Director Emeritus Arthur Mitchell
danced the central pas de deux in
Agon at the ballet’s premiere.
They will also be performing
Past-Carry-Forward which features
choreography by Tanya WidemanDavis and Thaddeus Davis set to
music by Willie “The Lion” Smith
and SLIPPAGE (Thomas F. DeFrantz and Jamie Keesecker). This
work takes a look at the legacy
of the great migration of African
Americans from the agrarian South
to the industrial North in the early
part of the twentieth-century. The
New Jersey Stage
migration forced many young African Americans into difficult situations, making choices to leave
family at home in the South while
they searched for the promise of a
better life in the North. The Harlem
Renaissance, the African American
presence in a segregated military,
working in the segregated service
industry as Pullman railroad porters and as entertainers to white
American audiences are also considered in the work.
The last ballet in the program is
entitled Return, which is a rousing
December 2014
pg 84