What's Up?
“Influenced by six years of dancing with Ronald K. Brown, the lithe Atlanta native combines African and contemporary forms, delving into charged social issues with depth and compassion—in his own voice.”
— From Dance Magazine's "25 to Watch"
Life & Work
Bio:
Celebrated as one of the most gifted and innovative new voices in American dance, Juel D. Lane was anything but fearless growing up in Atlanta, Georgia. Overcome by severe anxiety as a child, Lane would soon discover it was that same body that would unlock his freedom.
Lane’s serendipitous encounter with dance occurred while he studied theater in Tri-Cities High School’s Visual and Performing Arts magnet program. Picking up on his faculty and fluidity with movement, teachers Freddie Hendricks and Dawn Axam suggested Lane register for dance classes. And like a tsunami stirred by a butterfly in flight, Lane’s dance destiny was set into motion.
After receiving elite training from Tri-Cities High School and the Youth Ensemble of Atlanta, Lane earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts with a focus on Contemporary Dance. It was the unconstrained self-expression offered by this style of dance that freed Lane from his severe anxiety.
Lane pushes the boundaries of contemporary dance through choreography that “strips labels and shows humanity,” as he puts it. Whether he examines political concepts, gender roles, or his own intimate experiences, Lane stays unapologetically true to his singular perspective. Lane’s clear vision is met by his extraordinary technical talent, resulting in ever-growing national acclaim that is helping to launch his career to new heights.
World-renowned Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater recently invited Lane to flex his creative muscle as a featured choreographer for Ailey II, a secondary company that focuses on emerging young dancers and innovative choreographers. This addition to Lane’s resume lends global flare to an already robust list of accolades and achievements.
Lane’s exceptional repertoire has landed him on the cover of Dance Studio Magazine and on Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” list.
Currently dancing with Bessie Award-winning Camille A. Brown & Dancers, Lane made history in 2012 as the first local and independent black choreographer to have his work commissioned by the Atlanta Ballet. From there, he participated in the 2015-2016 Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation New Directions Choreography Lab, and collaborated with dance legends across the United States.
In 2010, he began incorporating multimedia into his performative work. His film projects, "Just Another Day," "How to Kill a Ghost," and "When The Beat Drops," showcase the complexity, playfulness and creativity within this dynamic choreographer’s mind.
Lane’s choreographic voice and the growth of his repertoire share one common thread: they are fast. Lane nods to his up-tempo inclinations when he says, “My work is fast because the hyperactive boy with anxiety is still in there.” Lucky for us, he is helping to shape the future of dance before our very eyes.
Award-winning choreographer, Juel D. Lane, is closing out the year in celebration of the life of painter, Ernie Barnes. Lane's tribute, which uses the medium 'dance on film,' draws inspiration from Barnes’s 1978 painting, “The Maestro.” It depicts a black...
Juel D. Lane directed and choreographed "When the Beat Drops"to explore the relationship between the physical, material world and the sonic world. The film illustrates a harmonious collaboration with The University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
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"Just Another Day"
( I do not own the rights to songs presented in this film)
Dance is universal and everybody at some point will dance in his or her lifetime.
The natural law of rhythm is constructed to allow human beings to dance. We dance uncons...
Human creativity is everywhere. From Brazil it's all being connected in a manner allowing one to move from any creator to any other creator in just a few steps. Artificial Intelligence & algorithms not necessary. Real intelligence, yes.
THE MATRIX IS THE MOTHER SHIP (it carries people to culture; per above, it carries culture too)
THE MATRIX IS CULTURAL DIFFUSION ON A PLANETARY SCALE (Bahia is Ground Zero)
THE MATRIX IS THE INTEGRATED GLOBAL CREATIVE ECONOMY (matrixed economist, Dr. Darius Mans, presents the Africare Award to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — Brazil's current president — in 2012)
Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix. — Susan Rogers (personal recording engineer for Prince; recorded "Purple Rain", "Around the World in a Day", "Parade", and "Sign o' the Times"; now director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory)
Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched! — Julian Lloyd Webber (most highly renowned cellist in the United Kingdom; brother of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats...)
This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :))) — Clarice Assad (pianist, composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world)
This Matrix was built by an ex-royalty "rescuer" (Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Led Zeppelin, Bob Marley and many others) so that deep Brazilian culture, much of it otherwise impossible to find if one is not right there where it is made, might also (via an alternative to major media) be discoverable from all around the world. To do this it integrates this immensity into a system whereby ALL CULTURE EVERYWHERE — from small villages in Africa to Grammy-winning artists in Los Angeles — writers, filmmakers, painters... — can be found from anywhere on the planet.
The Matrix uncoils from the Recôncavo of Bahia, Brazil, final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history and from where some of the most physically and spiritually uplifting music ever made (samba and its precursor chula, per the Saturno Brothers above) evolved...
WHAT IS THE RECÔNCAVO? The peninsula upon which Salvador is situated is like the thumb of an open and grasping hand, what is normally thought of as the Recôncavo then being defined by the curved index finger. This way of definition developed when agricultural products were brought to Salvador by boat, sometimes making their way first down the Paraguaçu river after having been carried overland from the sertão (backlands) to Cachoeira, the river debouching into the Bay of Saints at Maragogipe. The city of Bahia (as it was usually called then) was crouched on the bay, comprised of a commercial district much smaller in area than today (landfill has increased it greatly), the area around the upper section of the elevator, and what is now called Pelourinho.
Much of the remainder of the peninsula was given to sugarcane plantations, and dotted within the Atlantic rainforest were countless quilombos (Afro-Brazilian villages founded during the age of slavery); both are attested to today in commonly used city names. The neighborhood of Garcia was once Fazenda Garcia (fazenda being a farm or plantation), and this denomination is still used today to distinguish one end of Garcia (fim-de-linha) from the other (the Campo Grande end). Neighborhoods Engenho Velho de Federação and Engenho Velho de Brotas are so called for the old mills (engenhos velhos) which pressed the caldo (juice, so to speak) from the cane so laboriously hacked out of the fields. The neighborhood of Cabula is named for an nkisi (deity) of candomblé angola (the first candomblé -- a West African religious belief system -- to arrive in Bahia)...whose rhythms comprise the basis for samba, meaning that the rhythms to which so many in the world inexpertly swayed as Stan Getz's saxophone soared and João and Astrud Gilberto sensuously intoned -- this paragon of suave Brazilian sophistication -- was born in the rough senzalas (slavequarters) of Bahia. Ironically enough, the barefoot senzala version was/is far more sophisticated than the sophisticated version.
But times have changed, and Cabula is now a crowded, non-descript middle-to-working class Salvador city neighborhood (plenty of candomblé around though), and Engenhos Velhos de Federação and Brotas are swarming working class neighborhoods (ditto the candomblé); the senzala samba, the samba chula and samba-de-roda have disappeared. A simplified version -- Bahian pagode -- is heard everywhere in Salvador, but the real-deal stuff has died out here in the big city. It remains, however, a potent force on the remainder of its native ground, the Recôncavo proper, where it is danced to upon pounded earth, under moonlight broken by banana, palm and mango leaves, lifting the souls of its participants almost like something religious, which it was, and gods aside, is.
By the same mathematics positioning some 8 billion human beings within some 6 or so steps of each other, people in the Matrix tend to within close, accessible steps of everybody else inside the Matrix.
Brazil is not a European nation. It's not a North American nation. It's not an East Asian nation. It straddles — jungle and desert and dense urban centers — both the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn.
Brazil absorbed over ten times the number of enslaved Africans taken to the United States of America, and is a repository of African deities (and their music) now largely forgotten in their lands of origin.
Brazil was a refuge (of sorts) for Sephardim fleeing an Inquisition which followed them across the Atlantic (that unofficial symbol of Brazil's national music — the pandeiro — the hand drum in the opening scene above — was almost certainly brought to Brazil by these people).
Across the parched savannas of the interior of Brazil's culturally fecund nordeste/northeast, where wizard Hermeto Pascoal was born in Lagoa da Canoa (Lagoon of the Canoe) and raised in Olho d'Águia (Eye of the Eagle), much of Brazil's aboriginal population was absorbed into a caboclo/quilombola culture punctuated by the Star of David.