Redemption Too,
At Least Some
by BANDALOOP & DBR
Redemption Too,
At Least Some
Commissioned by The Apollo Theater
Premiering in Harlem, 2024-2025
MAP Fund Award Recipient
Co-Produced by BANDALOOP and SOZO Creative
Redemption Too, At Least Some is a collaboration between vertical dance company, BANDALOOP, and composer/violist Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR) commissioned by the Apollo Theater as part of Apollo New Works, a new initiative dedicated to the creation of new work by artists of color funded by the Ford Foundation with creation residency support from the National Endowment for the Arts. Co-directed by Melecio Estrella and Amelia Rudolph, it will be the first performance of violin and dance on the side of a tower in Harlem and will mark the grand reveal of Victoria Theater, part of the expanded and redeveloped Apollo Performing Arts Center.
This collaboration explores the themes of home, urban belonging, race and privilege, charging performers and audiences to see their community in a new light. Drawing from Black and Haitian culture and musical influences, DBR’s contemporary classical voice will merge with BANDALOOP’s perspective-shifting choreography to create impactful public art that physically and creatively elevates predominantly BIPOC artists, while affording a dynamic platform from which place-based stories can be told.
Having moved to Harlem in 1998, DBR made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2000 with the American Composers Orchestra performing his Harlem Essay for Orchestra, a piece in which he wove in the life story of his landlady, Barbara Logan- a lifelong Harlem resident, chronicling her life as an African American woman. DBR is consistently looking to the communities he is creating within to authentically uplift their own stories, a practice that he continues today in his myriad artistic and community engagement endeavors across the country. This collaboration with BANDALOOP is no exception. Collaborating with Gabriele Christian, a Harlem-born conceptual artist experimenting with somatic practices, language and community arts facilitation to locate and center BlaQ (Black and Queer) experience, DBR and BANDALOOP will infuse Gabriele’s writing and interviews with their family members with deep Harlem roots: Gabriele’s mother still resides in the same apartment, blocks from the Apollo, for the last 50 years; and their great-grandfather was a Reverend who stewarded a church in Harlem until the 1950s. Drawing upon these narratives, the collaborators will create a unique living vertical public art experience to reflect and honor the current and future visions of the places we call home.
“As a Black, male, Haitian-American composer, statistically I face death daily. I feel under siege. I can’t always trust the law to enforce my right to life, liberty, or any pursuit of happiness. I don’t always feel fully free. Working with Bandaloop, within their creative practice, has changed how I see our communities, literally. From above, our communities look beautiful and connected and new and reveal them as much more connected and accessible.”
The MAP Fund, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, and Mellon Foundation.
ABOUT DBR
Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR) is a Black, Haitian-American composer who sees composing as collaboration with artists, organizations and communities within the farming and framing of ideas. He is a prolific and endlessly collaborative composer, performer, educator, and social entrepreneur. “About as omnivorous as a contemporary artist gets” (New York Times), Roumain has worked with artists from J’Nai Bridges, Lady Gaga and Philip Glass to Bill T. Jones, Marin Alsop and Anna Deavere Smith.
Known for his signature violin sounds infused with myriad electronic and African-American music influences, Roumain takes his genre-bending music beyond the proscenium. He is a composer of solo, chamber, orchestral, and operatic works, and has composed an array of film, theater, and dance scores. He has composed music for the acclaimed film Ailey (Sundance official selection); was the first Music Director and Principal Composer with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company; released and appeared on 30 album recordings; and has published over 300 works. He has appeared on CBS, ESPN, FOX, NBC, NPR, and PBS; and has collaborated with the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Kennedy Center, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Sydney Opera House. He was Artist-in-Residence and Creative Chair at the Flynn in Burlington, Vermont. Currently, he is the first Artistic Ambassador with Firstworks; the first Artist Activist-in-Residence at Longy School of Music; and the first Resident Artistic Catalyst with the New Jersey Symphony.
Roumain is an Atlantic Center Master Artist, a Creative Capital Grantee, and a Hermitage Artist Retreat Fellow. He has won the American Academy in Rome Goddard Lieberson Fellowship; a Civitella Ranieri Music Fellowship Award; an Emmy Award for The New Look of Classical Music; National Sawdust Disruptor Award; and the Sphinx Organization Arthur L. Johnson Award. He has been featured as a keynote speaker at universities, colleges, conservatories and technology conferences, and was the first ASU GAMMAGE Residency Artist. He has lectured at Yale and Princeton University and was a Roth Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Dartmouth College. He currently serves as a board member for the Association of Performing Arts Professionals (Vice Chair), the League of American Orchestras, and is a voting member for the Recording Academy GRAMMY awards.
ABOUT BANDALOOP
BANDALOOP honors nature, community, and the human spirit through perspective-bending dance. A pioneer in vertical performance, BANDALOOP seamlessly weaves dynamic physicality, intricate choreography, and the art of climbing to turn the dance floor on its side. Under the artistic direction of Melecio Estrella, the work reimagines dance, activates public spaces, and inspires wonder and imagination in audiences around the world.
BANDALOOP performs in theaters and museums, on skyscrapers, bridges, billboards and historical sites, in atriums and convention halls, in nature on cliffs, and on screen. Community is a pillar of the dance company’s work and they regularly offer courses for students and adults in Oakland, as well as lectures and corporate team building workshops worldwide.
Among BANDALOOP’s vertical dance floors are the New York Stock Exchange, the LIC Building (Delhi), the Space Needle (Seattle), IBM Headquarters Brazil, the National Museum (Singapore), the Campanile Tower at The Venetian Macau, UNESCO sites, Yosemite’s El Capitan, and the Sundial Bridge at Turtle Bay (California). The dance company headlines at festivals and grand openings celebrating new structures and public spaces, including the Virgin Galactic Spaceport, Los Angeles City Hall for the launch of Grand Park, the IFC Tower in Seoul, and Hermès Beverly Hills.
ABOUT GABRIELE CHRISTIAN
Gabriele Christian is an Oakland-based conceptual artist and descendent of stolen folk experimenting within somatic practices, language, performance composition, video production and community arts facilitation to locate and center BlaQ (Black and Queer) experience, vernaculars and aesthetics as wellsprings for radical futurity. They are a founding member of BlaQ-led projects: &theruptureisnow; OYSTERKNIFE; and blaQyard. They’ve been involved internationally in multimedia productions and processes with choreographers, collectives and companies like jose e. abad/fugitivity labs, LXS DXS, Sherwood Chen, Lenora Lee Dance, SAMMAY, Skywatchers (ABD Productions), Kim Ip, Mica Sigourney/OX Productions, Robert Woodruff, Joe Goode Performance Group, Jess Curtis/Gravity, WePlayers, Larkin Street Youth Services, Destiny Arts Center, et hella al. With this experience, they've also empowered the work and stories of Blind and Visually Impaired (BVI) folk, black and brown youth, Tenderloin residents, and LGBTQ+ elders. At the heart of all of their work, they strive to excavate oral tradition and movement as conduits for equitable conversations around belonging, spirit, desirability, abundance, and care.
Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR)
“BANDALOOP makes dance accessible and reinvents the form in exciting and unexpected ways.”
Gabriele Christian (photo by Rich Lomibao)