CRĀV The HARVEST

CRĀV The Harvest Inaugural Conference & Festival with Rennie Harris
March 26-30

CRĀV The Harvest's inaugural conference at Five College Dance features Hip-Hop scholar and practitioner Rennie Harris in a festival of events: a masterclass, 2 showcases, an artist talk, and lecture. Please see the Festival Schedule below.

In 1992, Harris founded Rennie Harris Puremovement American Street Dance Theater. Regarding accolades, Dr. Lorenzo "Rennie" Harris holds two honorary doctoral degrees from Bates College, Lewiston, ME, and Columbia College, Chicago. Rennie has received 3 Bessie Awards for his choreography Rome & Jewels based on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, 5 Black Dance Theater Awards from Alvin Ailey, Herb Alpert Award in choreography, a Guggenheim award, Dance Magazine's Legend Award, and a Palm Desert Festival lifetime achievement award, to name a few. Please see more about Rennie below.

About CRĀV The Harvest

CRĀV The Harvest is a network that brings together artists that are building the pedagogy for the continuum of Black American Artistry in higher education. CRĀV The Harvest provides artists, scholars, and marginalized artists with the opportunity to be in residence together to: foster interdisciplinary creative collaborations for stage performance, bring authentic Black American experiences to academic spaces, and build artistic events within local POC communities. Please see the full mission statement of CRĀV the Harvest and a list of our funders, below. 
 

Festival Schedule

All events are free and open to the public. Please note, photographs and video may be taken throughout the Harvest events, and by participating, you acknowledge that your image may be captured on photo or video and used for archival and promotional purposes by Five College Dance. 

Rennie Harris Biography

CRĀV The Harvest's inaugural conference at the Five Colleges features Hip-Hop scholar and practitioner Lorenzo (Rennie) Harris. In 1992, Harris founded Rennie Harris Puremovement American Street Dance Theater. Harris has received 3 Bessie Awards for his choreography Rome & Jewels based on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, 5 Black Dance Theater Awards from Alvin Ailey, Herb Alpert Award in choreography, a Guggenheim award, Dance Magazine's Legend Award, and a Palm Desert Festival lifetime achievement award, to name a few. Recently, Harris received a Doris Duke Artist award. He is also noted as the first street dancer to receive two honorary doctorates, one from Bates College (Lewiston, ME) and the other from Columbia College (Chicago, IL). He’s the first choreographer to set a 60-minute work on the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater company. “Lazarus,” his latest work on Alvin Ailey, is hailed as a modern version of Alvin Ailey’s signature work “Revelations.”  Harris served as Hip-hop ambassador in 1986 for President Ronald Reagan’s US Embassy Tour. In addition he and his company Rennie Harris Puremovement served as Hip-hop Ambassadors for President Barack Obama’s Dance Motion USA 2012.  A native son of North Philadelphia, Rennie Harris is noted for coining the terms "Hip-hop concert dance" and "street dance theater” in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Suffice it to say, he founded the longest running street dance theater company in American history and is considered the preeminent authority on Hip-hop and street dance culture. The New Yorker said, “Harris is the most respected, and, to my knowledge, the most brilliant Hip-hop choreographer in America” - Joan Acocella. According to the London Times, “Rennie Harris is the Basquiat of the US.” 

CRĀV The Harvest Mission Statement

CRĀV The Harvest is a network that brings together artists that are building the pedagogy for the continuum of Black American Artistry in higher education. CRĀV The Harvest provides artists, scholars and marginalized artists with the opportunity to be in residence together to; foster interdisciplinary creative collaborations for stage performance, bring authentic Black American experiences to academic spaces and to build artistic events within local POC communities. 

CRĀV The Harvest is a collaborative dance program, shared between UMass-Amherst and Mt. Holyoke College, that is actively cultivating infrastructure around embodied intellectual property, illuminating the context (history), content (practice), and citation (source) of the continuum of Black American Artistry. The practice will inform the theory, through the embodiment of African American scholarship, Call and Response, double consciousness, and Ritual and Play. We create programming (CRĀV The Harvest) around these ideals and the practices of professionals and culture bearers from around the country.

Showcase Details

CRĀV The Harvest is an evening featuring artists creating work through the fundamentals and lens of the Continuum of Black American Artistry. The evening centers on the legacy of Black American dance, music, theater, and film as the key to freedom, justice, and survival. This year we are featuring the work of Lauren Cox, Shakia Barron, and Duane Lee Holland, Jr. in two showcases.

CRĀV The Harvest Showcase 1

Tuesday, March 26 at 7pm (UMass-Amherst -Totman Gym)

The Adventures of Maxx Lancaster: A Journey of Black Masculinity

The Adventures of Maxx Lancaster: A Journey of Black Masculinity, is an evening-length interdisciplinary dance performance. The work centers Maxx Lancaster, a queer, charismatic dance artist, raised in the Golden Era of Hip-Hop. Maxx’s journey is narrated by practitioner, and scholar Professor Duane Lee Holland Jr, and the unapologetic brilliance of activist and writer James Baldwin. Through dance, music, and literature, Professor Holland and Mr. Baldwin's inter-generational conversation disrupts rigid notions of Black masculinity in the body, through the use of experimental dance performance, voice, African religious expressions, and exotic dance.

The production, which is accompanied by an original R&B, Soul and House music project created by Duane Lee Holland, Jr, and Maxx Lancaster, operates as an auto-biographical and auto-ethnographic dance performance, using lived experiences to queer Hip Hop dance history. The performance and sonic structure will trace embodied archives of personal, collective, and ancestral Black memories to explore notions of Black masculinity and sexuality in the context of Hip-Hop history. 

CRĀV The Harvest Showcase 2

Thursday, March 28 at 7 pm (UMass-Amherst -Totman Gym)

Take Back, choreography by Shakia Barron, Mount Holyoke College

Shakia Barron is a choreographer, performer and dance educator whose work is rooted in street dance.

Funk is Dad, choreography by Lauren Cox, UMass Amherst

As I write this, my father, Dr. Jeffrey Alan Cox, passed one year ago exactly. I am simply trying to understand his life, transmute his love for music, poetry, philosophy and piece together gems that he left behind. He was a poet and diligent musician - he would burst into my room with his bass guitar and amp, playing whatever funky tune that he wanted us to know. Music made his face light up and Jimi Hendrix was the ultimate. This piece is sprinkled with his words, music and presence. I want to thank my cast for holding space in this process; it has been emotional and comforting to trust you with sacred information. Thank you to Tom Vacanti and Cathy Maclutsky for the light you shine on this dance program. Thank you to my partner, Jonathan Dent, for the incredible support in this time and the growth we experience together daily...you and Josiah are my home. Thank you Dad for showing me the beauty of life and music - "If you're gonna play it, play it LOUD" – Wid. - Lauren Cox