According to Holly Bass a trend-setting performance and visual artist, there is a new and exciting genre on the local arts scene called “Performance Dance’, where the message is as important as the movement.

Last weekend at Dance Place, MK Abadoo, and Vaughan Ryan Midder rolled out a reimagined Spike Lee Joint called “Wake Up!”, that was part spoken word and all about collaboration where the line between the audience and the performers was merged into an hour-long high energy engagement that ‘splained’ everything from “Good Hair’ to the difference between an HBCU and PWI education.

After the audience was hand stamped at the rear juke joint entrance door, they settled in and found a comfortable spot on the couch or holding up the wall, as Moriamo Temidayo Akibu ‘splained’ black collegiate culture from the prism of a ‘Historically White Institution’ (PWI) like say UMD where MK and Midder matriculated and started their collaboration.

“We began discovering in rehearsals that M. Temidayo Akibu was assuming the role of somewhat of a spokesperson within the show. In a way, her character was the mouthpiece for Black students on her PWI campus. As such, she was also a keeper of their stories and a witness to their daily struggles. At times she dances among them, other times she’s outside them but still connected. She carries the weight of always having to be the face for her people, the representative, a feeling that other characters and even audience members feel and express at times throughout the show” said co-director, Vaughn Midder.

The scholarly seminar starts out as an enlightened discussion but then all hell breaks loose as the movie’s hit soundtrack ‘DA BUTT’ breaks out and the audience is drawn into the campus party on the yard!

“Wake Up!” was inspired by the 2015 Black Lives Matters protest at the University of Missouri where members of the football team refused to play that led to the resignation of the college President. Spike Lee’s seminal 1988 ‘School Daze’ period piece is the thematic platform for Wake Up!’ critical examination of the many cultural touchstones of black college life from the colorism conflict between light skinned and dark skinned students {The Wannabees V. Jigga Boos} became well-worn clichés on campus life

Dance as a collaborative tag team sport is on full display as the black students of the imaginary Privridge West Institute (PWI) Ballers open the party with an in-your-face invitation to the audience to join the mix as the raucous sounds of legendary DC GO GO group Experience Unlimited fill the four corners of Dance Place and the performance is ON!

The most provocative subplots focus on class and color as a faux audition for a campus fashion show hosted by two gay white recruiters played to a spot on twist with white shades by Kevin Carroll and Tariq Darrell O’Meally, systematically reject all the women with African features and kinky hair, until the one Redbone in the lineup shows up who they think is perfect! The tension between the light-skinned ‘exotics’ and how Don Imus described the Rutgers Women’s basketball team as “Nappy Headed Hos’ goes bizzerk as the women finally ask the question, “Do we have to play this Game’?

The strength of the overall production is the depth of the MK & Midder collaborative team and the involvement of the Dramaturg team of Leticia Ridley and Jordan Ealey. From the blend of two strong male dancers {Tariq Darrell O’Mealey & Kevin Carroll} and the decidedly feminist balance of four dominant female dancers, one of which Asia Wyatt served as the ‘Dance Captain’ as Shanice Mason, Moriamo Temidayo Akibu and Selyse completed a balanced team.

But before the homecoming party ended things got deadly serious. A powerful non-musical segment had each of the dancers repeatedly run into the far wall of Dance Place to symbolically hammer the point that the barriers to equality and access still remain for Young, Gifted & Black talent with ambitious aspirations of upward mobility. And Tariq Darrell O’Mealey desperately sucked for air in an “I Can’t Breathe” Eric Garner moment on the side of the stage.

The magic of “Wake UP!” is the joy you saw in the faces of the audience as they were drawn in the action and the energy of the performance and the seamless storyline that kept the participants from letting the experience end as the party continued well after the formal end of the performance.

The only criticism I experienced was an occasional departure to Millenial cliques such as the ‘selfie’ set-up on the sidelines that did positively engage a delighted senior citizen, but took too long on the set-up and execution and seemed superfluous! One thing is for sure, the emergence of Performance Dance is here to stay and the new cadre of talented dancers, producers, choreographers, and artists from PWIs and HBCUs have the perfect platform at DANCE PLACE to showcase their dynamic new content!