MAJOR by Ogemdi Ude
Don’t miss the Los Angeles premiere of MAJOR, a dynamic new dance theatre performance exploring the history and carrying on the legacy of majorette dance.
In MAJOR, Brooklyn-based dance, theatre, and interdisciplinary artist and educator Ogemdi Ude mashes up majorette movement, verbatim theatre, and oral history to examine the dance form’s history and physicality, and explore how Black culture relocates, persists, and transforms over time and places.
“Exploring majorette practice is such a sweet nostalgic journey, and deeply humbling,” says Ude, who was included in Dance Magazine’s list of “25 to Watch” in 2022. She explains, “The challenge of this piece lies in reorganizing the body to dance in the ways you were born to, but have been trained out of. In MAJOR, audiences follow the intimate journey of returning to a body that you have lost.”
Accompanied by a digital archive featuring interviews with multigenerational HBCU majorettes, MAJOR is a dynamic love letter to the folks who taught the team how to be proudly Black and proudly femme.
Choreographed to a score that integrates Southern rap, horns, drumlines, melodic R&B, and soul, the exciting and original performance will be followed by a conversation with Ude and performers.
