POWER

About the Show

Award-winning choreographer Reggie Wilson offers up a whirling, rhythmic, exalted expression of Black Shaker worship through music and movement.

Did you know there was a Shaker community led by a free Black woman in Philadelphia in 1859? Folding his research of Shakers into this history, Wilson gives his perspective on what the community of Mother Rebecca Cox Jackson may have looked like.

Throughout his career, Wilson has sought out the varied histories and spiritual practices of Africa and its diaspora to develop his own personal movement style, which he sometimes calls “post-African/Neo-HooDoo modern dance.”

Returning to FringeArts, Wilson and the Fist and Heel Performance Group offer audiences a simple gift: a powerful reflection on Black Shakers’ practices.

“Wilson’s poetic work often has historical resonance.” — The New York Times

Run time: 60 minutes

POWER is dedicated to The Dead

Post-Show Discussions

With a post show discussion moderated by Dr. yaTande Whitney Hunter on 9/21 and Dr. Brenda Dixon Gottschild 9/22. 

Fist & Heel Performance Group

Fist & Heel Performance Group is a Brooklyn-based dance company that investigates the intersections of cultural anthropology and movement practices and believes in the potential of the body as a valid means for knowing. Our performance work is a continued manifestation of the rhythm languages of the body provoked by the spiritual and the mundane traditions of Africa and its Diaspora, including the Blues, Slave and Gospel idioms. The group has received support from major foundations and corporations and has performed at notable venues in the United States and abroad.

Bios

Reggie Wilson (Executive and Artistic Director, Choreographer, Performer): founded Fist & Heel Performance Group, in 1989. Wilson draws from the cultures of Africans in the Americas and combines them with post-modern elements and his own personal movement style to create what he often calls “post-African/Neo-HooDoo Modern dances.”

His work has been presented and workshops taught nationally and internationally at many venues. This list is a sample and by no means exhaustive: Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York Live Arts, Summerstage (NY), Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Summer Stages Dance @ ICA Boston (MA), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, UCLA Live, Redcat (CA), VSA NM (New Mexico), Myrna Loy (Helena, MT), The Flynn (Burlington, VT), Contemporary Arts Center (New Orleans), Dance Umbrella (Austin, TX), Linkfest, Festival e’Nkundleni (Zimbabwe), Dance Factory (South Africa), Danças na Cidade (Portugal), Festival Kaay Fecc (Senegal), The Politics of Ecstasy, and Tanzkongress 2013 (Germany).

Wilson is a graduate of New York University, Tisch School of the Arts (1988, Larry Rhodes, Chair). He has studied composition and been mentored by Phyllis Lamhut; Performed and toured with Ohad Naharin before forming Fist and Heel. He has lectured, taught and conducted workshops and community projects throughout the US, Africa, Europe and the Caribbean. He has traveled extensively: to the Mississippi Delta to research secular and religious aspects of life there; to Trinidad and Tobago to research the Spiritual Baptists and the Shangoists; and also, to Southern, Central, West and East Africa to work with dance/performance groups as well as diverse religious communities. He has served as visiting faculty at several universities including Yale, Princeton and Wesleyan. Mr. Wilson is the recipient of the Minnesota Dance Alliance’s McKnight National Fellowship (2000-2001).  Wilson is also a 2002 BESSIE- New York Dance and Performance Award recipient for his work The Tie-tongued Goat and the Lightning Bug Who Tried to Put Her Foot Down and a 2002 John Simon Guggenheim Fellow. He has been an artist advisor for the National Dance Project and Board Member of Dance Theater Workshop.  In recognition of his creative contributions to the field, Mr. Wilson was named a 2009 United States Artists Prudential Fellow and is a 2009 recipient of the Herb Alpert Award in Dance. His evening-length work The Good Dance–dakar/brooklyn had its World premiere at the Walker Art Center and NY premiere on the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 2009 Next Wave Festival. In 2012, New York Live Arts presented a concert of selected Wilson works, theRevisitation, to critical acclaim and the same year he was named a Wesleyan University’s Creative Campus Fellow, received an inaugural Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, and received the 2012 Joyce Foundation Award for his successful work Moses(es) which premiered in 2013. His critically acclaimed work CITIZEN, premiered 2016 (FringeArts – World; BAM Next Wave 2016 – NYC); both these works continue to tour. Wilson was curator of Danspace Project’s Dancing Platform Praying Grounds: Blackness, Churches, and Downtown Dance (Platform 2018) and created the commissioned work “…they stood shaking while others began to shout” specifically for the space at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery. In 2019, he curated Grounds That Shout! (and others merely shaking), a series of performances in Philadelphia’s historic sacred spaces. He is currently creating a new work titled The Reclamation to premiere in 2025.

Naoko Nagata (Costumer Designer): Her evolution into costume making is a long story. With literally no formal training, she has been creating for a diverse group of choreographers and dancers non-stop since 1998. She has collaborated with David Thomson, Ralph Lemon, Reggie Wilson, Vicky Shick, Kyle Abraham for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Bebe Miller, David Dorfman, David Neumann, Doug Elkins, Gina Gibney, Jimena Paz, Liz Lerman, Nora Chipaumire, Urban Bush Women, Zvi Gotheiner and many, many others. Recently, designer for Raja feather Kelly’s 2nd stage production of “we are going to die”. Working closely with collaborators, Naoko helps bring to life what she herself calls, “the creation of a shared dream.”

Enver Chakartash (Costume Designer): is a New York based costume designer and wardrobe stylist. He has designed costumes for: Tony Oursler, The Wooster Group, Young Jean Lee, and Half Straddle. Enver began collaborating with Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group in 2016. Since then, he has designed costumes for CITIZEN and consulted on costumes for …they stood shaking while others began to shout. Working with Naoko on this project has been one of the most rewarding experiences of his life.

Jonathan Belcher (Lighting Designer): was born in Rochester, NY and now lives in Brooklyn. He is Lighting Director, Set Designer and Studio Manager for City University of New York Television. Previously, he was resident Lighting Designer at the Kitchen, The Harkness Dance Festival 2001, The University of Michigan Musical Society, SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance, Dance Theater Workshop and The Yard. Jonathan’s career has most recently been distinguished with a Bessie Award winning performance of Exhausting Love at Danspace Project by Luciana Achugar; One of 3 Lighting Designers featured in the 2009 New York Times article by Roslyn Sulcas entitled Lighting Designers Illuminate Ballet; a Bessie Award; and designing a number of projects with Amanda Loulaki, Bill Young, Luciana Achugar, Blk Market Membership, Dean Moss, Maria Hassabi, Jill Sigman, Jeremy Wade, Sara Michelson and most notably Mr. Reggie Wilson. Mr. Belcher’s guiding principal in lighting design is, “look at things differently, if for no other reason than it’s a lot more fun that way.”

Brenda Dixon Gottschild (Moderator): is the author of Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance: Dance and Other Contexts; Waltzing in the Dark: African American Vaudeville and Race Politics in the Swing Era (winner of the 2001 Congress on Research in Dance Award for Outstanding Scholarly Dance Publication); The Black Dancing Body–A Geography from Coon to Cool (winner, 2004 de la Torre Bueno prize for scholarly excellence in dance publication); and Joan Myers Brown and The Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina-A Biohistory of American Performance.  

Additional honors include the Congress on Research in Dance Award for Outstanding Leadership in Dance Research (2008); a Leeway Foundation Transformation Grant (2009); the International Association for Blacks in Dance Outstanding Scholar Award  (2013); the Pennsylvania Legislative Black Caucus Civil Rights Award (2016; a Pew Fellowship in the Arts (2017); the Dance Magazine Award (2022); the New York University Hemispheric Center for American Politics and Performance 2022 Mellon Foundation Artist in Residency Award; and the 2022 Dance History Scholars Scholarly Achievement Award.

A self-described anti-racist cultural worker utilizing dance as her medium, she is a freelance writer, consultant, performer, and lecturer; a former consultant and writer for Dance Magazine; and Professor Emerita of dance studies, Temple University.  As an artist-scholar she coined the phrase, “choreography for the page,” to describe her embodied, subjunctive approach to research writing. 

Nationwide and abroad she curates post-performance reflexive dialogues, writes critical performance essays, performs self-created solos, and collaborates with her husband, choreographer/dancer Hellmut Gottschild, in a genre they developed and titled “movement theater discourse.

www.bdixongottschild.com and Facebook

Performers

Hadar Ahuvia (Performer) is a performer, choreographer, Jewish educator and ritual leader. She is grateful to have been performing with Fist and Heel since 2017.  Previous work credits include Sara Rudner, Jill Sigman, Anna Sperber, Kathy Westwater, Molly Poerstel, Tatyana Tenebaum, Donna Uchizono, and Trisha Brown Dance Company, among others. Her writing on choreographing an Israeli identity beyond Zionism is featured in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook on Jewishness in Dance. Ahuvia is a two-time finalist for the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, a recipient of a Bessie nomination for Outstanding Breakout Choreographer and was one of Dance Magazine’s ‘25 to Watch in 2019’.

Rhetta Aleong (Company administrator, performer) Her performance roots are grounded in community-theater, performance art, and a good Catholic all-girls high school in Trinidad and Tobago. She has a BFA in Journalism, with an art bent, from School of Visual Arts and is a 5 th degree black belt. Aleong began working with Mr. Wilson in ’91 and began “wearing many hats” within Fist and Heel Performance Group. Creative Artists of special significance to Aleong: Pat Akien, Michael Steele, Helen Camps, Noble Douglas (Trinidad), Anita Gonzalez, Ms. Hattie Gossett, Tiyé Giraud, Cynthia Oliver, and Lawrence Goldhuber. Respect to those before, after, above and below.

Bria Bacon (Performer) is a 20-something, queer, performing artist. Although she is predominantly trained in movement art/dance, she holds passions and gifts in writing, sound-making, and theater. She has worked with Sally Silvers Dance, ChameckiLerner, Johnnie Cruise Mercer, Stephen Petronio Company, and Kyle Marshall Choreography, as well as Beth Gill and Rachel Comey in NYFW and Company Christoph Winkler in Berlin. As of late, she is a contributing choreographer and performer in the new immersive dance-theatre show “Life and Trust”. Originally from Munsee-Lenape lands in New Jersey, Bacon currently resides on Munsee-Lenape land in Brooklyn.

Paul Hamilton (Performer) is a Brooklyn based movement artist. He attended SUNY Purchase, where he trained with Kazuko Hirabayashi, Kevin Wynn and Neil Greenberg, and also studied at the Alvin Ailey school. He has performed with Elizabeth Streb, the Martha Graham Dance Ensemble, The Barnspace Dance, Mauri Cramer Dancers, Ballet Arts Theatre, Ralph Lemon (Bessie nominee Scaffold Room), Deborah Hay, David Thomson, Headlong Dance Theater, David Gordon’s The Matter 2019, Melinda Ring, Oren Barnoy, and The Museum of Modern Art, recreating Bruce Nauman’s Wall/Floor Positions. He is a member of Reggie Wilson/Fist and Performance Group, Keely Garfield Dance, and Jane Comfort and Company.

Lawrence A.W. Harding (Performer) was born in Sierra Leone and now practices Physical Therapy in New York.  He is the Director of Fitness at The Axis Project, a multidisciplinary center that serves people with physical disabilities and empowers them to pursue a healthy and active lifestyle. He is also the developer and President of Spinal Mobility, a novel manual technique that enables clinicians to improve their rehabilitative interventions for people with Spinal Cord Injury and other Neurological diseases. He has been a member of Fist and Heel since 1993 and continues to delight in discovering himself in Reggie’s work.  He gives continued thanks to Remi, D.Z. Martha, Samuel and all the dead ones. Big love to the ‘rents and the family.

Michel Kouakou (Performer) is a choreographer and dancer from the Ivory Coast. He is the founder and director of Daara Dance. Michel received his MFA in Dance from Hollins University. He is the recipient of the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Dance (2012), a Jerome Foundation Fellowship for research in dance (2012), winner of a New York Foundation of the Arts Artist Fellowship (2008), and winner of the U.S. Japan Fellowship (2008) to conduct six months of research in Tokyo and Kyoto. In 2008 he was nominated for the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative and in 2010 and was a finalist in The A.W.A.R.D. Show in New York City and Los Angeles. Mr. Kouakou moved to New York in 2004 and subsequently to Los Angeles, where he is now based and has been a lecturer at UCLA since 2009. He maintains an active touring and teaching schedule across the globe and continues to pursue his long-term goal of building an “artistic bridge” between his origins in the Ivory Coast and the US. Michel Kouakou’s company has moved to Minnesota due to a new job position at the University of Minnesota where he was an assistant professor in dance at the Barbara Darker Center for Dance for two years.

Annie Wang (Performer) is a freelancer with training in classical ballet, Graham technique, wushu, taiji, and software engineering. In addition to Fist and Heel Performance Group, she has also worked with Same As Sister, Emily Catalyst Johnson, and Carrie Ellmore-Tallitsch. Her own choreography has been presented by Five Myles, CPR in Brooklyn, the 92Y, the Exponential Festival, Pioneers Go East, BKSD, WestFest Dance, BRIC, and Triskelion. She has been Artist-in-Residence at BRIC, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the Marble House Project and an invited guest teacher at Amherst and Smith colleges.

Henry Winslow (Performer) Henry Winslow grew up dancing in Bellingham Washington. At 17 he moved to Oregon to study in The Portland Ballet’s Career Track program. He has attended summer programs at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Batsheva, Jacob's Pillow, and Springboard Dance Montreal. He Graduated with a BFA in contemporary dance performance from Boston Conservatory in 2021. Currently he works as a freelance dancer living in Brooklyn and hopes to build a sustainable and enjoyable career in the arts.

Michelle Yard (Performer) Brooklyn native Michelle Yard stands firmly on her Caribbean foundation. Yard joined Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group in 2017 for …they stood shaking while others began to shout, and POWER (2019). Upon her graduation from NYU Tisch School of the Arts (B.F.A. Dance), she began dancing with the Mark Morris Dance Group, where she enjoyed an illustrious twenty-year career. Ms. Yard also dances with Vanessa Walters. In 2020, she earned an M.A. in Arts Administration from CUNY/Baruch College. She is a certified Pilates instructor and a freelance arts administrator. a mis padres, gracias.

Miles Yeung (Performer) is originally from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Miles has been dancing since the age of 10 before relocating to Philadelphia, PA to continue his training at the University of the Arts. Here, he completed his BFA in Modern Performance with honors and was awarded for Excellence in Modern Performance. His performance credits include Brian Sander’s JUNK, Stacey Tookey’s Still Motion, Helen Simoneau Danse, La Biennale di Venezia’s Arsenale della Danza, and the New York production of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. Miles recently completed his MFA in Dance through the University of the Arts and is currently based in Philadelphia, PA.

Fist & Heel Board

Ann-Marie Joseph (President), Rhetta Aleong, Carol Bryce-Buchanan, Joshua Sirefman, Jesse Wolfson, & Reggie Wilson.

Advisory Council

Elise Bernhardt, Michael Connelly, Paul Engler, Phyllis Lamhut, Susan Manning, Martha Sherman, Megan Sprenger, Radhika Subramaniam, Laurie Uprichard, Ivan Sygoda, Charmaine Warren, Ms. Lois Wilson

For booking information, contact Sophie Myrtil-McCourty at Lotus Arts Management:

72-11 Austin Street, Suite 371 Forest Hills, NY 11375
Tel: 347.721.8724
Email: sophie@lotusartsmgmt.com
Website: www.lotusartsmgmt.com

Funding Credits

POWER was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; was co-commissioned by Jacob’s Pillow alongside with Hancock Shaker Village, created in part during multiple residencies in the Pillow Lab which included deep research at Hancock Shaker Village and premiered at Jacob’s Pillow July 10, 2019. POWER is made possible with public funds from the Decentralization Program of the New York State Council on the Arts, administered in Kings County by Brooklyn Arts Council; creation of this project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Fist and Heel’s programs are also made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts with funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation; in part by Dance/NYC’s Dance Advancement Fund, made possible by the Ford Foundation; NYC COVID-19 Response and Impact Fund in The New York Community Trust; Howard Gilman Foundation; Mosaic Network Fund Initiative; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; Mid Atlantic Arts Resilience Fund made possible by the American Rescue Plan through the National Endowment for the Arts; and the kind support of our many individual donors.

Special Thanks

GOD; Ancestors; Ira Sutton Ewing; Lois J. Wilson, A’nt Jean, A’ntie C; A’nt Wilma, Uncle Rev., Uncle Von, Uncle George, Aba, Abba, Saba, David Wilson, Jr., Elaine Flowers, Phyllis Lamhut, Germaine Ingram, Tim O’Brien, the cities of Philadelphia, Watervliet, Hancock, Bellagio and Mt. Lebanon, Mary Ann Haagen and The Enfield Shaker Singers, The Land of the Blacks, Susan Manning and Doug Doetsch, Tara Rodman, Lucia Kellar, Estate of Samuel Miller, DJ McManus Foundation, Inc., Martha Sherman, Cheryl Ikemiya, Tayloria L. Grant, Lois Greenfield, Cathy Edwards, Jean Cook, Elizabeth Harvey, Mike Johnson, Justin Knowlden, Melissa Benson, Madeline Brine, Deborah Sale and Ted Striggles, Susanna Sirefman, Germaine Ingram, Okwui Okpokwasili, Mark Wilson, Lois Wilson, other anonymous donors, Pam Tatge and the full team at Jacob’s Pillow, Jennifer Trainer Thompson, Caitlin Spara, Magda Gabor-Hotchkiss, the interpreters and the Hancock Shaker Village crew, Lacy Shutz, Jerry Grant and Sharon Koomler at Shaker Museum | Mt. Lebanon, Adrian Matejka, Nicolas Galanin, Merrit Johnson and the cohort and Administration team at the Rockefeller Bellagio, Polly Morris at Lynden Sculpture Garden, Arianne King Comer and Adjua Nsoroma, Judy Hussie-Taylor and the Danspace Team and St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, Sam Miller, Harry Philbrick, Karen DiLossi at Philadelphia Contemporary and Partners for Sacred Places, Arielle Julia Brown, Sophie Myrtil-McCourty Lotus Arts Management, Fist and Heel Board of Directors, members of the Advisory Council members, the performers past and present for their time on this project, their commitment over the years, prioritizing and sacrificing and their relentless talent.

About FringeArts

FringeArts is Philadelphia’s home for contemporary performance, presenting progressive, world-class art that expands the imagination and boldly defies expectation. Our programming exposes audiences to genre-defying dance, theater, and music performances by accomplished and emerging innovators who push the boundaries of art-making and redefine the artistic landscape worldwide.

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