Fragments of Bone

An Evening of Dance, Memory, & Myth-Making

December 15, 2022 | 7:30 PM

The Carr Center Performance Studio

Detroit, MI

Robin Wilson, choreographer, teacher, performer, and founding member of Urban Bush Women, curates an evening of dance.

"Dancing is how I breathe."

- Robin Wilson

Ancestral Haiku

An Evening of Music, Movement, Meditation and Poetry

Detroit jazz legend Marion Hayden and Legacy join forces with dance artists and U-M dance faculty Robin Wilson and Alexandria Davis to create an experience exploring. Black Ancestry, Reflection, and the Middle Passage. Fueled by the artwork and video installation of M. Saffell Gardner.

The University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance and the Center for World Performance Studies present Ancestral Haiku.

An interactive performance that takes the audience on an immersive experience through live original music, dance, video projection, and visual art installations—guided by the Haikus of Jazz poet/scholar Mursalata Muhammad and a few taken from the public domain.

Zora on My Mind

Book by Anita Gonzalez. Ph.D.

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Alexandria brings life to the character Key in Zora on My Mind, a jazz and blues chamber musical that tells the story of Key, a woman Zora Neale Hurston would admire.

Key is a fiercely independent and strong-minded Black woman who operates a one-chair beauty shop and manages an inherited boarding house. When Malik, a shoe-shine salesman, rents a room in Key's boarding house, their interaction transforms the narrative. Two female interlocutors, Sophie and Draft, aspire to shape the characters' journeys, but the spirit of Zora Neale Hurston remains vibrant throughout.

The work is inspired by Hurston's essays "Characteristics of Negro Expression" and "How It Feels to Be Colored Me."