CITIZEN- Raja Feather Kelly - Solo

horeography by Reggie Wilson

Lighting Design by Chris Kuhl
Video Collaboration with Aitor Mendilibar
Costumes by Enver Chakartash
Cast: Yeman Brown, Raja Feather Kelly, Clement Mensah, Anna Schon, and Annie Wang.
Music: Rev. Olsie Cowan; Baaba Maal; Aster Aweke; Tchad Blake; The La Drivers Union Por Por Group; Fist & Heel Performance Group; The Singing and Prayer Bands of Maryland and Delaware; “Young Tikar Woman”; Gonga Sarki Birgui and Hamadjam Sarki Siyawa; Local musicians from the Border Area of the Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso
Choreographic Advisor: Phyllis Lamhut

“What does it mean to belong” and“What does it mean to NOT want to belong,” are core questions of Reggie Wilson’s investigations for his new evening-length dance work, CITIZEN.

In CITIZEN, Wilson drills down into the human desire to belong with exponentially expanding questions: “Do the injustices in today’s America engender a feeling of belonging? What supports belonging? Is belonging solely something internal, inside the individual? Is a sense of belonging or not belonging, a private or a public matter? How is my experience as a Black, 48 year-old male in America compared to a black 30 year-old male or a 23 year-old black male’s experience, reality of America, different? What makes our experiences different, race, class, religion, gender, location, ancestry, language…? Do I change to belong? What do I change? Is change necessary? Does knowing the past help now, how? Do I become an anonymous individual if I belong? Belong to what…Where? Why? How? Who?” This work takes these ever-expanding questions out of the theoretical and cerebral, and confronts them on kinesthetic, personal, individual, practical, and macro levels, to offer alternatives. CITIZEN promises to engage and compel while igniting disruptive, uncomfortable perspectives on our compassion and humanity.