The Living Ancestors

The Living Ancestors is a multimedia dance theater production that launches the audience into the narrative journey of artistic worldbuilding and ethnography as conceived by the project’s Artistic Director j. bouey. Guided by the poetic libretto of Junauda Petrus, this disco-funk space-opera dance-theater work presents an immersive vision of a future global society at the precipice of abolishing oppression. In this speculative story, The Living Ancestors, a renowned band of griots, reveal their origins as formerly enslaved clones from the Underground and shift the future world’s perspective of a supposed utopia. Ethnochoreological research of Punking and Waacking is encoded into The Living Ancestors’ choreography by performers Tyrone Bevans, Nubian Néné and Jayson P. Smith. The entrancing cast of performers bring embodied fieldwork to the concert stage through iterative artistic and field research practice. Sound designer Dane Deveraux‘s sonic landscape of funk, disco, and house music seamlessly connects the futuristic setting of this tale with the history of the liberating underground club scenes that birthed Waacking, Punking and House dance, projecting their legacy into the future. Featuring George Del Barrio’s pioneering Live Performance Camera Obscura projection design, this epic saga of an oppressed population of trafficked people conjures otherworldly images, inviting audiences to re-engage with the human form as a boundless body. Appropriate Age Range Appropriate for audiences of all ages Content Warnings The Living Ancestors includes loud club music with heavy bass and visual projections that can possibly trigger vertigo for sensitive viewers. Duration: 70 minutes