This newly commissioned solo dance work by award-winning choreographer/performer Adam W. McKinney deals with his family heritage of his father’s American Blackness and his mother’s European Jewishness as synthesized through his dancer’s lens.
McKinney danced in the Alvin Ailey Dance Co, Lines, and other companies before embarking on his solo work, continuing to tour and create new works. He said recently, “in the Jewish calendar this is a Shmita year, a year of rest and release. It’s also a year in which my father died. I’ve asked myself, What does Shmita mean in terms of loss and ancestry? How does it translate in my own body and process into the experience of letting go? My goal for the new piece is to create a space that allows people to arrive and be in community, to participate in a community practice of art making.”
McKinney presents his work through his own DNAWORKS. Founded in 2006 with Daniel Banks, their DNAWORKS centers Global Majority and LGBTQQ2SPIAA+ voices to create more complex representations of identity, culture, class, and heritage in dance, theatre, film, and writing. In addition to DNAWORKS, Rimon is co-hosting with Eydot Midwest, the Midwest Regional Jewish Diversity and Racial Justice Collaborative.
The Rimon Salon requires masks for those in attendance. The Salon is sponsored by The BrinIngber Salon Commission, funded from the Howard B. and Ruth F. Brin Jewish Arts Endowment Fund at the Minneapolis Jewish Community Foundation.