Strange Fruit
by Donald Byrd | Spectrum Dance Theater
ONLINE PREMIERE – JANUARY 2023
Streaming is FREE 24/7, beginning with the premiere.
Captured at the Alexander Kasser Theater, February 2022
Dance/Theater, USA
“Byrd’s choreography is chilling.” —Joe Addison, AS Review
Strange Fruit draws its title from the 1937 poem and song of the same name by Abel Meeropol and made famous by the great jazz singer Billie Holiday—which metaphorically addresses lynching as a tool of racial terrorism during the Jim Crow Era. For this dance/theater work, the facts of lynching act as springboards into a highly personal interior space and state of mind. Abstract yet grounded in a brutal reality, Strange Fruit tracks choreographer Donald Byrd’s feelings as a response to lynching and plays out as a series of dance/theater vignettes.
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Gallery
Credits
Programs in this season are made possible in part by the Alexander Kasser Theater Endowment Fund, PEAK Patrons, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the FACE Foundation, and the Aaron Copland Fund for Music.