Harlem Stage WaterWorks 2023-2024

Harlem Stage’s signature commissioning program, WaterWorks, was created to identify, cultivate and nurture the talents of visionary artists of color—ranging from artists that are just emerging in the field to artists who have well-established careers. Harlem Stage’s role is, by intention, to shine a light on these artists and to light the path on their road to artistic achievement. Through WaterWorks, Harlem Stage provides critical support to create new, innovative and socially significant work and engage the community through residency and educational activities.

WaterWorks Emerging Artists Showcase
Saturday, December 9, 2023 @ 7:30 PM
For nearly 30 years, the WaterWorks Emerging Artists program, formerly Fund for New Work, has supported artists of color emerging in their careers and artistic practice. Today, the program continues this tradition by awarding commissions to five early-career artists of color per year. The year-long program offers a space among a multidisciplinary cohort of artists who receive mentorship, critical feedback, professional development workshops, rehearsal space and production support. Throughout the duration of the experience, artists develop an original performance piece. In this culminating work-in-progress showcase, Harlem Stage presents works by the 2023 WaterWorks Emerging Artists cohort: interdisciplinary performing artist and painter Shantelle Courvoisier Jackson; singer/songwriter Hannah Lemmons aka LEMMONS; choreographer and dancer Bobby Morgan; interdisciplinary artist, composer and pianist Mary Prescott; and trumpeter and composer Kalí Rodríguez-Peña.

Ambrose Akinmusire—banyan seed
Friday, March 29 & Saturday, March 30, 2024 @ 7:30 PM
Described by NPR Music as “a trumpeter of deep expressive resources and a composer of kaleidoscopic vision,” composer, trumpeter and bandleader Ambrose Akinmusire has made a home at the crossroads of different musical forms and languages, from post-bop and avant-garde jazz to contemporary chamber music and hip-hop to singer-songwriter aesthetics.  Akinmusire returns to Harlem Stage during its 40th Anniversary Season to present banyan seed. He builds on his interest in the intersection of the griot, mentor and oral historian in social history to develop a multi-part suite and companion video installation. Like the banyan tree, which starts as a plant growing on another plant to become a tree of far-flung roots and interwoven vines, the project incorporates interviews with jazz elders to share ideas, knowledge, history and community with younger musicians and to connect audiences to the living stories of jazz—its social innovation and endless creativity.

Tamar-kali—Black Damask
Carl Hancock Rux, libretto
Friday, May 3 & Saturday, May 4, 2024 @ 7:30 PM
Composer, vocalist, and performing and recording artist Tamar-kali presents performance excerpts from Black Damask—an opera she is developing featuring a libretto by Harlem Stage Associate Artistic Director and Curator-in-Residence, Carl Hancock Rux, about the life and times of William Dorsey Swann, the first known person to identify as a “queen of drag.” A formerly enslaved denizen of our nation’s capital, Swann was the first American on record to pursue legal and political action to defend the LGBTQ community’s right to gather. Set during his detention and conviction in 1896 for “keeping a disorderly house,” a criminal charge often levied against those who ran brothels, the opera explores the interior of Swann’s mind as inquest, analysis and detainment begin to take their toll. The program concludes with a discussion featuring Tamar-kali and her collaborators, including Rux and stage director James Blaszko.