LaTasha Barnes’s The Jazz Continuum lands in Chicago after wowing audiences at the Kennedy Center, Bates Dance Festival, and Jacob's Pillow among others. Combining improvised personal expressions and multi-Bessie Award-winner LaTasha Barnes’s choreography, the work showcases the connections from the past 100 years through today’s Black dance forms including Jazz, Lindy Hop, Hip-Hop, House, and other social dances.
Centering the prolific artistry of Jazz music and dance as a cornerstone of Black American culture and community with an intergenerational and multi-disciplinary cast, this offering to the continuum celebrates the joy and sacred power of the Black experience.
According to The New York Times review of the world premiere at the Joyce Theater, “LaTasha Barnes’s The Jazz Continuum passes from each artist, like an electrical pulse, emanating into the audience and unapologetically invites them into its joy-filled powerful and transformative space - an experience unlike any other and certainly not to be missed.”
Photos by Steven Pisano
This presentation is made possible by Alphawood Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
