Mayday Danse, Cabaret Noir

Brian Webb Dance Company presents: Cabaret Noir, both a giant celebration centred around the idea of négritude and a space, so to speak, for resisting being essentialized and pigeonholed by the limitations of this concept, this blackness, this gloominess. Since it’s impossible to escape our bodies, why not pay tribute to this condition, this identity, this burden, this beauty? After taking a look at the playground in front of us, a combination of cotton field and circus ring, stranded between essay and cabaret, we’re diving in eyes shut, fists raised.

Equal parts High Mass, happening, and plea for recognition, Cabaret Noir is a nod to both the flippant attitude of Cabaret Neiges Noires and the carefree atmosphere that marked the bals nègres of Paris during the 1930s.

We play around with clichés, folklore, and prejudices. We summon up the words of Frantz Fanon, Nina Simone, Dany Laferrière, and Spike Lee. We let the discourse develop and contradict itself. We observe how a bodily shell has the power to both sharpen instincts and dictate destinies.

In an age where one can lay claim simultaneously to both George Floyd and Barack Obama, Cabaret Noir is a space both sacred and profane, a space for demanding the right to tell one’s own story, in one’s own words, the right to fashion one’s own identity and, in the final reckoning, the right to not let oneself be defined by any authority whatsoever.”

Westbury Theatre