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The Arts Intel Report

A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler

Dianne McIntyre Group: In the Same Tongue

Feb 16–17, 2024
Bryan University Center, 125 Science Drive, Durham, NC 27708, United States

Dianne McIntyre is as much of an experimentalist as the Judson Church gang that got their start in 1960s Greenwich Village and are still celebrated worldwide. And now you have heard of her. Long a lodestar for Black artists less populist than Ailey but just as rooted in African-American expression, this undersung choreographer defies easy classification. A jazz improvisor through movement, McIntyre also uses text or history to hint at story. For her latest piece, the evening-length In the Same Tongue, to jazz cellist Diedre Murray’s score and Ntozake Shange’s poems, the five dancers and four musicians share the stage. “My way of working,” McIntyre, now 77, has said, “is that the dancer and the musician are part of the same band.” And yet this harmony is never too smooth. McIntyre cultivates an off-kilter raggedness that keeps you on the edge of your seat. —Apollinaire Scherr