PERFORMANCE GROup

PHOTO: RACHEL NEVILLE/ART BY: AARON LAZANSKY “SPAZECRAFT”

RENEGADE
 PHOTO: RACHEL NEVILLE
andre m. zachery
André Zachery hails from Chicago’s South Side from
a family of African-American and Haitian descent. He
As a movement artist, André developed his
original technique labeled Physical Propulsion,
The Luminal Theater, Weeksville Heritage Center
and Earthdance Festival. In New York City, his work
cites the Afrofuturism movement as one of the leading a training method of engaging the body through with RPG and other collectives has been presented
influences in his artistic practice. Having created space using floor, standing and aerial techniques at the Brooklyn Museum, Irondale Center, JACK,
works of his own since the early 2000’s and with the rooted in sacro-cranial alignment and awareness. Prelude Festival, Harlem Stage, 3-Legged Dog Art
collective Wildcat!, he formed Renegade Performance Physical Propulsion is based on modalities from & Technology Center, and many other venues.
Group (RPG) in Brooklyn in 2007. André has developed Flying Low technique, codified by David Zambrano, Recently, his projects have been shown in the US
a highly idiosyncratic practice, inspired by African Laban, Límon, and Capoeira. also in Chicago and Atlanta as well as internationally.
diasporic practices, contemporary urban forms and As a filmmaker and technologist, Zachery has been He was a 2015-17 Jerome Foundation Artist-in-
innovations in technology. He eschews Eurocentric a creative lead on collaborative teams ranging from Residence at Movement Research, and a recipient
performing arts traditions, pioneering the integration theatre works, films, operas and music videos. His of the 2016 NYFA Gregory Millard Fellowship in
of the principles of the Afrofuturism movement. He design work in production has been shown and Choreography. He also was an artist-in-residence at
combines choreography, performance, music, film, reviewed at New York venues such as Clemente Soto the School of Dance at Florida State University and a
and new media in a highly collaborative manner to Velez, Harlem Stage, The Met Breuer, 3-Legged Dog guest faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University in
fashion cross-media pieces that are total works of art. Art & Technology Center, Judson Church, Mabou Mines Richmond. Andre’s scholarly work has been presented
His artistic investigations are shaped at Performance Space New York, and for Marc Jacobs during conferences at Duke University, Brooklyn
by his experience of being Black in America. Issues Fashion Week Book Launch 2015. As a filmmaker he College and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
of social justice and gender equity found in the work has edited feature music videos for Grammy Award- He has curated performance platforms and artists’
are rooted in the desire to reclaim the Black body winning artist Kendra Foster, has had films screened panels at Danspace Project and the CUNY Graduate
along with the ideas and aesthetics drawn from for the Haiti Film Festival of Haiti Cultural Exchange, Center in New York.
the margins of mainstream culture.
 about rpg
Founded in 2007, Renegade Performance Group (RPG)
is a Brooklyn-based performing arts collective exploring Black

artist’s
artistic aesthetics and expressions through dance theatre,
visual performance, film, and other media. The company was
formed as an artistic outlet to foster dialogue compelled by the
human experience and considers the local activism and education

statement
an important part of its activities, geared towards engaging
a new generation of audiences, especially those underrepresented
in the mainstream culture.
#beRenegade
As an interdisciplinary artist, I investigate the presence
of the Black body as a medium of political and artistic Since the company’s inception, RPG has received a number of
expression through performance and technology. Diverse prestigious residencies, awards, and support for its ongoing work
influences and lineages converge in my cross-media work, from institutions such as the Jerome Foundation, CUNY/Dance
which I find to be most closely aligned with the tenets Initiative, the Brooklyn Arts Council, Harlem Stage, the Foundation
of the Afrofuturism movement, currently brought to for Contemporary Arts, the Brooklyn Museum, MoCADA, Danspace
international attention of the American mainstream Project, The Studio Museum of Harlem, 3LD Art & Technology Center,
by pop-culture phenomena such as The Black Panther. and The Kennedy Center. Renegade Performance Group is a fiscally
sponsored project of Fractured Atlas.
My practice seeks to emancipate the principles of
Afrofuturism in the realm of the performing arts, where it
has not taken root to the extent it has in literature, music
and visual arts. The movement focuses on the role of the
artist as a member of a collective body of individuals,
seeking equality through activism; that is what I want
to put at the center of my practice. My goal as an artist,
a scholar, and an activist is to end the marginalization of
the Black experience and to restore its prominence as a

PHOTO: KERRRA AMAYA GOPEE

universal element of our common cultural domain.
I find that movement, in its abstractness, reveals an innate
awkwardness, a humor that echoes our vulnerabilities.
I also celebrate its power as the means of communicating
the self-identification, communal understanding, diaspora
lineage, and non-binary empowerment. I strive to connect
the unnameable and the verbal by evoking raw, visceral
emotions, pushing the envelope of expectations, in
particular the definition of art and beauty.
collaborators Jeremy Toussaint- Charles Vincent LaMont Hamilton is an autodidact Joy Havens is a
-Baptiste is a Burwell is a interdisciplinary artist working multidisciplinary artist
Bessie-nominated Congressional in New York. He works primarily working in the worlds
composer, designer Scholar in Leadership, in photography, moving image, of dance, costume
and performer, holds a B.S. in Vocal performance and sound. Hamilton and opera.
living and working Music Education has been the recipient of several Her costume designs
in Brooklyn, NY. He holds an MFA from Florida A&M University with
residencies, fellowships and awards, for dance and baroque opera include
from Brooklyn College’s Performance emphasis in theater, dance, voice,
including the Skowhegan School of premieres for Renegade Performance
and Interactive Media program. His and ethnomusicology and an MFA
Painting and Sculpture, MacDowell Group, Peter Kyle, Elke Rindfleisch,
work, through the lens of precarious in Musical Theatre writing from the
labor, complicates notions of industry, Tisch School of the Arts (NYU). He Colony, MFAH Dora Maar program Sarah Weber Gallo, Pappas and
identity, and environment and the has worked for dance companies in Menerbes, France, Smithsonian Dancers (with Jill Sigman) among
implications of the intersections of and arts organization such as the Artist Research Fellowship, others and have been seen across the
such phenomena. He is a founding Lincoln Center Institute, New York’s Artadia Award, ArtMatters Grant, US and in Europe. As a dancer, she
member of performance collective, City Center Theater, the Katherine Artist in Residence at Duke has performed with the Metropolitan
Wildcat!, and frequently collaborates Dunham Institute, Trenton Education University’s African and African Opera, toured India with Thresh/Preeti
with performers and fine artists, Dance Institute (TEDI), National American Studies, Bemis Center for Vasudevan and appeared on Great
including Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, Dance Institute, Urban Bush Women, Contemporary Art, and the City of Performances on PBS. She attended
André M. Zachery, and Yanira Castro/ Festival del Caribe (Santiago de Chicago’s IAP Award.
a canary torsi. He has presented Cuba, Cuba), Ile Aiye (Brazil), Jacob’s The Ohio State University receiving
at the Brooklyn Museum, Newark Pillow Dance Festival, and Bates the Special Projects Fund for
Museum, Under The Radar at The Dance Festival. He has composed Exceptional Creativity.
Public Theater, The Studio Museum In music for the Cairo Opera House
Harlem, National Sawdust, The Jam Ballet (Cairo, Egypt), National Dance
Handy (Detroit), Tanz Im August at Institute under the Artistic Direction
Hau3 (Berlin), American Realness at of Jacques d’Amboise (Shanghai,
Abrons, Knockdown Center, Gibney China) as well as the accompanying
Dance, FringeArts (Philadelphia), HBO documentary Jacques D’Amboise
Judson Church, Stoa Cultural Center in China – The Other Side Of The World.
(Helsinki), MIT, Arts East New York, Burwell has sung at New York’s
JACK, Painted Bride Art Center Carnegie Hall and maintains a private
(Philadelphia), University Settlement, studio for vocal instruction while
Harlem Stage, as well as on Dazed continuing his career as a singer,
Digital, Complex, and Boiler Room. dancer, actor, and composer.
He was a 2017 Artist-In-Residence at
Issue Project Room.
www.jeremytoussaintbaptiste.com
 PHOTO: KERRRA AMAYA GOPEE
“Reaching into this rich In his seminal 1978 text The Necessity of Tomorrows,
the science-fiction writer Samuel Delany, recognized as one
heritage, Zachery embraces of the forefathers of literary Afrofuturism, wrote: “We need

Afrofuturism as a way to images of tomorrow, and our people need them more than
most.” This philosophy ushered in a generation of creatives
understand how Black people such as musicians Alice Coltrane and Sun Ra, writer

have existed, what forces Octavia Butler, and visual artists Jean-Michel Basquiat
and Rammellzee. In their work, the influence of the
sustain our existence and roots of the African-American culture meets the present,
marked by the extensive use of contemporary media and
how it might continue.” strong engagement in the current socio-political issues.
Afrofuturism looks towards the future where the Blackness
–Eva Yaa Asenteewa, InfiniteBody
will find its full expression and the rightfully prominent
place in the cultural landscape.

afrofuturism
The AFROFUTURISM Series, initiated by RPG in 2014, was
built from a desire to follow this path and understand how
new ideas of Black cultural expression could be manifested

series
through a variety of means: dance, visual media, sound,
and conceptual ideologies. It seeks to form a creative space
where African-rooted experience is no longer invisible,
but fully rendered as a synthesis of communal sharing
and practice, evolving across spectrums, domains and
dimensions. The works in this series are also united in the
desire to illuminate the value of the “low” culture – such as
sci-fi or graffiti – in shaping new cultural paradigms.
 untamed space
Premiere: 2017 | 70 minutes
Choreography/projection design: André M. Zachery
Music: Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste
Scenic design/costumes: Joy Havens

Untamed Space is a quartet for three female as Zachery explains, “arriving at my point of deep inspiration from the work of visual artists
and one male dancer, embodying Zachery’s departure in Chicago, and into the Afrofuture.” Kerry James Marshall and John T. Biggers, both
contemporary reinterpretation of Black signifiers Building on a number of dance styles, including painters of large canvases, whose imagery focuses
through the use of technology. Its point of contemporary modern technique, house, hip hop on the beauty of the mundane details of African-
departure is the history of the maroon colonies dance, and African-American stomping traditions, American life. Untamed Space taps into the spiritual
of the 17th and 18th centuries – the liberated the piece also uses Zachery’s own Physical dimensions of maroon colonies, considering
communities of Africans who escaped to hills, Propulsion technique. how the creation of those impassible spaces has
mountains, and forests upon their arrival to the In this piece, Zachery is particularly invested influenced contemporary identities of African-
Americas. Set in a vivid environment enriched in reframing the narrative by placing female blooded people in the Americas.
by video projections, Untamed Space covers the performers front and center, in defiance of the Untamed Space is comprised of four sections: Haiti,
trajectory of marooning across time and space: dominant patriarchal perspective. The work draws Mississippi, Chicago and Black Space.
starting in Haiti, moving to Mississippi, and,

“Zachery’s
dancers…
move as one
harmonious
organism with
a minimalism
that compels
the audience
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE KENNEDY CENTER

to reconsider
stereotypical
expectations of
Black dance.”
–Deirdre Towers,
DanceEnthusiast

w VIDEO
Full work | P: danspace
 the “[The Inscription

PHOTO: KEARRA AMAYA GOPEE

Project] holds

inscription within the same

confrontational spirit

project of graffiti and hip hop...

that said we had the
The Inscription Project is a media-infused piece for six right to leave our mark
performers which looks at graffiti art as a manifestation
of Afrofuturism. Born in the Black and Latino South Bronx on society, determine
in the 1970s as part of the original hip-hop movement,
graffiti has spread globally as a tool of artistic resistance.
the spaces we live
This piece draws inspiration from the late artist in, and rewrite our
Rammellzee, whose pioneering philosophy of “Gothic
Futurism” influenced what would become known as
futures; that we will
“wildastyle”, elevating graffiti-makers into their own not be silenced because
artistic canon. One of the focal points of the piece is the
irony of how this urban artform – once a symbol of blight
our lives matter.”
and dysfunction – became a tool of gentrification with
–Sherese Aker, Futuristically Ancient
its mindless cultural appropriation, displacement, and
oppression. In The Inscription Project, Zachery explores the
resilience and honesty of the art struggling to maintain
its original message of political empowerment in the
changing cultural context.

Premiere: 2015 | 55 mins

Choreographer: André M. Zachery
Music: Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste + Mos Def +
Flying Lotus
Sound Arrangement and Design: André M. Zachery
Multimedia + Set Design: André M. Zachery
Visual Images: Aaron Lazansky “Spazecraft”
Lighting Design: JC Moore
Performed by Andre Zachary, Sarah Chien, Steph Lee,
Candace Thompson, and Nehemoyia Young

w VIDEO
Trailer
 PHOTO: BOB GORE
dapline!
Set in sparse space merely accompanied by the sound generated by the
bodies, Dapline! looks at the origins and continued practice of “the dap” – the
intricate handshake typically exchanged between Black men in the United
“A powerful dance… communication
through touch, a dialect direct in its
wordlessness but still rich in emotional
States. Originating as a sign of camaraderie among the Black troops during nuance and gestural beauty.”
the Vietnam War, “DAP” was initially an acronym for dignity and pride but has
later been co-opted into popular culture – as well as amongst gang members –Brian Seibert, The New York Times
and professional athletes – through mass media marketing. Using a gestural
vocabulary reminiscent of a police pat-down line, a ritual greeting, and, finally, w VIDEO
Premiere: 2015 | 40 minutes
an ancestral dance, Dapline! reveals a deeper meaning and origins of the Trailer
Created by André M. Zachery and LaMont Hamilton
practice: a wordless conversation, a show of support and resistance, and a Performed by Brian Henry, André Cole, Johnnie
Mercer, Malcolm McMichael, TJ Rocka Jamez, w VIDEO
communal experience that is ever-relevant to the image of Black masculinity in
and Stephen Galberth Full work
the American culture.
 PHOTO: MARC MILLMAN
“Kick-ass… work that
is so much itself that it
just carves out its own
space… The best rock
show I’ve seen in ages.”
–STEW, co-creator of Tony Award-winning
musical Passing Strange

In Fire on the Mountain, commissioned by Harlem Stage for the 90th

birthday anniversary of James Baldwin, searing social commentary
collides with rock-and-roll in a form of an explosive performance
conceived and created by André M. Zachery in collaboration with

fire
composer Charles Vincent Burwell and sound artists Jeremy Toussaint-
Baptiste and Jessie Nelson. Titled after two of Baldwin’s best-known
books - Fire Next Time and Go Tell It On The Mountain – the work
re-fashions selected Baldwin texts into punk songs. While leaving the
writing intact, Zachery’s engagement with the text reveals the poetry’s
unexpected dimension, tapping into the disquieting visceral emotion.

on the
In his explanation of the origins of the piece, Zachery points out the
importance of bringing back the largely forgotten tradition of Black punk
rock – represented by artists as Death or Bad Brains – adds to the power

mountain
of the original text, concerned with intricacies of racial, sexual, and class
distinctions in Western societies.
Premiere: 2015 | 15 minutes Vocals: André M. Zachery
Direction/concept: André M. Zachery Lead Electric: Charles Vincent Burwell
Text: James Baldwin Bass/synth: Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste
Composer: Charles Vincent Burwell Drums: Jessie Nelson

w VIDEO
Full work
 PHOTO: BOB GORE
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