ABOUT THE GRANT
- $45,000 to Destiny Arts Center to support The Black (W)hole (MAP 2019)
ABOUT THE PROJECT
The Black (W)hole is a multidisciplinary, collaborative spoken word and movement elegy for Oakland youth killed before the age of 30. A collaboration between Destiny Arts Center’s award-winning, Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company; 2017 TED Global Fellow, Vice President and Artistic Director of Social Impact at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Marc Bamuthi Joseph; Oakland muralist, Brett Cook; and co-founder of YAK Films, a multimedia company dedicated to filming movement-based art, Yoram Savion.
The Black (W)hole will include poetic elegies, choreography, video installations, and “vévés”—visual symbols in the Voudon tradition that represent and summon spirit intermediaries—to create a public ritual for mourning and healing. The production will examine black culture as a vehicle for resistance and spiritual renewal. With a 2020 premiere at the Oakland Civic and the Odell Johnson Performing Arts Center at Laney College, The Black (W)hole will address Oakland youth homicide and urban gentrification, and become a resource to residents in Oakland, a city undergoing swift, dramatic transitions.
ARTISTIC TEAM
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