Red Clay Dance Company begins its 16th season with “Turning Points,” a program featuring the work of three choreographers. Performances will take place on October 25 and 26 at 7:30 p.m. at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, 915 East 60th Street, in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood.

“In our 16-year history, we have only commissioned work from four choreographers; two of them will be featured in this program,” said founding director Vershawn Sanders-Ward. “Both choreographers value research as part of their creative process and place the lived experience of being Black at the center of their work.” She continued, “This concert features dynamic movement and compelling narratives that showcase the diversity and innovation of Afro-contemporary dance.”

The program includes Sanders-Ward’s Unconditional Conditions, a work for eight dancers premiered in March as part of Red Clay Dance’s La Femme Dance Festival and inspired by Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s poem “We Wear the Mask.” Music is by Missy Elliott, Ran Bango and Moses Sumney.

In its live premiere, We all’ gon die: into revivals, choreographed by Lela Aisha Jones, was first performed as part of Red Clay Dance Company’s online concert “Visions and Voices” during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. The work, for six dancers, is based on “Black Truck” by Mereba, as well as an original composition and poem by Jones. Jones, who lives in Philadelphia, said the inspiration for the work came from “trying to get to this healing practice—work that allowed me to think about an African future, that allowed me to think more deeply about our relationship to the natural environment as Black people, and that was designed to help us touch the unearthly… What if we imagined ourselves as particles in the landscape of the Earth… how we connect and disconnect, how we come together and let each other go, collectively and individually? This work was inspired not by leaving racial trauma behind us…but by how to reland in that struggle and relocate yourself with a liveliness that allows you to live while confronting traumatic events.”

Red Clay Dance premiered DevelopMino, set to “Fugama Unamathe” (Culoe de Song Serenity Mix) by Qness, in November 2015 at the Center for Performing Arts in Richton Park, Illinois. It is the first of two works choreographed for the company by Amansu Eason. Inspired by accounts of the Mino warriors of Dahomey and their stories, the three dancers explored the different layers of these complex warriors in preparing this work. “Hopefully this piece will spark more conversations about these historical figures,” said Sanders-Ward.

The Red Clay Dance Company season will continue in spring 2025 with “16” in collaboration with the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago. The program includes a world premiere by Bebe Miller performed by the Red Clay Dance Company and a new production of Sanders-Ward’s Written on the Flesh. Performances will be April 17-19 at the Dance Center, 1306 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago. For tickets and information, visit dance.colum.edu.

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