The Final Year of a Powerful Residency
Accelerator Program Dance World Premieres
Open Rehearsal
“The dancer is a physical historian,” Harris told the audience who had filled the Prince Theatre for an open rehearsal ahead of Losing My Religion’s premiere. Showcasing Harris’ creative process, the open rehearsal allowed attendees to preview themes and motifs that informed this new work: images of protest, tradition, ritual and mourning.
Dancers from the company also talked about the ways they saw their practice, honoring street dance’s cultural legacy and contribution to positive forces in a difficult global moment. Harris was even more forthright, sharing that each time he had considered leaving the dance world as a younger artist, the universe seemed to send him a sign that he should continue, usually in the form of an audience member who had found unexpected meaning, or even a lifeline, in his art.
High School Engagement
Alongside members of the public, students from two of our partner schools, West Philadelphia High School and George Washington Carver High School for Engineering and Science, attended the open rehearsal. In the weeks prior, our teaching artist Donnell Powell visited the classes with company dancers Rachel Snider and Maggie Waller. Together, they introduced techniques and gestures key to Losing My Religion, including introductory house moves that appear in the piece and the concept of collage.
These partnerships gathered students from diverse academic backgrounds around Harris’ work: West Philadelphia High students were enrolled in a formal dance program, while Carver students mostly focus on STEM subjects.
Penn Community
Harris’ presence on the Penn campus extended to the classroom: he visited Theatre Arts instructor Margit Edwards’ first year seminar, Theatre as Storytelling: Black Theatre and Performance Practice.
Students asked Harris a broad range of questions, including:
- What does it mean to be trained “formally” as a dancer?
- Can you really reproduce a club vibe with a proscenium audience? (Harris’ answer: Nope)
- How can artists, particularly those of color, maintain connection with their own cultural knowledge while learning more mainstream techniques?
Harris and Edwards also reflected on their respective experiences of hip hop’s transition from a social phenomenon in neighborhoods and at block parties to the cultural mainstream via radio and commercial distribution.
Student Discovery
More questions, though of a different nature, came from the always enthusiastic K-12 audience at a Student Discovery matinee. The company performed excerpts from standbys Nuttin’ But a Word and The History of Hip Hop, a lecture-demonstration piece that introduces students to key players and movement vocabulary in street dance.
“Street dance is social dance,” Rodney Hill, the company’s executive director, emphasized at the performance. That definition seemed to embolden the sold-out crowd during the Q&A. More than anything, students wanted to know if these professional dancers were familiar with the dances they knew and practiced with their friends. (By and large, they were, though one dancer gently corrected students’ misconception of the classic moonwalk.)
Opening Night
At the opening night of Losing My Religion, a third of the audience arrived early to hear Harris in conversation with our Executive and Artistic Director, Christopher Gruits.
Elsewhere in the Annenberg Center, students from the Penn First Plus program had dinner and a conversation with Edwards, who reflected on the conversation her class had with Harris. She also answered students’ questions about her own memories of watching DJs, dancers and others create hip hop culture in her New York neighborhood growing up.
Audiences loved Losing My Religion, describing it as powerful and profoundly moving. One patron shared, “Rennie Harris [Puremovement] has been the most spectacular three-year residency EVER. This performance brought me to tears. It was so astounding, amazing and wonderful. I would go to anything he did.”
We are proud to have been an incubator for Harris’ impactful work over the past three years and look forward to continuing this great partnership in the future.
