Time’s Up: A Liberation Ritual
by Chanon Judson
in collaboration with the Haitian Cultural Exchange
A new participatory dance and liberation Ritual honoring the Drivers and Dreamers of Liberation and Considering how we Activate the Spirit of NOW!
ABOUT CHANON JUDSON
Chanon Judson joined the critically acclaimed Urban Bush Women in 2001. She has had the privilege of serving the company as rehearsal director, Director for UB2 – Urban Bush Women’s performing apprentice ensemble, and now furthers her work with UBW as Co-Artistic Director and Co-Director of BOLD (Builders Organizers and Leaders through Dance). Chanon and Samantha are choreographic directors for UBW’s new evening-length work, “Hair and Other Stories,” in collaboration with Raelle Myrick-Hodges. Chanon is a recipient of the APAP Leadership Fellowship Cohort II and Director’s Lab Chicago Fellowship 2018. Additional credits include Taylor Mac’s 24-Hour Spectacular, A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, Cotton Club Parade (Warren Carlyle), Prophecy Dance Company (Kwame Ross), and the Tony Award-winning musical Fela! (Bill T. Jones). Her commercial credits include Victoria’s Secret Live, L’Oreal Live, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Apple Watch and the Michael Jackson 30th Anniversary Concert. Judson is avid arts educator and has served as faculty with Urban Assembly of Music and Arts High School, Ailey Camp Kansas City MO (Site Director), Alvin Ailey Arts in Education, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Earl Mosley’s Institute of the Arts. Additionally, Chanon is the proud founder of Cumbe Center for Diasporic Arts’ Dance Drum and Imagination Camp for Children and Family Arts Movement LLC, offering creative movement and art making for children.
JUNETEENTH PUBLIC PERFORMANCE COMMISSIONS
Join us June 11–19 throughout New York on a journey towards Black liberation and a celebration of Black joy, dreams, experiences, queerness, resistance, and more. Featuring new works by Ebony Noelle Golden, James Scruggs, Chanon Judson, Niegel Smith, and the Mx. Juneteenth Fire Island Drag Pageant by the Black and Brown Equity Coalition of Fire Island (BaBEC), this year’s Juneteenth public programming is distinct, daring, and engaging.
About The Flea’s Juneteenth Public Performance Program
The Flea’s Juneteenth Public Performance Program is also part of the Festival of New York, a growing collective of 200+ organizations across the five boroughs collaborating to marshal the creativity, resiliency, diversity, and spirit of collaboration that makes New York one of the strongest and most inspiring cities on earth.
The Juneteenth Public Performance Program was piloted by The Flea in 2021 to great success and commissioned and premiered four new public performances: Chanon Judson’s Time’s Up A Liberation Ritual, a new participatory dance piece in Fulton Park of Bed Stuy; James Scruggs’ Ask Me About Juneteenth, where an unusual character offered cotton blooms and cash to viewers willing to engage others in a frank conversation about race; Imani Uzuri’s Jus’ Like A Tree Planted By Water, a performance of experimental interpolations of African American spirituals in Harlem; and, Artistic Director Niegel Smith’s The Worthy, a celebratory walk for justice and Black men from the African Burial Ground to The Flea theater uplifting our souls.