Dance and Digital Culture Merge in AFROFUTURISM Series

    NEW YORK, NY, October 09, 2015 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Renegade Performance Group presents the 2015 AFROFUTURISM Series at the Irondale Center, in Brooklyn, NY, November 4-7.

Renegade Performance Group will present two unique full-length programs: the world-premiere of Untitled Distances, including Neon Cross, Digital Middle Passage, Hidden Tracks (showing November 4th and 6th) and the Inscription Project(showing November 5th and 7th), for their 2015 season, THE AFROFUTURISM Series. Originally launched in January 2014, the AFROFUTURISM Series is an ongoing interactive multimedia project that investigates the presence of Blackness into and beyond 21st Century techno-culture, art, and society through contemporary dance in a digital landscape. The series introduces a platform where Black cultural themes and contexts are remixed and reimagined through contemporary dance, digital sound scaping and landscaping. The 2015 AFROFUTURISM Series will be Renegade Performance Group's first season in the company's founding city, Brooklyn, NY.

"Much of the work and ideas engaging AFROFUTURISM have existed in artistic mediums outside of the body such as music, film, literature, and visual art. Our aim with the AFROFUTURISM Series is to use dance and performance to create new narratives and intersect technology using the living body as a medium," Renegade Performance Group's artistic director and interdisciplinary artist, Andre Zachery, shares. "RPG's new works examine various actions, traditions, and innovations that constantly establish a new framework for Black existence -- one beyond usual stereotypes, tropes or expectancies. The idea of the future and its possibilities exist in everyone from every culture. Our hope is to allow the audience to experience something unknown about this possibility!"

The AFROFUTURISM Series features collaborations with sound artists and composers Ivonne K. Paredes and Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste, graffiti & visual artist Aaron "Spazecraft" Lazansky, and costume designer Joy Havens. The performers of RPG including Sarah Chien, Shiloh Hodges, Cameron McKinney, Candace Thompson and Nehemoyia Young, represent the diversity of Brooklyn in nationality, identity, gender and dance backgrounds. RPG is building a new future with every artistic venture.

Coined by cultural critic Mark Dery in the 90s, Afrofuturism refers to the growing artistic movement that incorporates cultural aesthetic that combines artistic elements of science fiction, historical fiction, fantasy, Afrocentricity, and critiques narratives of people of African descent in a sci-fi, futuristic treaties. Renegade Performance Group's collective body of work for the season seeks to inspire and forge a stronger self-identity and respect for humanity AFROFUTURISM as a movement expresses new and progressive narratives, ideologies and symbols representative of Black culture from a global Diasporan perspective. With dance and new media innovation, Renegade Performance Group is poised to lead a critique of the evolving identity and present-day dilemmas of people of color using dance and performance art as the framework for the next phase of the AFROFUTURISM movement.

The performance season will run four nights, from 4-7 November at the Irondale Center, located at 85 South Oxford Street Brooklyn, NY. For tickets to Renegade Performance Group's 2015 AFROFUTURISM Series, visit renegadepg.com/the-afrofuturism-series.html. All shows begin at 8:00pm. General admission tickets are just $25; student rate tickets are $18 and $15 for groups of 10 people or more.

For press inquiries on Renegade Performance Group's AFROFUTURISM Series and media passes to cover the event, please contact Jasu Sims at [email protected]. For press assets, visit
dropbox.com/sh/5jt1ge5r7t2uumw/AACe98_Qc1tETLMtlhyoy6ala?dl=0. To get connected with Renegade Performance Group, follow the company on Twitter and Instagram at @RenegadePG. To learn more about The AFROFUTURISM Series, visit renegadepg.com. Join the Renegade Performance Group on Facebook community and RSVP to attend The AFROFUTURISM Series at the Irondale Center.

ABOUT RENEGADE PERFORMANCE GROUP
Renegade Performance Group was founded in Brooklyn, New York to engage a new generation of audiences with performance and innovatively integrates dance, storytelling, new media and culture. Formed in 2007 by Andre Zachery, the company was designed as an artistic outlet to foster dialogue compelled by the human experience. Renegade Performance Group collaborates with artists of all genres on projects that stretch the boundaries of performance presentation. To learn more about Renegade Performance Group, visit renegadepg.com.

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