Take time out, stop, look, and listen the next time you find yourself on a bus, waiting in line, walking down the street or being bombarded by cell phone conversations. Thousands of non-verbal gestures, utterances and meaningful expressions enter into our consciousness and sub-consciousness each day. These gestures and expressions capture the spirit of the human condition and usually unbeknownst to the individual chronicle a cultural history associated with a particular race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation and generation. Sadly though, we rarely take the time to absorb the power and depth of these communications, nor pay homage to their origin, meaning, or cultural significance.
Rashaad Newsome in his performance art piece Shade Compositions gives us this opportunity to study and admire gestures and expressions typified by African American Women. Shade Compositions dissects, embraces and reconstructs what is often perceived and portrayed as a lower class and “ghetto” language, into an orchestrated dance, video, high tech and musical performance that champions this languages’ elegance, richness and strength. Shade Compositions enables the audience to appreciate the cultural power of this language and understand its political, economic, and sociological origins that are all rooted in the love, challenge, responsibility, and survival that personify the modern African American Woman.
Newsome has harmoniously choreographed a performance of over twenty stylishly attired African American women who communicate a series of distinct ‘shady’ gestures and vocalizations that are mixed with supporting video, music sampling and driving beats. The combined piece results in the transformation of a seemingly pedestrian collection of daily utterances and expressions into a modern linguistic symphony. Newsome conducts these five sections using his baton (a programmed Wii game device programmed to control the timing and sequencing of the audio and video components of the piece), and progresses stereotypical history into modern reality and appreciation. Shade Compositions delivers an artistic and stylish tribute to the language (verbalized and body), strength and beauty of the African American woman, and in turn effectively realizes the fact how this culturally “owned” language associated with this population has deferentially crossed racial, sex, class and gender specific lines and become a meaningful and endearing part of our collective humanity. So take the time, stop, look, listen and appreciate Shade Compositions and the artistry of Rashaad Newsome.
Rashaad Newsome will perform Shade Compositions at the Kitchen on W. 19th street on February 12 and 13th at 8:00PM and February 14th at 5:00 PM.
