Sinclair Community College Theatre and Dance Department will celebrate the words of Martin Luther King Jr. and the music of Mary Lou Williams with two performances of Free Spirits: From the Mountain Top to the Jazz Hall.
The dance concert, in collaboration with Cityfolk, will be open to the community and held at Blair Hall Theatre at 8 p.m. on Friday Feb. 15 and Saturday Feb. 16. Tickets cost $15 for adults and $10 for students with student IDs.
The Free Spirits dance concert will feature Sinclair students and other community members performing alongside a jazz orchestra, spoken word performances, the Omega Baptist Church Choir and guest work from Jakari Sherman of Step Afrika! and LaFrae Sci of Lincoln Center Jazz.
Rodney Veal, Free Spirits choreographer and adjunct faculty member at Sinclair, described his role of artistic director as helping to fuse these various elements together into one performance.
“My task is to create this kind of journey, this artistic journey and so it’s definitely not going to be a traditional concert by any means,” Veal said. “It should be a pretty epic show.”
Sci, a composer and drummer, is working with local jazz musicians to help put together the live music for Free Spirits.
Sherman, a choreographer who works in the tradition of stepping, is bringing his expertise to help Dayton students bring a unique style of dance to the performance.
Veal said he feels the performance showcases three components (the spiritual, the secular and the political) of not only the world we live in, but of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mary Lou Williams, who serve as two prime examples of “individuals that have gone above and beyond as human beings on this planet.”
“I’m hoping [the audiences] will not only embrace the artistry that’s being presented, but the thought behind it, the ideas behind it, that we should strive for greatness, that we should express ourselves to the best of our abilities,” he said.
Veal, hired as an independent choreographer by Cityfolk, said Sinclair’s mission to embrace community mirrored Cityfolk’s Culture Builds Community program and helped present an opportunity for this partnership.
Sinclair students will also be backstage working to assemble the many parts of the production, while working with others involved on and off-stage, in “a real, living example of what they’re aspiring to do in Theatre [Technology],” Veal said.
Dancers with varying experience, ranging in age from 14 to 35, were chosen from an open audition held on Dec. 12 to participate in the dance workshop that preceded the Free Spirits performance.
“I hope that people take the time to really embrace this program because it speaks not only to what Sinclair is about, but it speaks to what our city of Dayton and our community is about,” he said. “And it’s a celebration. It’s going to be great time.”
For ticket sales and box office information, please visit www.cityfolk.org.