School Performance: Step Afrika! (KCYS)
This performance is part of the Krannert Center Youth Series, school-day performances for public, private, and home schools, grades PreK-12. View the general public event page.
Step Afrika! returns to the Krannert Center Youth Series with an exhilarating program featuring excerpts from their newest work, The Migration: Reflections on Jacob Lawrence, along with a sampling of stepping traditions and percussive dance styles that have elevated the company to "one of the top 10 African American Dance Companies in the US" over its 20-year history. Celebrated African-American painter Jacob Lawrence was barely in his twenties when he created his powerful 60-cardboard-panel masterpiece chronicling the Great Migration of millions of African-Americans from the South to the North after World War I. Step Afrika!, the first professional organization dedicated to the uniquely African-American tradition of stepping, has partnered with The Phillips Collection of Washington, D.C. to transform Lawrence's groundbreaking work into a textured, interdisciplinary piece where lighting-fast claps, impressive footwork, percussive chants, and perfect synchronicity echo themes of locomotion, flight, struggle, and, ultimately, hope.
A collaborative project of Step Afrika! and The Phillips Collection.
Recommended for grades 3-12
Performance length: 50 minutes and 10 minute Q&A
