Ronald K. Brown brings EVIDENCE to the Joyce Theater

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Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE returns to the Joyce Theater, to celebrate its 40th anniversary Jan. 14 -19 with a program of works that brings this outstanding company’s ebullient brand of dance that melds traditional African, Afro-Cuban, modern dance and spoken word in contemporary choreography that pleases the eye and soothes the soul. Brown, the company’s founder, has long been critically praised for the brilliant ways he creates a seamless fusion of movement. It is such a mesmerizing visualization of the accompanying music’s rhythm that the very air seems transformed, leaving audiences transfixed. 

A testament to Brown’s choreographic genius is the fact that Judith Jamison, the late artistic director emerita of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, once declared that Brown had more works in the repertory of the AAADT than any other choreographer except, of course, Ailey himself. Brown’s work has also been performed by Ailey II, the Cleo Parker Robinson Ensemble, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, Jennifer Muller/The Works, Jeune Ballet d’Afrique Noire, Ko-Thi Dance Company, and Joan Myers Brown’s Philadanco, among others. In fact, Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE has enchanted audiences with its magically infectious movement in Cuba, Brazil, England, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Mexico, Senegal, Nigeria, South Africa and Canada. Yet, with characteristic humility, the choreographer says of the Joyce season, “I hope that when people see the work, their spirits are lifted. I am interested in sharing perspectives through modern dance, theater and kinetic storytelling. I want my work to be evidence of these perspectives.” 

This 2025 Joyce season is guaranteed to lift the audience’s spirits as Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE returns to the Joyce for its annual home season with a program in which the company’s richly expressive dancers invoke themes of spirituality, community, and liberation, artfully brought together in a 25th anniversary performance of Brown’s tour-de-force masterpiece, “Grace,” along with a landmark restaging of its thematic sequel, “Serving Nia,” which answers the call to serve a higher purpose than oneself through a rapturous blend of movement traditions from Senegal, Ivory Coast, and Guinea with modern dance forms.

Two more repertory works resurface to round out the pair of programs across six performances. “Order My Steps,” originally inspired by the idea of stumbling through life on one’s path, ultimately turns to the instructions in Psalms 119: “Make me go in the path of thy commandments for therein do I delight … with my whole heart.” Built as images of migration and the discovery of decadence, “High Life” examines the movement, stories, and music that describe the journey of the African American from the rural south to the north. Like many works in Brown’s vast repertory, freedom, self-determination, tradition, and cultural values of the African diaspora are on full display, a mix Brown recently told the Amsterdam News is particularly important in “a world that sometimes seems so upside down.” 

Highlighting a quality that shines through his work, Brown added, “There has to be an integrity and humility in your body and in your soul. You know when you start learning to dance, it’s always about moving away from the ground but my thing is, what is our relationship to the ground, to the earth? And then, what is our relationship to the most high and if we can bring all those things to the stage then we’re doing our work.”

Noting the importance of dancers performing his work having “an integrity and humility in [their] body and in [their] soul,” Brown spoke of the upcoming Joyce Theatre program and the particularly touching collaboration that made this season’s performance of “Serving Nia” possible, making the work, which hadn’t been done since 2001, “new for EVIDENCE.” Brown recalled, “I didn’t have a whole lot of time when I was setting it on Ailey so I have a whole new relationship to the piece now that we’re bringing it back. It’s brand new.” 

Since his 2021 stroke, Brown spoke about the love and support he has received from his life partner and Associate Artistic Director Arcel Cabuag, his own company of talented dancers, and the larger dance community. Brown also mentioned the Ford Foundation’s support which helped him bring in former Ailey dancer Cheryl Rowley Gaskins, “who was in all three of the casts that I had at Ailey,” as well as the support of AAADT. “We had some B-roll performance video that former AAADT Associate Director Masazumi Chaya was able to give us. Chaya also found this incredible video of me making up the movement with the Ailey dancers.” Those records allowed Brown and Arcell to “start the editing process and pull together movement we thought belonged in the piece while also creating some new movement. Arcell is so amazing.” Taping the process with his company’s dancers, then changing and editing it, working day and night, the work came together as evidence of the miracle of collaboration, love, and the resilience of the human spirit. Brown’s gratitude was palpable as he spoke. There was Chaya who “went into the Ailey archive and found all this stuff for us.” There was costume designer John Taylor, who had a book of photographs of the costumes traditionally referred to as “The Bible” as well as the Ailey company which “allowed us to borrow the costumes” And, then, of course, there was Cabuag who Brown said, “was so amazing. He is really the brains and the motive behind this.” Brown added, “In Swahili, ‘Nia’ means purpose, so I recently told Arcell that now the piece, ‘Serving Nia’ can be referred to as ‘Being Purpose,’ since in many ways it embodies the concept of how we live with purpose and understand the idea that we’re here to serve one another. That’s the real message. How we serve one another before our time is done.”

In many ways the upcoming EVIDENCE season is proof of that both with its presentation of “Serving Nia,” and the performances of other works that celebrate the grandeur of the African American heritage and more. Brown said, “This year we have Gordon Chambers the prolific songwriter, performing with us and Chadwick Boseman’s brother, former AAADT dancer Kevin Boseman as a guest with us dancing in “Order My Steps,” a piece inspired by a conversation I had with Chadwick Boseman about not compromising in your work because we were raised to understand that God has ordered our steps.” And, of course, there is the beloved masterpiece, “Grace,” a work reflective of a quality of which Brown’s company can be said to be the EVIDENCE. For more info, visit evidencedance.com and joyce.org.ENCE. For more info, visit evidencedance.com and joyce.org.