy has worked and performed with Nicole Wolcott, Eva Dean Dance Company, Wendell Cooper, David Capps/ dances, Gerald Otte and Compay, Monica Bill Barnes, Robin Dunn's Middleground DanceTheater and The IndoRican Dance Company. Timothy has had the honor of teaching nationally and internationally. He was chosen to travel abroad and become a Cultural Envoy where he performed and taught in the styles of Hip Hop, Breaking and other street forms. He now teaches for the Joffery Ballet School and the Brooklyn Ballet. He would like to thank his friends and family for their continue d support and love.
Orlando Hunter
Orlando is an international artist , who has performed in Trinidad & Tobago and Zimbabwe,Africa with Ananya Chatterjea, on a project that was based on the economic dysfunction and exploitation of oil and how its extraction from the earth causes systemic violence against women, water and children. Orlando has studied GLBT activism and history in Amsterdam and Berlin. He is a choreographer that creates, researches and illustrates an African-American male who responds to a
white supremacist system. Grew up dancing Hip-Hop. He graduated with a BFA degree from the University of Minnesota’s Dance Program, where he performed works by Donald Byrd, Bill T. Jones, Carl Flink, Louis Falco, Colleen Thomas, Uri Sands, Stephen Petronio, and Nora Chipaumire. His solo "Mutiny" was selected to represent the University of Minnesota at the 2011 ACDFA gala in Madison Wisconsin. He also has performed with TU Dance at its Ordway debut and with Makeda Thomas in her 10th anniversary show. He is a member of the Ananya Dance Theater an all women's company where he is the first male member.He has danced for two seasons with Contempo Physical Dance, and three seasons with Threads Dance Project. Upon arriving to New York he has performed at the Apollo Theater and NJPAC with the Harlem-based company Forces of Nature. Recently he has started a collective Brother(hood) Dance!, choreographed and danced in a multidisciplinary show titled "Redbone: A Biomythography" with it's debut at the Nuyorican Cafe and Wild Project Theater.
Cameron McKinney
Cameron is a dancer, choreographer, teacher, and author from Memphis, TN. He is the Artistic Director of Kizuna 絆 Dance and has been commissioned by SpectorDance Studio. His choreographic work has been shown in New York and in California, Massachusetts, and Vermont with the Dance Company of Middlebury. Cameron currently dances with The Median Movement, Christal Brown / INSPIRIT, and Chafin Seymour. He speaks Japanese and has studied dance and taught internationally in Tokyo.
Gilbert Reyes
Gilbert was born in the Bronx and raised in Spanish Harlem, is a graduate from Hunter College with a B.A. in Dance and Anthropology focused in Linguistics with a minor in Afro-Latino Studies. Inspired by physicality and improvisation Reyes plays with the body's different venues of exploration through movement research. He dances for Maura Donohue and Frankie Martinez as well as Christal Brown. He is currently creating work that questions the relationship between authority and reputation in todays current events surrounding police brutality towards people of color.
Ricarrdo Valentine
Ricardo's artistic experience is rooted in using art as a vehicle for activism. In November 2011, Ricarrdo performed in the works-in-process program at the Guggenheim Museum with Christal Brown and Fred Ho in the “The Sweet Science Suite: A Scientific Soul Music Honoring of Muhammad Ali”. Ricarrdo Valentine has presented his choreography at Bates Dance Festival, Brooklyn Museum, El Museo de Barro and LaGuardia Community College. Ricarrdo continues to collaborate and work with Christal Brown/INspirit, Edisa Weeks/Delirious Dance, Paloma McGregor, DanteBrown/Warehouse Dance, Malcolm Low/Formal Structure Jill Sigman/Thinkdance, Ni'Ja Whitson, Nadine George-Graves, Ari Krieth and Emily Berry/B3W. Most recently, he recently attended the Urban Bush Women's Summer Leadership Institute in New Orleans, Louisiana to further investigate how to use dance to connect to a specific community and leverage the arts as a vehicle for social activism and civic engagement. Ricarrdo Valentine is the co-founder of Brother(hood) Dance!
Billy Joe "J" Bouey
Billie-Joe “J.” Bouey is a choreographer, performer, and dance educator. Jay was born in Los Angeles, raised in Phoenix, and recent New York City transplant who graduated from Arizona State University with a BFA in Dance. As well as dancing with Inspirit Dance, I am a current performer and collaborator with Elisa Monte Dance as an apprentice, and Duane Cyrus. As a dance instructor at Mind-Builders Creative Arts Center in the Bronx, he contributes to making dance easily accessible in low-income communities for Black and Brown people.
Tyrone Bevans
Tyrone Bevans was born and raised Bronx. He is a dancer, choreographer and visual artist. He began his journey in dance while studying at the Mark Morris Dance Group and Martha Graham School for Contemporary Dance. In the past Tyrone has performed for choreographers and artist such as Amalgamate Dance Company, Movimento do Povo, Enforced Arch Dance Company, Sons of Kick, Neil Schwartz, and Karla Garcia. As a graduate of Pratt Institute with a BFA in Communication Design (Illustration) Tyrone has a passion for printmaking as well as dance. He is continually exploring ways to combine the these medium to create new performance experiences. He is currently working on a performance series exploring fagile masculinity in relation to binary gender norms.
Wendell Gray
Raised in Atlanta, Georgia, Wendell Gray has always had a passion for the arts. He attended Dekalb School of the Arts where he was involved in dance, vocal music, drama, musical theater, media, and music production. During his time in high school, he attended DanceMakers of Atlanta under the direction of Lynise Heard and Denise Latimer. In the Spring of 2015, he graduated from The University of the Arts with a BFA in Dance, under the direction of Donna Faye Burchfield.
Among many opportunities, he has performed in works choreographed by Sharon Eyal, Doug Varone, Mark Caserta, Tommie Waheed, Netta Yerushalmy, and Helen Simoneau. In the summer of 2013, Wendell was awarded a choreographic residency at San Francisco Conservatory of Dance. He was also on faculty at Millennium Dance Complex Philadelphia in 2015.
Upon graduating, Wendell received the Pennsylvania Ballet Choreography Award. In June of 2016, he premiered How Close is Together? featuring dancers from Pennsylvania Ballet II and Philadanco II. In the summer of 2015, Wendell was awarded the Best Choreographer Award at The Dance Awards in NYC and competed in the 2016 Capezio A.C.E. Awards. He was also one of 20 choreographer’s chosen for the 2015 REVERBdance Festival. In Fall 2016, Wendell performed Rules Of The Game at Brooklyn Academy of Music for choreographer Jonah Bokaer and fellow collaborators Pharrell Williams and Daniel Arsham. Jonah and Wendell have recently recorded video material for the Medardo Russo exhibit at the Pulitzer Foundation in St. Louis. Wendell is also on guest faculty at Broadway Dance Center in NYC.
Matthew Woodcock
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Matthew Woodcock grew up in a household surrounded by art and music. From an early age, he already felt a strong pull towards dance and the creation of movement. At just 7 years old, Matthew had already been recognized by the Walter K. Hoerning Foundation. Through this foundation, all of Matthews early artistic endeavours were fully funded, opening doors that would have otherwise been closed. By the age of 11, Matthew had enrolled in the dance department at the Ronald Edmonds Learning Center, under the direction of Ruth Sistaire, as well as at Creative Outlet Dance Theater of Brooklyn, under the tutelage of Jamel Gaines. There, he began to build his artistic palate studying in West African, tap, hip-hop, jazz, lyrical, and even began exploring his choreographic side. In 2014, Matthew graduated from the famed Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. Upon graduation, Matthew attended the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London, UK. Matthew has performed with artists such as Lady Leshurr, FKA twigs, and in various venues both nationally and internationally such as the Bonnie Bird Theatre in London, UK and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Matthew currently dances with Danté Brown|Warehouse Dance and is a freelance dancer and choreographer based in New York City.
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Special Guest Performers:
Jabari Matthew is a sophomore at Middlebury College in Vermont. Born and raised New York City, he was always surrounded by its urban scenery and ubiquity of art. Dancing since the age of 3, Jabari attended LaGuardia high school as a dance major. Outside of dance, Jabari enjoys music, poetry, and theater. Jabari is thrilled to be a part of this year’s, “Opulence of Integrity.”
Patrick Washington - Forged in Washington DC's now legendary U Street Poetry Scene, Patrick Washington spent the mid-to-late 90's cutting his teeth as part of the Generation 2000 poetry troupe. The 4 time DC representative at the National Poetry Slam and 2001’s Washington DC Def Poetry Slam Champion has been heard in every corner of the country, eventually becoming a semi-regular performer on HBO presents Russell Simmons Def Poetry, along with his right-hand man natural law DP, as one of spoken words most dynamic duos, The POEM-CEES.
In 2009, he co-wrote and narrated the centerpiece to Tavis Smiley's national museum exhibit, “America I Am” which was seen by over a million people, and as part of the POEM-CEES, he was honored to write and perform an original piece along with Grammy-winning violinist Miri Ben-Ari for the dedication of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, sharing the stage with Stevie Wonder & President Obama, among others on October 16th 2011.
The U Street activist still abiding within, Patrick remains a strong voice for artists rights, and as a teaching artist for Words Beats & Life & The American Poetry Museum, he conducts poetry/hip-hop workshops for thousands of young people locally & nationally, spreading his love for the spoken, written & the rhythmic word.
*More Special Guests TBA...
*FOR ALL CASTING INQUIRIES PLEASE CONTACT OPULENCEOFINTEGRITY@GMAIL.COM
