INSPIRIT Dance Troupe Honors Legacy of Muhammad Ali

Last Friday and Saturday, March 15-16, Professor of Dance Christal Brown and the INSPIRIT dance troupe performed her dance piece, titled “Opulence of Integrity.” A production nearly two years in the making, “Opulence” sought to present the life and legend of world champion boxer Muhammad Ali through the lens of sheer masculine physicality in the form of dancers Danté Brown, Timothy Edwards, Christian Morel ’11, Gilbert Reyes and Ricarrdo Valentine.

The performance began even before the house lights went down — as people milled about taking their seats, three male students, Clifford Alexander ’15, Cheswayo Gabriel Mphanza ’16 and Debanjan Roychoudhury’16, stood erect, stoic and unmoving downstage, holding newspapers and dressed in suits and bow-ties. Using poignant quotes taken from Ali’s life, these three served as narrators throughout the performance, providing a verbal context for the story the dancers portrayed.

The piece was broken into four “movements,” each representing a significant period in the legendary boxer’s evolution from Cassius Clay to self-titled Muhammad Ali, his tragedies and triumphs as civil rights activist and public speaker for the Nation of Islam movement, as well as his exile from boxing following his refusal to be drafted.

Immediately apparent to the audience even prior to the dancers’ entrance was Brown’s multimedia approach to the production. In the far right corner of the stage, a screen projected images and words to complement the on-stage performance. In addition, Brown’s effective use of costume, props, musical composition and lighting provoked the audience to engage all their senses, which, in concert with the dancers’ performance, produced at times a visceral reaction from the audience, yet also proved to be overwhelming.

THE FIRST MOVEMENT
The first movement, “Passing the Torch” began with an introduction from a deep off- stage voice, which explained the intent to remove Ali from his pedestal and show his humanity. The three “narrators” then threw their newspapers to the ground and backed onto the stage, bouncing rhymes between them in the style of spoken-word.

The dancers finally entered in intervals; their movements began low and rooted to the ground, their knees bent on the floor and their upper bodies contracting and releasing, seemingly uncontrollably. They soon progressed to standing position and engaged the rest of their body, fully extending their arms and legs in powerful outward strokes directed at the audience. While there were five dancers, they truly succeed in embodying what Brown referred to as a “homogenous inner struggle for identity.” Whether moving as a five-person unit or pairing off into subgroups to engage in aggressive physical dialogue, the responsive nature of their interactions revealed them as many parts of a whole rather than disconnected entities.

THE SECOND MOVEMENT
The second movement, titled “Larger than Life,” displayed Ali at the height of his boxing success, and the start of his relationship with the Black Muslims. The energy on stage shifted dramatically, featuring unique, flowing costumes and a fast-paced funky sound. The dancers moved rhythmically and with seemingly little effort, gracefully and powerfully traversing the stage and thrusting their fists to the sky as in victory. The most surprising and tangibly perceivable change in on-stage energy, however, occurred when Brown herself appeared in a fitted yellow and black jumper, beckoning the male dancers with her sexual and seductive body language. The dancers played gaga, falling theatrically over themselves, as they both sought her out and attempted to restrain themselves. Through her entrance in an otherwise all-male performance, Brown hoped to expose a little-known, more human side to Ali’s life — his relationship with women, whom she called his “kryptonite.” The playful and exciting interactions between Brown and the dancers stood out from the rest of the piece.

THE THIRD MOVEMENT
The third movement lived up to its title “Standing up and Torn Down.” After a brief interlude by Roychoudhury, who vocalized Ali’s objections to the Vietnam War — “no Vietnamese ever called me a n****r” — Danté took to the stage in a painful and all-consuming physical expression of the boxer’s fall from grace. Accompanied by an electric guitar cover of the national anthem, mashed up with soft chords played in interval and sound bites from the civil rights era, he pushed forward towards the audience before subsequently crashing back to the floor, as if acted on by a powerful external force. The array of conflicting sound, which felt like voices in my head, mixed with the solitary form on the floor only served to enhance the audience’s perception of Ali’s psychological injury at this point in his life. The other dancers soon reappeared on stage, dressed in military garb and black balaclavas, shoving Danté and stripping him of his clothes, before assimilating him into their army cadre in a unified dance. Carrying unseen rifles, a reworked version of Edwin Starr’s “War” repeatedly posed the question, “What is it good for?” The dancing slowed as Danté underwent another public costume change — the other dancers entered and exited, providing him with the separate pieces of a black suit, off-set with a bright patterned and visually out-of-place bow-tie.

THE FOURTH MOVEMENT
The fourth movement, titled “The Noble Fight,” evokes an up-until-then untapped spiritual perspective. The stage effectively transformed into a boxing arena, as the group incorporated several Ali-patented moves, including the Ali shuffle and the rope-a-dope, into the dance. Shadowy figures appeared on the backdrop, overseeing the performers, who, despite going through the former champions’ motions, stifled the attitude they had previously exuded freely. The audience experienced the epitome of Ali’s defeat as the dancers pointed their arms forward in a motion paralleling the first movement; however, rather than stare defiantly through the fourth wall, they turned their heads down in submission.

In a physical presentation of Ali’s return to boxing, two dancers strapped on gloves and engaged in an exchange, the light crew producing towering shadows overhead. Their movements began basic, as though the dancers were attempting to regain their stride, then became stronger and defiant. The performers, then dressed in tie-died African-like fabric, rearranged themselves in a ceremonial configuration, enhancing the ritual feeling of the dance. In the final moments of the performance, the dancers altered their formerly low-riding horizontal movements, extending their bodies upward in what seemed to be Ali’s completed rehabilitation.

The production lasted almost an hour without intermission — a final testament to the stamina of the dancers, whose strength, control and intensity was displayed throughout. As the house lights came on to a standing ovation, the performers, narrators, Brown herself, and composer Farai Malianga took the stage to answer questions and discuss their experience in the production process.

Students were impressed with the epic physicality of the performance and the deep significance of the message it bore.

“When I left the performance, the quote that remained in my mind was one that Christal said after the show: ‘Being authentic to one’s self is the greatest struggle one goes through everyday,’” Anna G. Stevens ’13.5 wrote in an email. “The dancers, combined with the student speakers, certainly represented this struggle Muhammad Ali went through and that African-American men, and perhaps each and every one of us, continue to struggle with today.”

In describing what lasting impression he would take from the performance, Mzwakithi “Prestige” Shongwe ’16 said, “The legacy that is Muhammed Ali is one that appeals to the human essence, and transcends the notions of race and religious affiliation. Integrity, failure, pride and perseverance. All these are the demons and angels we all have come across somewhere down our path in this world.”