NOT ABOUT RACE DANCE
“a critically important catalyst for and contribution to a necessary dialogue around postmodernism and racial identity” — Carla Peterson, Director, Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC)
Not About Race Dance is a collaborative, choreographic response to the unacknowledged racial politics in U.S. postmodern dance — a form developed in the 1960s whose tropes and aesthetics have endured in the dance field. Despite postmodernism’s popularity, its racial dynamics have gone largely unacknowledged. In Not About Race Dance, Gerald Casel and his collaborators occupy a space that has been historically defined by white artists to present a contrasting vision of where Black and Brown bodies belong.
Read the New York Times review of Not About Race Dance here.
Program Credits for Not About Race Dance
Concept and Direction: Gerald Casel
Movement Collaborators: Styles Alexander, Audrey Johnson, Karla Quintero, and Cauveri Suresh
Live Sound Design: Tim Russell
Lighting and Media Design: Aron Altmark
Dramaturgy: Rebecca Chaleff
Text: “Coyotes” by Styles Alexander
Script: “La revancha” by Karla Quintero
Costume Consultant: Pamela Rodriguez-Montero
Filmed by: Chani Bockwinkel
All photos by Robbie Sweeny from Not About Race Dance’s December 2021 premiere at CounterPulse in San Francisco, CA.
Write about Not About Race Dance
Not About Race Dance deals with an unspoken-ness — it addresses the unwillingness to address. Both within and without the work, we point out silence. Onstage, we explore body-based tropes and aesthetics. Offstage, we're aware of the vacuum in critical response available for work like this. If you’re a writer, we want to invite you to respond to this work in the spirit of colleague-criticism. Writing can be emailed to notaboutracedance@gmail.com, and will be shared on our website.
Support for Not About Race Dance
The development of Not About Race Dance was supported by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, UCSC Arts Research Institute, the National Center for Choreography at The University of Akron, the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography at Florida State University, and The Bogliasco Foundation.
For more information and touring:
Tour Manager Adam Smith | adam@geraldcasel.com