Ronald K. Brown is celebrating 40 years since putting on his first concert. He was just 19. The tour by the master choreographer’s Evidence: A Dance Company includes a Dallas stop to open presenter TITAS/Dance Unbound’s new season. For decades, Brown has made works blending the sacred with the secular reflecting the Black experience across the African diaspora.
The program includes two pieces originally commissioned by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater: the now canonical Grace (1999), chronicling a spiritual journey through modern dance, West African idioms and jazz, house and Afropop music, and Open Door (2015), set to recordings by Arturo O’Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra.
The evening will be rounded out by another Brown signature work, 1998’s Upside Down. "I find music and start improvising in the studio with the dancers,” he told The Dallas Morning News in 2019 when his company also opened the TITAS season. “I don't come with preconceived ideas. It's like journalism. I make phrases and build those into sentences kind of the way I would write."
Details
Sept. 12 at Winspear Opera House. Details, tickets at attpac.org.
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