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The Arts Intel Report

Max Roach 100

Apr 12–14, 2024
25 Harbor Shore Dr, Boston, MA 02210

Beginning with bebop and ending with hip-hop, the output of funky, spunky, myriad-armed drummer Max Roach virtually guarantees success to the Joyce Theater’s Max Roach 100. Dance producer and former Twyla Tharp stalwart Richard Colton’s invitation to three reliably great, deeply musical choreographers clinches the deal. Working with the Havana-based Malpaso Dance Company, the softly magical Ronald K. Brown (with Arcell Cabuag) has chosen Roach’s Afro-Cuban-inflected 1961 album Percussion Bitter Sweet. Phenomenal tap dancer-and-choreographer Ayodele Casel will solo to the bold avant-garde exchange between Roach and pianist Cecil Taylor, recorded in 1978. And hip-hop choreographer extraordinaire Rennie Harris sets his Philadelphia street dancers to the 1981 proto-rap The Dream/It’s Time, in which drum and horns frame Martin Luther King Jr.’s urgent call for racial equality. After New York, Max Roach 100 travels to Boston. —Apollinaire Scherr