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BAAD! celebrates borough through provocative dance iangell@riverdalepress.com
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ll this month, the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance (BAAD!) is putting on a dance festival called “The Boogie Down Dance Series.” The shows will be at BAAD!’s performance space at 2474 Westchester Ave. BAAD co-founder and executive director Charles Rice-Gonzalez, 50, said his group has a couple of goals. “One is to create space in the Bronx for contemporar y dance,” he said. “Another thing is to create and foster a Bronx dance community. So we ver y often look for dancers who are from the Bronx… We’re tr ying to brand the Bronx as a place for dance.” BAAD!’s general manager Manuel Rivera, 35, said the group also pulls people from outside the borough if their work resonates.
“We also bring people you might not always find in the Bronx, that collaborate with Bronx artists as well,” he explained. “We call it the ‘Boogie Down’ because that’s what the nickname of the Bronx is,” Mr. RiceGonzalez said. “But it’s kind of like a ghetto nickname for us, so sometimes it also has that kind of flavor, a homegrown flavor to it.” Mr. Rice-Gonzalez said the Boogie Down Dance Series is in its 14th year. “In general, I think our audience has come to expect something a little edgier,” he said of the series. “A dancer came up to me [last weekend] and said, ‘I love coming to BAAD! because I don’t get to see this in other places,’” Mr. Rice-Gonzalez recounted. “He was saying the level of quality, but also the level of experimentation and the interesting kind of work.” Mr. Rice-Gonzalez said BAAD! fills an important need
in the Bronx. “I think this is important because if you think of the Bronx as a well-rounded community, as a community that has all of the healthy components, one of the healthy components is art,” he said. “And BAAD! in particular is presenting art that is speaking to specific communities of women, people of color and LGBT people, and braiding those people together. But it’s really car ving a space for art, for professional art.”
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AAD! rents its space, a standalone stone chapel, from St. Peter’s Episcopal church. A church might seem like a strange landlord to a group as experimental and edgy as BAAD!, but Mr. Rice-Gonzalez said that’s not the case. “They know exactly who we are and what we do.” When the church was deciding whether to lease the space to BAAD, Mr. Rice-Gonzales said the dance group decided to
put on a show for their possible future landlord, Reverend Mother Joade Dauer-Cardasis. “We presented one of the most provocative performances we could have presented,” Mr. RiceGonzalez said with a laugh. “And after the show, when someone asked her what she thought, she said, ‘If those guys move here, I think it would be a dream come true.’” Mr. Rice-Gonzalez urged Bronxites to come check out the Boogie Down series. “You’ve got a gem in your borough. In your ver y own borough, you’ve got a dance gem where people are traveling from all over the city to come see work. Here we are. Come on over and see something special.” Visit www.baadbronx.org for a full listing of events. Some shows may contain nudity.
DANCER SAEED SIMIAK rehearses for the ‘Boogie Down Dance Series’ at BAAD!’s theater at 2474 Westchester Ave. on May 8. Photos by Adrian Fussell
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By Isabel Angell