Choreographers Chris Walker and Kevin Ormsby will tour “FACING Home: Love & Redemption,” a contemporary dance concert that investigates the global impact of Bob Marley’s music—its expression of humanity’s struggle and inspiration toward love, redemption and hope—and the active, deep-rooted homophobia in Jamaican/West Indian Culture.
The tour opens in Wisconsin at the Margaret H’Doubler Performance Space, University of Wisconsin-Madison Dance Department, November 19-21.
“FACING HOME” is meant to impact migrant populations, generate change and ignite the LGBTQ community, it’s supporters, and service workers everywhere it’s performed and beyond. Walker and Ormsby hope, with this work, to initiate an ongoing conversation and provide spaces for the LGBTQ narratives of displacement from home.
“This work faces the paradox that is the West Indian preaching of liberation we find in Marley’s music,” said Chris Walker, Associate Professor of Dance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “while simultaneously oppressing the LGBTQ’s community ability to participate in family, community, and culture.” Through the work, which is constantly evolving, Walker explains, “We aim to engage communities in conversations around homophobia and look at its impact on how individuals engage with space—internal/external, new/old, there/here—and also with each other.”
This body of work evolved from Walker’s experimental contemporary work—“FACING Home: A Phobia” which premiered in New York City June 2013. That work explored the violent attitudes towards homosexuals in their home countries, which for many, resulted in a forced exodus from their country and the reconstruction of their identities as a means of survival.
For performance & ticket information, go online at www.uniontheater.wisc.edu or call 608-265-2787.