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Meet three women who are celebrating, and remixing, Black dance. Every image here of the dancers Ayodele Casel, LaTasha Barnes and Camille Brown is strikingly contemporary. All artists at the cutting edge of dance today, they regularly perform for rapt audiences. But if you were to cast their angled bodies, brilliant smiles and euphoric turns […] More
Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s regular quiz about books, authors and literary culture. This week’s installment tests your knowledge of novels, poems and memoirs by writers connected to the Harlem Renaissance, a creative movement by Black authors, artists and musicians that crystallized into a cultural force a century ago. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books and other information if you’d like to do some further reading.3 of 5In 1930, Langston Hughes collaborated on a play called “Mule Bone,” which was never finished but was published in a new edition and produced on Broadway in 1991, long after both authors were dead. His co-writer, who was also an anthropologist, was the author of several fiction and nonfiction books, including an autobiography titled “Dust Tracks on a Road.” Who was it? More
A couple with deep ties to the popular Brooklyn festival and its founder and longtime artistic director, Chuck Davis, recall when their wedding was part of the show.Not every love story has a third character, but in the case of N’Goma and Normadien Woolbright, there was one, and he was a force of nature: Chuck Davis, who brought African dance traditions to the United States and founded the DanceAfrica festival. It was his idea that the couple — his friends and colleagues — would marry on the stage of the Brooklyn Academy of Music at the annual festival in 1983.“Life is love,” Davis says in a video shot at the wedding, crossing his arms across his chest before reaching them broadly to either side. “Love is all.”The wedding was a lavish occasion, but it was more than a theatrical staging of a ritual. DanceAfrica, the vibrant festival now in its 47th year, is as much about building and honoring a community as it is about showcasing artistic forms. Personal moments like the Woolbrights’ marriage ceremony are part of its texture.Davis brought the couple — N’Goma, 80, is a drummer and Normadien, 71, a dancer — together by bringing them into his world. They have been involved with the festival since its inaugural presentation, first as performers and now as fixtures behind the scenes. At DanceAfrica, N’Goma is a stage manager; Normadien is assistant stage manager.N’Goma first met Davis while working for the New York Transit Authority. Davis’s musical director worked there too, N’Goma said, and he “wanted me to come down to a dance class with him because I told him I played the drums. I went down to play and Chuck said, ‘Welcome aboard.’”A DanceAfrica wedding: In 1983, N’Goma, middle, and Normadien, right, got married onstage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.BAM Hamm ArchivesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
I don’t know how many rent parties Minnie threw. I do know that her younger son, Cleveland Gilmore, never liked to talk to his son about his childhood and the poverty he experienced as a boy. I know this because nearly 100 years after she and her sister passed out invitations and opened their home, […] More
