30 Years in 30 Days: A Celebration of the Black Rock Coalition

The Black Rock Coalition Orchestra, featuring Stew. Photo: Earl Douglas, Jr.

By Darrell M. McNeill

Thirty years ago, at the crest of another "Black Lives Matter" epoch—hip-hop going mainstream, The Cosby Show, Spike Lee, Michael Jackson, and the rise of African-Americans and "urban influence" in media and pop culture—a group of cultural warriors were born. In the mid-1980s, the music industry operated (and, bluntly, STILL operates) under a type of cultural Jim Crow, where white artists were/are largely free to pursue any musical genres they chose, while black artists were/are relegated to genres considered more "traditional" or "conventional" (meaning, in real world terms, more commercially viable), like gospel, rap, R&B, soul, jazz, funk, reggae, blues, etc. This flew in the face of documented history, particularly of modern pop and rock 'n' roll, where Black artists were either creating or at the aesthetic forefront of these genres.

In April of 1985, Vernon Reid, Konda Mason, Greg Tate, Craig Street, and a loose group of musicians, writers, actors, filmmakers, academicians, journalists, and fans—driven by these incongruities and inequities in music and the arts—gathered initially to dialogue and vent and figure out solutions. They began to coalesce around the idea that black artists have the inalienable right to the same creative freedom and compensation for success as their white counterparts. By September, a name was chartered, a manifesto was drafted, and the Black Rock Coalition (BRC) was founded.

In Context: Antigone

Director Ivo van Hove's Antigone, featuring Juliette Binoche and a new translation by Anne Carson, comes to BAM on September 24. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of articles and videos related to the show. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought below and by posting on social media using #Antigone.

In Context: TAPE

TAPE, choreographer Kenneth Kvarnström's duct tape-delineated po-mo mashup up of modern dance and baroque music, comes to BAM on September 23. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of articles and videos related to the show. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought below and by posting on social media using #Kvarnstrom.

In Context: Rice

Rice, Cloud Gate Dance Theatre's lyrical tribute to Taiwan's essential crop, opens the 2015 Next Wave Festival on September 16. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of articles and videos related to the show. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought below and by posting on social media using #CloudGateDance.

In Context: Nufonia Must Fall

Nufonia Must Fall, the puppet-filled adaptation of DJ Kid Koala's titular graphic novel, comes to BAM on September 17. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of articles and videos related to the show. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought below and by posting on social media using #NufoniaMustFall.

In Context: COLLAPSE

COLLAPSE, LA band Timur and the Dime Museum's glam-rock requiem for Mother Earth, comes to BAM on September 17. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of articles and videos related to the show. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought below and by posting on social media using #TimurCOLLAPSE.

To Baba Chuck, With Love

Baba Chuck Davis. Photo: Jack Vartoogian

By David Hsieh

DanceAfrica 2015—Brazilian rhythms, African roots ended on a theatrical and emotional high note. Multiple shows sold out completely with long cancellation lines. The high-octane Balé Folclórico da Bahia and the BAM/Restoration DanceAfrica Ensemble roused the audience to their feet to join their samba/reggae dance. On the street, gorgeous weather brought out tens of thousands of people to the bazaar, sampling everything from crafts, fabrics, jewelry, masks, and clothes, to foods and drinks. The smell of BBQ wafted in the air, mixing with the aroma of soap and incense. The beat of drums were counterpoints to trumpet and saxophone lines. The impromptu street musicians conjured bazaar attendees to dance in the streets.

A Visually Literate, Critical Generation

by Lucie Hecht

This fall marked the 8th year of BAM’s Young Film Critics After-School Program, inaugurated in 2006. Fourteen students from Brooklyn area high schools spent 10 weeks with instructor Josh Cabat, watching films and learning how to talk and write about them. Cabat selected movies made by directors “outside of the white male-dominated mainstream,” introducing the students to directors such as Agnès Varda, Akira Kurosawa, and Hany Abu-Assad, among others. As is tradition in the program, the Young Film Critics benefited from a visit from a professional film critic; this year’s guest was Wesley Morris of Grantland.com.

According to BAM’s Assistant Director of Education John Tighe, “these kids are astute because, more so than any generation before, they are visually literate… They all love film because they can ‘read’ images.” The idea of a universal language of cinema that is best read by someone who has grown up immersed in its grammar is nowhere better exemplified than in the work of BAM’s Young Film Critics, whose final film reviews can be as elegant as A.O. Scott’s. Here’s an example from Ali Motte, a junior at the French-American School of New York: “While film is completely valid as a form of entertainment, Cleo from 5 to 7 engages the viewer in a melting pot of the gravity of reality and the light nature of fiction, inducing a delightfully confusing third reality.”

This season continued a powerful tradition and also marked a first: the fledgling expedition into distance learning between BAM’s Young Film Critics and Cabat’s students at Roslyn High on Long Island. The two student groups made strides for BAM’s expanding technological education initiatives as they discussed Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing and its powerful resonance with youth today.

To read more of the students’ reviews, visit the program page. And, if you know a high schooler who would benefit from the program, check back in the fall for information on the 2015 application process.

Lucie Hecht is the general management administrative assistant at BAM and takes great photos of her cats.

Babel, Babel, Bastille!

Courtesy BAM Hamm Archives

In honor of Bastille Day, here's a shot of Maguy Marin's company in Babel, Babel from the 1987 Next Wave Festival. Read the full New York Times review here (including a rather glorious intro!).

About Last Weekend: Contemporary Color

They call it "the sport of the arts" #contemporarycolor #davidbyrne @st_vincent #colorguard

A photo posted by tedalcorn (@tedalcorn) on Jun 29, 2015 at 4:00am PDT

"Ladies and gentlemen, America has changed!" noted David Byrne before beginning his thrilling "I Was Changed"—a collaboration with Longueuil, Quebec's Les Éclipses Winterguard—last weekend at Contemporary Color (BAM's first co-presenation with the Barclays Center!). Bathing the arena in vibrant hues, Byrne's set provided an unexpected moment of celebration for SCOTUS's monumental Friday ruling...but it was by no means the program's only instance of jubilee. Audiences took to social media in droves to memorialize this once-in-a-lifetime performance spectacular, and we partnered with PHHHOTO to provide audiences dynamic portrait opportunities with an onsite PHHHOTO booth. After the jump, enjoy some of our favorite posts from the weekend and relive Contemporary Color's creative magic in posterity...