516 High Street
Bellingham
Strange Fruit draws its title from the 1937 poem and song of the same name by Abel Meeropol and made famous by the great jazz singer Billie Holiday. The lyrics are an extended metaphor linking a tree’s fruit with lynching victims. The impetus for this world premiere work is the employment of lynching as a tool of racial terrorism during the Jim Crow Era.
For this dance/theater work, the facts of lynching act as a springboard into a highly personal interior space and state of mind. Strange Fruit tracks choreographer Donald Byrd’s feelings as a response to lynching and plays out as a series of dance/theater vignettes. The piece is abstract but informed by the reality of these brutal acts of terrorism.
Spectrum Dance Theater’s Black History Month WWU residency also includes these public events:
Q&A with Donald Byrd and Spectrum dancers
Wednesday, February 19, 9pm, Ethnic Student Center, Viking Union
Strange Fruit rehearsals, open for observation
Thursday, February 20 & Friday, February 21, 10am, PAC Mainstage
Thank you to Mary and D. Pat Patterson; Virginia Anderson; and WWU College of Fine and Performing Arts, Enrollment and Student Services, DRAC (Department Related Activities Committee), and AS Productions for support of the Spectrum Dance Theater residency.
Full schedule of WWU Black History Month 2020: https://www.wwu.edu/black-history-month
