When choreographer Reggie Wilson debuted his work … they stood shaking while others began to shout at Danspace Projectin 2018, he cited an unusual source of inspiration: a Black Shaker eldress named Rebecca Cox Jackson who led a small community of worshipers in Philadelphia in the 1850s and ’60s. Struck by the linkage between ecstatic Shaker dance, a visionary black woman preacher, and the dual identity of Danspace’s home, St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, as both an arts space and an active church, Wilson layered the ideas into his choreography.
This month, he revisited the project in Philadelphia at the invitation of Danspace in collaboration with Philadelphia Contemporary. Dubbed Grounds that Shout! (and others merely shaking), the project — like the 2018 debut — put Wilson in the role of curator as well as choreographer. Over two weekends, he presented his own work alongside that of seven Philadelphia choreographers and dance companies who created performances at historic churches in response to his thematic network of spiritual histories, sacred spaces, ecstatic movement, and African diasporic experience.
The shift in location brought Wilson closer to his inspiration — Jackson and the religious context that shaped her unconventional life. (He’ll get closer still in July with a site-responsive version at Hancock Shaker Village commissioned by Jacob’s Pillow.)
Born into a free Black family in 1795, Jackson was a married seamstress when she experienced a spiritual awakening at age 35. When neither her husband nor her older brother (who was a prominent member of the recently founded African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia) supported her ambition to preach, she left and eventually joined a Shaker community in Watervliet, NY. (Along the way, she picked up a life companion, Rebecca Perot, making her a debatably queer icon avant la lettre.) Attracted to the Shakers’ emphasis on direct communion with god and race and gender equality, Jackson ultimately came to feel that the group’s abstention from direct political action was at odds with providing true support to Black believers in the age of abolitionism. She returned to Philadelphia and founded a community of Black Shakers that survived long enough for W.E.B. Du Bois to document its existence more than 30 years later.
Reggie Wilson: Grounds That Shout! (And Others Merely Shaking) took place at Church of the Advocate (1801 W. Diamond Street, Philadelphia) on May 2, 3, and 4, and at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church (313 Pine Street, Philadelphia), Old Pine Street Presbyterian Church (412 Pine Street, Philadelphia) and Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church (419 S. 6th Street, Philadelphia) on May 11.
The post Dance Performances in Historic Churches Revive Spiritual Historiesappeared first on Hyperallergic. Written by Megan Voeller