The Good Dance - dakar/brooklyn

Part of the 2009 Next Wave Festival

Dec 16, 18 & 19 at 7:30pm

Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group and Compagnie 1er Temps
Choreographed by Reggie Wilson and Andréya Ouamba

“…one of this country’s most talented choreographers…”
—The New York Times on Reggie Wilson

“The Good Dance is the final offering of the 2009 Next Wave Festival, and it’s hard to imagine going out on a higher note than this meticulously constructed, beautiful work.”
—The New York Times

“…the sheer sensual pleasures of The Good Dance astound…”
—The New York Times


Devoted to reinterpreting the movement languages of Africa and the Diaspora through a postmodern lens, Reggie Wilson creates fluid, grounded, and deeply expressive dances. Wilson and his Brooklyn-based company Fist & Heel Performance Group make their BAM debut with The Good Dance - dakar/brooklyn, a work representing the fruits of a collaboration with choreographer Andréya Ouamba and his Compagnie 1er Temps from Dakar, Senegal.

Combining Wilson's formalist approach with Ouamba's more improvisational style, the artists create a unique movement vocabulary as they draw from their families' roots in the Mississippi Delta and the Congo to ask profound questions about migration and identity. Featuring an amalgam of African and African American music, movement, text, and vocals, The Good Dance explores the genealogy of culture to consider the influence—real and metaphorical—of Central African culture on world performance forms.


BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
70min, no intermission
Tickets: $20, 30


Costume design by Naoko Nagata
Lighting design by Jonathan Belcher

The New York Times review of The Good Dance
“The title of Reggie Wilson and Andréya Ouamba’s new work, 'The Good Dance — dakar/brooklyn,' does not go nearly far enough in praising this marvelous collaboration…”

Article: “Reggie Wilson and Congo's Andréa Ouamba at BAM” (Village Voice)
Reggie Wilson discusses the "African genius for movement" and the research behind The Good Dance .

Article: "Dancing on the Steps of a Monument to Cultural Exchange, of a Sort" (The New York Times)
Claudia La Rocca profiles Reggie Wilson's site-specific precursor to The Good Dance.

Audio: Conversation between Andréya Ouamba and Reggie Wilson
The two choreographers discuss their parallel heritage and the origins of The Good Dance


Video: Reggie Wilson and the Fist & Heel Performance Group
Wilson and his company dance to the blues in this brief clip.


Video: Solo dance performance by Andréya Ouamba
A clip from a mezmerizing solo performance by the Congolese choreographer.