About The Project

(Re)Singing from the Underspace is a powerful, evening-length dance-theater diptych envisioned by choreographer and artist-activist Charles O. Anderson in collaboration with Dayton Contemporary Dance Company (DCDC). Conceived in recognition of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, this project summons Black memory, protest, and speculative imagination to confront foundational American myths and conjure alternative futures.

Merging Afro-contemporary movement, spoken word, digital media, and immersive installation, (Re)Singing… draws inspiration from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the “Montgomery Brawl” of August 5, 2023, and centuries of Black resistance. It reimagines national belonging through the lens of the “underspace”—the subversive historical terrain of ancestral knowledge, survival, and radical joy.

Each engagement includes pre-concert residency workshops—designed by Anderson and led by DCDC artists—welcoming community members of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities to participate in the creative process. Songs, stories, and gestures gathered from these sessions will be embedded into the performance, making each iteration of (Re)Singing… a site-specific and intergenerational act of collective reimagining.

A Dynamic Work in Two Parts

Part One: The Storm

Recurrent Unrest

The first part, Recurrent Unrest, is the storm—an embodied archive of resistance that reframes Prospero’s illusion of control as a white supremacist delusion. Here, protest is not unrest, but ritual, memory, and refusal. Through community workshops, this section integrates local voices into the sonic and kinetic fabric of the piece, drawing on the Civil Rights Movement and contemporary liberation struggles.

Part Two: The Reckoning

3/5 Proclamations

The second part, 3/5 Proclamations, is the reckoning. Set in a liminal, Afrofuturist hospice, it stages the imagined extinction of whiteness through the final monologue of a spectral Prospero—a disembodied Klan robe floating like a flag in collapse. Witnessed by Sycorax, Caliban, and Ariel—here envisioned as a triadic Black consciousness—the work centers Black mercy and choreopoetic memorialization, transforming Shakespeare’s colonizing fable into a ritual for release and reclamation.

A segment from this act, A 3/5 Proclamation: 8.5.23, commissioned by DCDC in 2023, serves as the skeletal foundation of the full-length work. New choreography, voice, and projected media will expand this frame into a richly layered communal ceremony.

Details

Program Length: 75-90 minutes, with intermission

Project Collaborators

Dayton Contemporary Dance Company*
Debbie Blunden-Diggs, Chief Executive and Artistic Director
Charles O. Anderson, Choreographer
Robert Ramirez, Dramaturg, Shakespearean Director, Carnegie Mellon University
Ursula Rucker, Performance Poet
Michael Wall, Sound Designer & Composer
Chris Coleman, Digital Media Designer, ACCAD

*Company of 14 dancers, plus DCDC Production Director, Associate Production Manager, Stage Manager, Wardrobe Director, Chief Executive Artistic Director and Associate Artistic Director.

Each performance intends to integrate DCDC dancers, university students, local community, artists and activists, transforming the stage into a site of intergenerational, and cross-sector engagement.

Anticipated Needs

Performance Needs

• $25,000 plus travel
• Housing
• Additional travel and housing for 2 people
• (pre-concert residency activities)
• General technical specifications and requirements
• Projection (rear) capabilities

Touring Activities

Proposed Residency

• • A multi-day workshop residency where DCDC leader(s) work with local community.
• • Full company arrives for a typical load-in, rehearsal and show (can include selected community participants). This can happen in a single block of time, i.e. Monday through Thursday residency activities with the remainder of the company arrives for prep and show at the end of the week.
• • Can be designed so the residency activity occurs weeks or months prior to the performance.