The March
Join Big Dance Theater for an evening of contemporary dance in three parts, presented in-the-round. Created by an intergenerational trio of acclaimed choreographers: Tendayi Kuumba, Big Dance Theater co-founder Annie-B Parson, and Donna Uchizono, each interrogate the notion of unison movement and the human compulsion to move together in time. How does it change us, shape us, deepen us, and lift us? How has it been co-opted, weaponized, sexualized, and politicized? What is the power of moving in precise unison? What happens when we dance together? And what happens when we don’t?
*Free Workshop*
Don’t miss your chance to move with Big Dance theater choreographers during two different 90-minute workshops on February 15! Click here for more details or to register!
TICKET & DISCOUNT INFORMATION
Tickets available starting from $19.
$11 STUDENT TICKETS
For UNC-Chapel Hill students (with valid UNC One Card) and all Triangle-area students K-college (with valid student ID)
- Current UNC-Chapel Hill students: Use promo code UNCST2425 and select the price type “UNC Student”
- Non UNC-Chapel Hill students: Use promo code GENST2425 and use the price type “Student”
15% DISCOUNT
Seniors, Active & Retired Military / First Responders, and Carolina Alumni save on regular price tickets with promo codes:
- Seniors: Use promo code SENIOR2425
- Active & Retired Military / First Responders: Use promo code SERVICE2425
- Carolina Alumni: Use promo code GAA2425
25% DISCOUNT
UNC-Chapel Hill Faculty & Staff / UNC Health Employees save on regular price tickets with promo codes:
- UNC-Chapel Hill Faculty & Staff and UNC Health Staff: Use promo code UNCFS2425
- Retired UNC-Chapel Hill Faculty & Staff: Use promo code UNCRET2425
Watch our video on applying discount codes when checking out!
*Limits apply. All prices include tax. A 6.5% platform fee will apply to all orders. Discounts cannot be combined. Additional exclusions may apply. Visit our FAQ page for more details.
EVENT DETAILS
- Runtime: 75 minutes
- Intermission: No intermission
- Additional information: Visit our FAQ page
PROGRAM
Big small feat (20 minutes)
by Donna Uchizono
Big small feat opens with a warm greeting by the “welcomers,” followed by a short blast of movement hurled towards you. This village of intergenerational dancers eventually comes together, redefining virtuosity as they move in a challenging formation, dancing in unison as a form of solidarity. The sensitivity required to pick up the qualitative shifts and nuances in the minute and detailed movement is an impossible task that the dance artists achieve with perseverance, grit, and kind compassion.
Opening music The Wayne Brothers by Tom Cora (with Samm Bennett and Mark Ribot)
Pause
NYSea (15 minutes)
by Tendayi Kuumba
Like water, we absorb frequencies from everything we see, feel, touch, and experience. Like the ocean, we hold those frequencies in each drop of water in our bodies like ink is soaked into paper. Our makeup and memories bring many waves and currents, changing with each moment of life. Sometimes it takes discovery, community, and release, to recognize that we already have everything we need even when we feel like we have nothing at all. We are each a drop in an ocean full of endless stories; all we have to do is take our time.
Pause
The Oath (23 minutes)
by Annie-B Parson
Since the beginning of time, in community, clan, congregation, and club, we have created unison systems of movement; since the beginning of the world, we have moved in large group choreographies. The creation of The Oath began as a chronological exploration of humanity’s common record of this vernacular and poetic unison movement, movement that is practiced for purpose and for pleasure, both utopian and dystopian. This is The Oath, an assembly of dancers practicing our human impulse to embody a larger physical statement in order to bond, to bind, to intimidate, to gather, to believe, to envision, to promise—to dance.
FEATURED ARTISTS
Tendayi Kuumba, Choreographer
Annie-B Parson, Choreographer
Donna Uchizono, Choreographer
Mawu Ama Ma’at Gora, Dancer
Brooke Ashley, Dance Captain
Natalie Green, Dance Captain
Meg Harper, Dancer
Jin Ju Song-Begin, Dancer
Joanna Kotze, Dance Captain
Devin Oshiro, Dancer
Pamela Pietro, Dancer
Chanel Stone, Dancer
Paz Tanjuaquio, Dancer
Isabel Umali, Dancer
devika v. wickremesinghe, Dance Captain
ADDITIONAL CREATIVE TEAM
Tei Blow, Sound Designer/Annie-B Parson
Elizabeth DeMent, Big Dance Theater Production Consultant
Ryan Gamblin, Original Sound System Designer
Levi Gonzalez, Associate Choreographer
okkyung lee, Composer/Big small feet
Sam McElrath, Costume Designer/Annie-B Parson
Naomi, Costume Designer/Donna Uchizono
Sara Pereira de Silva, Executive Director and Producer
Abi Stinnett, Costume Assistant
Daria Walcott, Production Manager and Stage Manager
UflyMothership, Sound Design/NYSea
Greg Purnell, Associate Artist and Costume Designer/NYSea
Jeanette Yew, Lighting Designer
Alex deNevers, Lighting Design Associate
ABOUT THE CHOREOGRAPHERS
Annie-B Parson
Parson is the artistic director of OBIE and BESSIE award-winning Big Dance Theater, which she co-founded in 1991. Outside of her company, some of the artists she has worked with include David Byrne, David Bowie, Lorde, St. Vincent, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Wendy Whelan, Anne Carson, Esperanza Spalding, Suzan-Lori Parks, Laurie Anderson, Salt n Pepa, and Jonathan Demme.
Additionally, Parson has created two large scale works for the Martha Graham Dance Company, and for the Sadlers Wells Company of Elders. Parson choreographed and did musical staging for David Byrne’s American Utopia, a world tour that ran on Broadway, won a Tony, and was made into a film by Spike Lee.
Tendayi Kuumba
One of Dance Magazine’s “25 to watch 2023” & Chita Rivera’s Outstanding Female Dancer on Broadway 2022 as Lady in Brown in the Tony Nominated Broadway Revival of “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/ When the Rainbow is Enuf.” Kuumba is an International dancer, choreographer, singer, songwriter, & Spelman College grad. She formerly performed as a background vocalist/dancer & original cast member of Special Tony Award Winning David Byrne’s America Utopia on Broadway and its World Tour in 2018 and the HBO Film adaptation directed by Spike Lee.
Donna Uchizono
Donna Uchizono, Artistic Director of Donna Uchizono Company, has performed throughout the United States, Europe, South America, Australia, and Asia and has been commissioned to create works for Mikhail Baryshnikov, Paula Vogel, Oskar Eustis, David Hammons, and Oliver Sacks.
A Guggenheim and United States Artist Fellow, Uchizono has been recognized by many awards/grants – Alpert Award, “Bessie,” National Endowment for the Arts, Rockefeller, National Dance Project, Creative Capital, National Performance Network, MAP, Jerome, New Music USA, Dance Magazine, New York State Council on the Arts, Joyce Mertz-Gilmore, Arts International, Foundation for Contemporary Performance, among many others.
*Free Workshop*
Don’t miss your chance to move with choreographer Donna Uchizono or Tendayi Kuumba during two different 90-minute workshops on February 15! Click here for more details or to register!
ABOUT BIG DANCE THEATER
Founded by Molly Hickok, Paul Lazar, and Annie-B Parson in 1991, Big Dance Theater is known for its inspired synthesis of dance, music, text, and visual design. The company’s work ranges from pure dance pieces, to dance/theater works with sources from found text, literature, plays, or an alchemy of wildly incongruent source material, weaving and braiding disparate strands of text and theatrical elements into multidimensional performance.
Big Dance has delved into the literary work of such authors as Twain, Tanizaki, Euripides and Flaubert, and dance is used as both frame and metaphor to theatricalize these writings. For 32 years, Big Dance Theater has worked to create over 25 large-scale dance/theater works, generating each piece over months and years of collaboration with its associate artists, a long-standing, ever-evolving family of actors, dancers, composers, and designers.
Support from friends like you allows us to present world-class artists, provide tickets to students, facilitate academic programs with artists, commission new works, and support artistic research and residencies. Make a charitable gift today to support continued access to the arts.