DANCE DOUBLE BILL: MAYA TAYLOR AND YINKA ESI GRAVES 7-8 MAY 2021
MAYA TAYLOR SHAPE | SHIFTER Shape | Shifter is a new work by American choreographer, Maya Taylor, exploring the strain she has often felt to assimilate as a mixed race woman. The solo unravels and illuminates Taylor’s journey as she works to defy the echo chamber of perceptions that have haunted her from adolescence to womanhood. Throughout the work she searches for a renewed, selfactualised version of herself with a clear sense of identity, created on her own terms. Maya Taylor is a choreographer and movement director based in Los Angeles and New Orleans. Her work is visible in multiple creative and commercial domains, ranging from television and film to fashion and stage performance. Taylor’s choreography has made distinct contributions to the incredible visions of Solange Knowles, Régine Chassagne of Arcade Fire, SZA, and St. Vincent. Her most recent credits include NETFLIX’s Song Exploder, The Dirt, The Lovebirds, TNT’s CLAWS, and HULU’s Looking for Alaska. Her movement has been presented on The Ellen Show, Saturday Night Live, and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Taylors’s work for St. Vincent’s live performance on The Ellen Show was featured in the PLAY IT LOUD: Instruments of Rock & Roll exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She has provided choreography and movement direction for Carlota Guerrero’s Spiritual Striptease and for high-profile brands such as Burberry, MAC Cosmetics, KREWE, and Collina Strada. In 2020, Taylor was named as one of DANCE Magazine’s 25 to Watch in 2020. In 2019, she was nominated for an MTV VMA for Best Choreography for her collaboration on Solange Knowles’ ALMEDA.
Director, Choreographer and Dancer
Maya Taylor
Poetry
Cubs the Poet
Music
Jeremy Phipps
Director of Photography and Editing
Diogo De Lima
Many thanks to my fellow collaborators Cubs, Jeremy, and Diogo. Thank you always to Marjorie and Greg Schramel for the generous use of your space. Image Credits: Diogo De Lima
YINKA ESI GRAVES THE DISAPPEARING ACT The Disappearing Act is a solo exploration of the ways in which Black women articulate their resistances to negation. Yinka is particularly interested in methods of camouflage and mimicry that insidiously seep into the intimate realm. Asking what the real cost of being viable is in a system that has only ever seeked to exploit or at best commodify you. The notion of crypsis, the ability an animal has to avoid observation or detection by other animals, as a predation strategy or an antipredator adaptation, is integral to the work. Yinka Esi Graves is a British Flamenco dancer whose choreographic work explores the form alongside other corporeal expressions in particular from an African diasporic and contemporary perspective. Having studied ballet and afro-cuban dancing in her youth Graves has dedicated the last 12 years of her life to flamenco studying at Amor de Dios in Madrid and later in Seville with artists such as La Lupi, Andrés Marin and Yolanda Heredia. Through her unique way of working in and around flamenco she has reached audiences nationally and internationally often taking flamenco into new spaces. Graves co-founded contemporary flamenco company dotdotdot dance in 2014. The company presented her work I come to my body as a question, a reimagined Guajira with spoken word artist Toni Stuart, in SAMPLED 2017 at Sadler's Wells and The Lowry. In 2015 Graves began a collaborative creation with former principal Alvin Ailey dancer Asha Thomas: CLAY, this work has participated in various UK and European festivals including Let's Dance International Frontiers 2016 and Dance Umbrella’s ‘Out of the System’ in 2017. Graves was also featured in Gurumbé: Canciones de tu Memoria Negra (2016) the first Spanish film to highlight the influence its African population had on Spanish culture. Graves is currently involved in two major productions Chloé Brulé and Marco Vargas’ Cuerpos Celestes and Dorothée Munyaneza’s latest work Mailles. Graves is also developing her first solo work The Disappearing Act (2021).
Concept, Choreography and Dance
Yinka Esi Graves
Guitarist and Music
Raúl Cantizano
Singer
Rosario Heredia
Technicians
Nacho de los Ríos and Sergio Clarasó
Filming of sharing
Miguel Ángel Rosales and Andrés Zoilo
Many thanks to the generosity of Factoria Cultural Seville for opening their studios and auditorium to us for this initial residency. Image Credit: Miguel Ángel Rosales and Andres Zoilo
LET'S DANCE INTERNATIONAL FRONTIERS 2021 If the events of the last year have taught us anything, it is that we live in an ever-fluctuating world where we have to be creative and responsive. With this in mind we are delighted to present a multifaceted programme of international dance that explores the theme Creating Socially Engaged Art: Can Dance Change the World? We celebrate International Dance Day on 29 April and over ten days, through innovative live performances, exhibitions and digital technologies, bring together dance enthusiasts from around the world. As part of this LDIF21 we are delighted to work again with Maya Taylor and Yinka Esi Graves for this sharing of work. Although travel restrictions have meant that Maya and Yinka are unable to join us in Leicester for the festival, we are able to travel through technology to New Orleans and Seville respectively. We are delighted to share these works that both explore in different ways, what it means to be Black and what it means to be a woman. Both works will continue to be developed over the forthcoming year and hopefully shared as live in person events at Let's Dance International Frontiers 2022. Thanks to Curve their support as we present this streamed performance for you to enjoy at home. Pawlet Brookes CEO and Artistic Director Serendipity www.serendipity-uk.com