BARACK; Buudou, BADOO, BADOLO; and BOOM!

World Premiere
With an opening performance by Cynthia Oliver

Born in Burkina Faso, choreographer and performer Souleymane Badolo’s African heritage is a driving force in his work. Badolo's newest work, BARACK, was created as an acknowledgement towards the individuals who have helped him since he moved from Burkina Faso to the U.S. four years ago, and the title of the work loosely translates as “gratitude” in his native Gurunsi. Also on the program, Buudou, BADOO, BADOLO is inspired by Badolo’s rich family legacy as it traces the journey of his great-great-grandfather; the lessons his father taught him; and the responsibility he feels to his own son about their ancestry.

BOOM!, a new duet by Cynthia Oliver featuring Oliver and Leslie Cuyjet, opens the performance program. A nugget of a larger work to come, BOOM! exposes and manipulates notions of building a life and a relationship – of a woman to herself, her history, her present and future. Negotiating and renegotiating the rules of personhood, fate and consequence, BOOM! simultaneously reveals, resists and submits to the structures and shape of a performance.

Apr 25 at 6:30 Come Early Conversation: Continuing the Discourse: The Africanist Aesthetic in Performance and Visual Art with Adrienne Edwards (Performa)

Apr 26 Stay Late Discussion: From BOOM! to Barak – A Conversation about Autobiographical Dancemaking with Reggie Wilson (Artistic Director, Fist and Heel Performance Group)

Sign up for Souleymane's Shared Practice,  Apr 27, 1:30-3:30pm, $15.

BARACK is commissioned by New York Live Arts and made possible, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Jerome Foundation. Additional support is given by contributors to the Dance Theater Workshop Commissioning Fund at New York Live Arts. Buudou, BADOO, BADOLO was originally commissioned for the Harlem Stage by the E-Moves Series. Buudou, BADOO, BADOLO premiered April 21, 2012 at the The Gatehouse of Harlem Stage.