Arts and entertainment  |  Education  |  Learning  |  Profiles  |  UW and the community

January 27, 2017

Meany Center joins visiting Step Afrika! dance troupe to honor 100th anniversary of artist Jacob Lawrence’s birth

 

The University of Washington Meany Center for Performing Arts will host the Washington, D.C.-based dance troupe Step Afrika! Feb. 16-18 in Meany Hall. Teri Mumme, director of marketing and communications director for Meany Center, conducted an interview with Michelle Witt, the center’s executive director, about the production, the center’s ongoing mission — and the importance of honoring artist Jacob Lawrence in the 100^th year since his birth.

Why is this project important for Meany Center to undertake now?

I was approached by the dance company, Step Afrika!, with an opportunity to co-commission the remounting of a performance work “The Migration: Reflections on Jacob Lawrence,” based on the painter Jacob Lawrence’s 60-panel Migration Series – which portrays the movement of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North throughout the 20^th century.

The co-commission and presentation of Step Afrika!’s “The Migration” was to coincide with the celebration of the 100^th anniversary of Lawrence’s birth, in 2017. Already an exciting project, it was even more compelling because Lawrence had moved to Seattle in 1971 to teach at (what was then) the UW’s art department, and made a home in Seattle until his death in 2000. His influence at the UW and in the city of Seattle was enormous; there are many of his works on campus, including a mural created specifically for the lobby of Meany Hall.

My colleague Jamie Walker, director of the UW School of Art + Art History + Design, recounts that Lawrence was deeply drawn to the UW — and that his dedication as an inspired educator was central to who he was. This project is important to undertake now, not only as part of the 100^th anniversary of Lawrence’s birth, but also as part of the UW’s participation in the vitally important conversations about African-American identity taking place across the country and the current migrations happening around the world, that are such a focus of contemporary national and international politics.

How does it support the new mission of Meany Center?

Meany Center endeavors to be a national model of innovative performance, public engagement, learning and creative research in the arts. Artistic excellence is a pillar of our mission and Jacob Lawrence and Step Afrika! demonstrate original, innovative and courageously realized examples of human creativity and expression.

The new mission of Meany Center is to nurture a culture of shared discovery through advancing interdisciplinary creative research — here as a supporter of the commission and the remounting of Step Afrika!’s important interdisciplinary work. Meany Center also forges powerful arts engagement and learning experiences by connecting diverse audiences and artists, and bold approaches to audience and student engagement. Step Afrika! will be engaging in a variety of campus and community activities throughout their residency, including a performance at SAM amidst the 60-panel Migration Series itself, where they are on display.

Meany Center is a national model of innovative performance, public engagement, learning and creative research in the arts. Artistic excellence is at the core of our mission and Step Afrika!’s use of Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series to create a new work is a perfect example of how one artist’s legacy inspires the next generation.

One of the goals of Meany Center is to nurture a culture of shared discovery by advancing creative research — here as a co-commissioner of the remounting of Step Afrika!’s important interdisciplinary work. We are also connecting audiences and artists in powerful arts engagement and learning experiences. Step Afrika! will be in residence at the UW, engaging in a variety of campus and community activities, including a performance at SAM, where the panels are currently on display.

The Jacob Lawrence Gallery is also presenting a series of exhibitions and programs in honor of the Lawrence centenary, and the Henry Art Gallery will present an exhibition of Lawrence’s silkscreen prints “Eight Studies for the Book of Genesis.”

What is the production’s connection to the Seattle Art Museum’s exhibition of the Migration Series in February?

The connection to the Seattle Art Museum happened very organically. Chiyo Ishikawa, the deputy director for art at SAM and I happened to be on the same plane returning from Madrid in summer of 2015; I mentioned that we had just secured the co-commission and performance of Step Afrika!’s “The Migration: Reflections on Jacob Lawrence” and would love to collaborate somehow. The 60-panel series of paintings — jointly owned by the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Phillips Collection, a museum of modern art in Washington, D.C. — was on display at MOMA at that time.

The Phillips Collection was willing to explore the possibility of lending four or five panels from their half of Lawrence’s Migration Series to interested project partners, provided their facilities meet approved museum standards for adequate display parameters, which Meany’s did not.  I suggested to Chiyo that SAM explore this possibility as well as other types of collaborations that we might engage in.

Chiyo not only loved the idea, but shared that SAM’s American Curator, Patty Junker, had already been thinking about the Migration Series, and that they were going to see if they could borrow the entire series. It was our hope together that the timing could coincide with our presentation of Step Afrika!’s “The Migration.” After much back and forth with MOMA and The Phillips Collection, Chiyo confirmed that they could bring the entire series to Seattle for display.

Tell us a little about Step Afrika! and how they will be engaging dance in the exploration of this subject?

Step Afrika! is the first professional company in the world dedicated to the tradition of stepping. Stepping in the United States grew out of song and dance rituals practiced by historically African-American fraternities and sororities, beginning in the early 1900s. In addition to step shows and competitions on college campuses, today stepping can also be found in schools, churches and community organizations around the country. Step Afrika! takes this tradition and combines it with African foot dances such as gumboot, originally conceived by miners in South Africa as an alternative to drumming, which was banned by authorities.

In Step Afrika!’s “Migration,” dance and visual art come together, and the painted images — which are projected onto the stage — in essence come alive. The intention was to make the dancers seem to emerge directly from the panels that Lawrence painted. Step Afrika!’s artistic director, Brian Williams, did extensive research into not only Lawrence’s panels and methods, but also the Migration itself, for the troupe’s first mounting of the production in 2011.

Lawrence wanted the series to transcend the specifics of time and place and to express a timeless relevance and ultimately a sense of hopefulness. It is a very interdisciplinary work and in a sense it is a nod to the idea of a very wide range of art forms that influenced Lawrence and even of his use of color and rhythm in his painting. Step Afrika!’s “The Migration” starts by depicting an experience in the South and moves toward the North, but is not chronological. The idea of the train is central to the troupe’s interpretation, as it was the key mode of transportation throughout the Great Migration.

In stepping, there is a movement called Alpha Train, which is specific to one fraternity, and the step basically imitates the sound of the train. In addition, the history of stepping actually parallels the story of the migration — as people from the South coming to the North trying to get better educational opportunities started stepping in the black fraternities and sororities.

I just finished reading Isabel Wilkerson’s “The Warmth of Other Suns,” an epic nonfiction rendering of the Great Migration which tells so many stories of black Americans fleeing the oppressive Jim Crow laws of the South, toward what they hoped was a better life with the promise of more stable working conditions, greater equity and the ability for their children to become educated. Of course what they found in their new communities was far from what what they had so desperately hoped and struggled for. I feel very moved being able to present this work at such an influential public university as the UW, which has provided a better life for many generations of struggling individuals and families.

I cannot think of a better way to honor the intention of Lawrence’s work as we celebrate his life and legacy.

###

For more information about the Meany Center for the Performing Arts or Step Afrika!’s performance, visit MeanyCenter.org.

Tag(s): Jacob Lawrence • Jacob Lawrence Gallery • Meany Center for the Performing Arts • Michelle Witt • School of Art + Art History + Design

---