How to Bend Down/How to Pick it Up

(The Shed, 2024)

Four dancers are in action with their left legs in the air and right legs on the floor.
Seven performers are in a studio space, right legs are in the air and bent, and their arms are crossed above their heads.
Five dancers in masks are in a studio space; their left legs are extended high in the air and their right arms are also lifted straight into the air.
Five dancers are in a studio and they are in a movement where their torsos are horizontal, one leg is on the ground and one is in the air, and their arms are extended behind them, a little like they are flying.

About

The Shed presented the world premiere of How to Bend Down / How to Pick it Up on August 15-17, 2024. The show has the support of the New England Foundation for the Arts - National Dance Project grant for U.S. touring.  

How to Bend Down / How to Pick it Up is a 11-person ensemble work that explores lineages of Black disabled imagination and alternative world-building through an immersive, multidisciplinary dance performance.

How to Bend Down / How to Pick it Up moves through three historical spaces—the cotton field, the Black church, and the freakshow/circus—where Black disability was hidden, deemed unproductive, reduced to spectacle, or asked to be prayed away. The work offers an archival exploration of these spaces and a reclaiming of agency, recentering the parts of the self that were discarded or suppressed in those settings while carrying forward the ancestral task of envisioning a future where every-body is free. 

Access is central to the creative process and performance. The production includes multiple audio descriptions, ASL interpreters, and a performance structure that can reconfigure every night based on the performers’ changing needs.

Two performers are facing the camera; one has arms folded in front of them and the other has their arms propping up their face.
Three performers in masks look like they are doing a sashay across the floor, with one arm and one leg lifted.
Two performers have their arms in front of them, extended in two different gestures.
Five performers are walking through a studio space at different angles and pathways.

Credits 

Director: Kayla Hamilton

Rehearsal Director: Alicia Raquel

Musical Director: Khalil Daniel

Song Writer: Kayla Hamilton and JJ Omelagah

Writer/Researcher: Joselia Rebekah Hughes

Video Design: Jessica Ray

Sound Design: DJ Potts 

Audio Description by: Alexandra Beller, Kayla Hamilton, Nicole Y. McClam, Azure D. Osborne-Lee, Brendan Drake, Aleeza Garcia, Indigo Sparks, nessie Slyker, Tess Dworman, JJ Omelagah, Joselia Rebekah Hughes

Choreographed and Performed by: Kayla Hamilton, Nicole Y. McClam, Azure D. Osborne-Lee, Brendan Drake, Aleeza Garcia, Indigo Sparks, nessie Slyker, Tess Dworman, JJ Omelagah, Khalil Brown, Jerron Herman, Vanessa Hernandez Cruz, alex Velozo, Akhila Vimal

This work is being supported by Bronx Council on the Arts, New England Foundation for the Arts, and The Shed.

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