The creation of new work is the basis of all that we do at Evidence. It can take anywhere from 1 – 3 years from inception to research to staged performance. Checkout this excerpt of an essay by Ronald K. Brown about his critically-acclaimed, full evening-length multimedia work One Shot: Rhapsody in Black and White, Dance Sessions (2007).

What do you do with your opportunity in life? Live each day as if it were your last. If this opportunity is your one shot, what would you do?

Several years ago, Neil Barclay of the August Wilson Center for African American Culture and I discussed a new dance work. We discussed the tradition of jazz in Pittsburgh, the artists from Pittsburgh across genres and Charles “Teenie” Harris, One Shot. There was an immediate excitement realizing there were so many artists and musicians from Pittsburgh who inspire me and whose work I’ve employed in the past. The metaphor that I heard in the nickname One Shot made me dream of possibility and opportunity.

From there I began to wonder, “What is the piece, what is the story?” Once Mr. Barclay mailed me some of the books of Mr. Harris’ work, I recognized many of the images in my collection of 500 black and white postcards that I had pasted on one wall in my apartment in Brooklyn, NY from 1994 to 2000. Images have always been a source of pride and were essential in the nourishment and inspiration for my creative process. The images and the music were beginning to converge in the discovery of the work. In June 2004 I met with Louise Lippincott of the Carnegie Museum and she supplied me with an oral history of One Shot and the contact information for Mr. Harris’ son Charles “Teenie” Harris, Jr. Later on I was later able to sit with an exhibition of Mr. Harris’ work at the Carnegie, pour over countless images of sports teams, choirs, baptism, and burials. I was also able to visit the August Wilson Center’s showing of young people in “Looking Forward.”

 

The imagining of the dance began to take form with these intentions:  prayer, hope, faith, service, beauty, celebration.  Words began to come, and I began to write ONE SHOT: First Words -

One Shot
One opportunity to live
Our faces
Our life
People’s faces
People’s lives
People’s hope “looking forward”
People’s roots
People’s gifts, presence and future
Music began to come, and I began to dance.

Several years ago, at an Artist-Talk at the Studio Museum of Harlem, I met the author of The Celebration of Black Culture, Deborah Willis, in January 2005. Working with Co-Curator, Deb Willis, an art photographer and one of the nation’s leading historians of African American photography, was one of the many gifts in this chance to contribute to a rhapsody in black and white, through dance and image. In 2006 in Brooklyn NY, as I prepared for the premiere of the first 12 minutes of the work, One Shot: First Glance (thank you for all the people we come from) at the American Dance Festival, I received a phone call from Charles Teenie Harris, Jr. who planned to come to the performances in Durham, NC in July 2006. Teenie Jr. came with his wife cousin and her husband to the theater before the show and then we had brunch the following day. All of these chance meetings have been divine and invigorating. The process of learning about the work of Charles "Teenie" Harris has included confirmation and guidance from the meeting of people and the wealth of Mr. Harris’ legacy in his photography and his story.

Mr. Harris captured many aspects of life in Pittsburgh in his photographs: the spirit of childhood, the indulgences in decadence, and the soul of jazz. Harris’ images inspire me to discover the story inside and behind the photos, in the music and in “the life.”  This new dance theater work, One Shot, will look at the affect that legacy has on community and individual evolution. The music will provide context for the dancescape to express who we are now and who we have been, “lifting up the past in praise today".   In the legacy of Charles "Teenie" Harris there are images of hope, joy and dignity. The black and white the photographs tell stories of community responsibility, faith and respect. Hopefully One Shot, the dance and the images, will inspire the viewer to remember that possibility has been initiated by legacies that keep us dreaming.

 

Evidence photos by Rachel Papo. Access to the photographs of Charles “Teenie” Harris and the photographic archives is provided courtesy of Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA, Charles “Teenie” Harris Archive.