Takademe

Robert Battle's Takademe
Please Credit Photo: Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's Yannick Lebrun in Robert Battle's Takademe. Photo by Andrew Eccles
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(1999)
                                                                              
Choreographer: Robert Battle
Music: Sheila Chandra
 
Artistic Director Robert Battle mixes humor and high-flying movement in this fiery work. The complex, tightly woven rhythms of Indian Kathak dance are deconstructed and abstracted in this percussive, fast‐paced work, where clear shapes and propulsive jumps mimic the vocalized rhythmic syllables of Sheila Chandra’s syncopated score.
 
Robert Battle comments: “Takademe is near and dear to me as one of my first creations. It’s a work I made in the tiny living room of my old apartment in Queens. As I begin as Artistic Director, I want to acknowledge my journey, look back on what I did with so little and recognize having so very much now. Also, the work has a sense of humor, and some of my other works that have been done at Ailey were in a more serious vein. I wanted to share another aspect of myself with the Ailey audience.”

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