Harriet’s Gun 2024: Shapeshifting Towards A Radically Imagined Black Future

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Dance Mission Theater presents
Harriet’s Gun 2
Shapeshifting Towards A Radically Imagined Black Future
An online dance festival featuring 16 prolific dance artists/companies
May 18-19, 2024

Curated by Sarah Crowell and Adia Tamar Whitaker
Featuring emcee, Rhodessa Jones

PROGRAM 1 Saturday, May 18: 5pm PT / 8pm ET 
PROGRAM 2 Sunday, May 19: 5pm PT / 8pm ET  
Two days, two distinct programs!

Harriet’s Gun: Shapeshifting Towards a Radically Imagined Black Future was first presented in March 2021. We are excited to bring this online festival back in 2024 due to audience demand. This year our theme is WE OUTSIDE!  To us this means, a study, an activation, an inspiration map of how we move into spaces of power and crown ourselves. This is the Black Future.This is a resistance to the consumption of Black suffering. An acknowledgment of that suffering as a launch pad into new life, without giving suffering all the power. This is Black folks in full-bodied Black joy, wings spread. It is us in the full bloom stage of shapeshifting. It is an unapologetic arrival into our brightness. The tears and fire that make us rainbows. The sweetness of freedom savored. – Sarah + Adia

About Harriet’s Gun
Harriet Tubman always carried a gun and an ivory handled sword on her liberation missions. Harriet’s gun was insurance, protection, a wand, an anchor, a shield, an antenna, a sage bundle, a way out, a motivator, and a guard rail. In the same way, Harriet’s Gun, Shapeshifting Towards a Radically Imagined Black Future, offers a collective space for artists to define, speak and move power into the Black future and out into the world

Co-curated by Liberation Academy co-director, Sarah Crowell, Artistic Director Emeritus of Destiny Arts Center in Oakland, CA and Dance Mission resident artist, Adia Tamar Whitaker, Artistic Director & Founder of Àṣẹ Dance Theater, Harriet’s Gun features a spectrum of world class Black artists from around the country, with Rhodessa Jones spinning the web for the evening as the Mistress of Ceremonies and homegrown San Francisco storyteller.  A panel with the artists follows each performance.

Saturday artists (Program 1) include amara tabor smith, Mud Water Theater, Kiazi Malonga, Efeya Sampson, UFly Mothership, Marjani Forte,  Sydnie L. Mosley, Hattie Mae Williams, Alayo Dance Company and CubaCaribe, and Kara Mack.

Sunday artists (Program 2) include Gbedu Town Radio, Rochelle Jamila, PUSH Dance Company, Bernard Brown/bbmoves, Jade Charon, Destiny Arts Performing Company, Jasmine Hearn, J. Bouey, and Kara Mack.

This year’s performances will be dedicated to Robert Henry Johnson, a prolific San Francisco Black choreographer who passed away in 2023. We are also honoring the lives of Papa Zak Diouf from Diamano Coura, Chief Yagbe Awolowo Onilu, Mozel Zeke Nealy, Malonga Casquelourd, Carlos Aceituno, and Iyanifa Omo Osun Ifadayo Olaberinjo Efeya Makala Sampson.

Registration tickets are free, but donations are accepted. (Registration is required. $10 or $20 donation is suggested, but not required. No one turned away for lack of funds.)

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.