RICARDO FRAYHA
producer

Characterised by pausing, snapping, gliding, bone breaking, hat tricks, animation, and contortion, flex is a form of street dance that has evolved from the Jamaican bruk-up found in dance halls and reggae clubs in Brooklyn. From the pages of The New Yorker, to the small screen in dance competitions and music videos and even on the big screen at the Tribeca Film Festival, flex culture has risen into the mainstream lexicon and created an entirely new movement vocabulary in post-modern dance. In 2015, this electrifying phenomenon was presented at the Park Avenue Armory as FLEXN, a new project that confronts the disparities of social justice and showcases a company of dancers who explore personal narratives through a unique vocabulary rooted in post-modern dance. Created in the era of unrest following rulings on the murders of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City, this powerful new work is staged by visionary director Peter Sellars and flex pioneer Reggie (Regg Roc) Gray in collaboration with a crew of 21 flex dancers from the very neighborhoods where the Black Lives Matter movement first took shape. Performing both as individuals and in groups to choreography created by the ensemble itself, the dancers utilize their breathtakingly beautiful movement to tell deeply human and sometimes heart-wrenching stories that address these troubling issues of our time.

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REGGIE (REGG ROC) GRAY

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Reggie Gray, a Brooklyn native and pioneer of Flex dancing, recently choreographed his largest production FLEXN at the Park Avenue Armory and toured with this production to the Brisbane Festival in Australia, Festival de Marseille in France, Napoli Teatro Festival in Naples, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in the Berkshires, Massachusetts, and a residency at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.  He recently choreographed, for Public Works: The Odyssey, a New York City theater production. Gray has won several top dance titles, danced for music videos, television shows, and reality competitions - he flaunted his own moves on the third season of America’s Best Dance Crew and has founded a dance competition called The D.R.E.A.M. RING (Dance Rules Everything Around Me). Gray specializes in pauzin, an animated and cinematic flex style that he developed early on in his dance career. FLEXN styles include bone breaking, pauzin, gliding, get low/floor, connecting, hat tricks, and punchlines which are influenced by the '90s Jamaican street dance styles "brukup" and "dancehall". Gray spends his time choreographing productions that speak to current events (such as police brutality), organiZing battles and performances, and filling any spare time by filming and editing dance works. He looks forward to the growth and popularity that FLEXN continues to gain.

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PETER SELLARS

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Peter Sellars has gained international renown for his transformative interpretations of artistic masterpieces and for collaborative projects with an extraordinary range of creative artists. He has staged operas at the Dutch National Opera, English National Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Opéra National de Paris, and the Salzburg Festival, among others, and has established a reputation for bringing 20th-century and contemporary operas to the stage. His most recent collaboration with composer John Adams, Girls of the Golden West, had its world première at the San Francisco Opera in November of 2017.  Noteworthy theater projects include a staging of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice set in southern California with a cast of black, white, Latino, and Asian-American actors and a production of Euripides’ The Children of Herakles, focusing on contemporary immigration and refugee issues and experience. Desdemona, Sellars’ acclaimed collaboration with the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison and Malian composer and singer Rokia Traore has been presented in major cities in Europe, the U.S. and Australia. Sellars has led several arts festivals, including the Los Angeles Festival and the Adelaide Arts Festival. He was Artistic Director of New Crowned Hope, a month-long festival in Vienna for which he invited artists from diverse cultural backgrounds to create new work in the fields of music, theater, dance, film, the visual arts and architecture for the celebration of Mozart’s 250th birth anniversary. Earlier this year Sellars served as Music Director of the 70th anniversary edition of the Ojai Music Festival in Ojai,  California. He is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures at UCLA, a resident curator of the Telluride Film Festival, and was a Mentor for the Rolex Arts Initiative. His awards include a MacArthur Fellowship, the Erasmus Prize for contributions to European Culture, and the Polar Music Prize. Peter Sellars is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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FLEXN

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a collaboration of REGGIE (REGG ROC) GRAY, PETER SELLARS and members of the FLEX community

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Light sculpture and light design: BEN ZAMORA | Costume design: ANGELA WENDT | Music mix: EPIC B | Associate director: CHARLOTTE BRATHWAITE | Production manager: ANDREW LULLING | Stage manager: BETSY AYER | Company manager and assistant producer:  ABENA FLOYD | Executive producer: PARK AVENUE ARMORY | Consulting producer: DIANE J. MALECKI | Producer: AVERY WILLIS HOFFMAN

 

Company

ANDROID……..    MARTINA HEIMANN

BANKS…….…..    JAMES DAVIS

BRIXX……………    SEAN DOUGLAS

CAL……………..…   CALVIN HUNT

DAYNTE.….....…   DEIDRA BRAZ

DOC………...…...    AARON FRAZIER

DRE DON.…....    ANDRE REDMAN

DROID…….......     RAFAEL BURGOS

KARNAGE.......    QUAMAINE DANIELS

REGG ROC.……   REGGIE GRAY

SCORP……..……   DWIGHT WAUGH

SHELLZ….....…   SHELBY FELTON

SLICC…….....…    DERICK MURRELD

TYME………...…    GLENDON CHARLES

 

World premiere: Park Avenue Armory, New York City, March 2015.

 

Originally commissioned and produced by PARK AVENUE ARMORY.

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Production in Brazil: PROD.ART.BR | Production directors: RICARDO FRAYHA, RICARDO MUNIZ FERNANDES | Technical director: JULIO CESARINI

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Realisation: Sesc São Paulo

Teatro Antunes Filho, Sesc Vila Mariana

São Paulo, SP, Brazil

17 to 20/10/2019