ArtSEA: Black History Month brings Afrofuturism to the dance floor

It seems like an apt tableau for this time of environmental catastrophe and political “shock and awe.”

A 2024 MacArthur genius, Pitts says Black Hole (at On the Boards, Feb. 6 - 8) was inspired by philosophies of Afrofuturism. “How can we reimagine a future in which we thrive as Black and brown people,” he posits, “in which our bodies are spaces of regeneration and potential and connection and community.”

In other words, the black hole is less about obliteration, more about transformation.

Performed by Pitts with Tushrik Fredericks and Marcella Lewis (all of African heritage), the piece also features starkly striking lighting design, video projections and a soundscape ranging from spoken word to Nina Simone.

The dancers’ bodies glint metallic on the darkened stage, adding to their sleek humanoid mystery and the sense that they have crawled from the past to push forward into the unknown. 

Black Hole is one of several new arts events whose arrival is especially well-timed with Black History Month.

Blues for an Alabama Sky (at Seattle Rep though Feb. 23) is lauded playwright Pearl Cleage’s story about what happens when Harlem Renaissance artists are hit with the Great Depression — not to mention racism, economic disparity and a lack of reproductive rights.

“I would like the audience to realize that the folks who lived during the Harlem Renaissance did more than dance and listen to jazz,” director Valerie Curtis-Newton said in an interview with Seattle Rep. “They lived lives much like our lives, full of choices and consequences.”

For another take on choices and consequences, consider I Need Love: The Story of Romance in Rap at the Clock-Out Lounge on Beacon Hill (Feb. 11 at 7:30 p.m.). Created in conjunction with Seattle writer Charles Mudede and hip-hop scholar Daudi Abe, who recently explored this rich topic in The Stranger, the event will feature live “annotations” by the duo as their song selections are played by DJ Vitamin D. Expect to hear love (and lust) lessons from Missy Elliott, Sir Mix-A-Lot, A Tribe Called Quest, Salt-N-Pepa, LL Cool J and other legends. 

The Jacob Lawrence Gallery on the UW campus is offering two ways to immerse yourself in Black history with the new exhibition Artists and Poets (Feb. 13 - April 19). L.A.-based multimedia artist Cauleen Smith stages her sight/scent/sound installation The Wanda Coleman Songbook, an ode to both the poet as well as Los Angeles. Smith’s videos of her city — beautiful and troubled — are projected on the walls as new songs inspired by Coleman’s poems are played (by visitors) on a record player. 

Also on view at Jacob Lawrence: an exploration of Dudley Randall's Broadside Press, which he founded in 1965 in Detroit with the aim of sharing the poetry of the burgeoning Black Arts Movement — including by writers such as Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni and Langston Hughes.

And opening tonight for First Thursday Art Walk, Florida-raised Seattle artist Ric’kisha Taylor presents Gleaming (at Gallery 4Culture through Feb 27), a collection of her multimedia collage works. These glamorous yet deliberately unsettling portraits — made using sewing techniques acquired from Black elders — toy with and question societal expectations of Black women.

Mostly cloudy

Earlier this week Seattle Art Museum deconstructed local artist John Grade’s Middle Fork, the 105-foot-long tree sculpture (based on a plaster cast of a real hemlock in the Cascade Mountains) that has hung in the lobby since 2017. The museum’s intention was always to replace it after several years, and this week we learned what will take the tree’s place: cheery plastic clouds. 

Little Cloud Sky (due to open June 27 and stay in place for at least two years) will feature 40 four-foot-wide clouds, inflated and identical. With their cartoony, manga-inflected faces (black oval eyes, a tiny crescent of a smile), the clouds are aggressively cute — and, en masse, perhaps tip toward menacingly cute.

I may be watching too much dystopian television, but my first thought was that the cloud army was meant to be ominous. However, that does not appear to be the case. 

“The work is designed to spread positivity and inspire a sense of connection, encouraging museum visitors to reflect on the beauty of togetherness and the power of joy and nature,” SAM noted in the press release. 

The “Little Cloud” image was created by FriendsWithYou, aka the L.A.-based art duo Samuel Borkson and Arturo Sandoval III. It debuted at the 2018 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and has appeared in various incarnations in Miami and Las Vegas and Tokyo.

When the artists did a similar installation in Covent Garden this past August, Time Out London wrote, “You can tell they’re based in the U.S. — few Londoners are ever so outwardly optimistic.” (Hey, Time Out: Ask us how we’re feeling now!)

I will try to give these little clouds a chance when they float into SAM this summer. Maybe one needs to experience them in person to be transported to “a peaceful, joyous, and more positive state.” But the lobby installation seems like an oddly lightweight choice by the museum — especially given the heft of the previous exhibitions.

Let’s end with a few Super Bowl-free ways to spend your weekend.

< Rupture at J. Rinehart Gallery (through Feb. 26): Now here’s a vibe that feels resonant right now. Seattle artist Helen O’Toole’s canvases roil with storms of paint, inspired by her recollections of growing up on a farm in Ireland during the tumultuous socio-political era spanning the 1960s to the 1980s.

< Sámi Film Festival at Majestic Bay Theater (Feb. 7 - 8) and streaming (Feb. 7 - 13): You think it’s cold here? Wait ’til you experience the snowbound life in 1982’s Skierri: Land of the Dwarf Birches. See these and other Indigenous films from the rich tradition of Sámi filmmaking. 

< Lunar New Year Celebration at the Seattle Chinese Garden (Feb. 8, 11 a.m. - 3 p.m.): The Year of the Snake comes hissing in with Chinese music, traditional knot tying and (my favorite) lion dances.