First performed in 2021 at New York Live Arts, again in the city’s Times Square, and in Seattle, WA., Saul Williams’ The Motherboard Suite will have its Los Angeles debut at The Ford on Friday, August 9, 2024 at 8:00 PM. The performance promises to be an exciting and thought-provoking event with live music by groundbreaking actor and slam-poet-turned-musician Saul Williams. The Motherboard Suite was directed by the renowned American choreographer, director, author and dancer Bill T. Jones who The Dance Heritage Coalition named “An Irreplaceable Dance Treasure.” The program includes works by cutting-edge dance artists Maria Bauman, Kayla Farrish, Marjani Forté-Saunders, d. Sabela grimes, Jasmine Hearn, Shamel Pitts, and Jade Solomon Curtis performed to live music by Saul Williams from his albums MartyrLoserKing and Encrypted & Vulnerable . Tickets are on sale now.
The seven very unique choreographic styles provided by these incredible dance artists breathe life into Williams’ music. A suite of songs that was inspired by his multi-tiered project MartyrLoserKing. The Motherboard Suite is a dynamic production that invites the audience to experience the coming together of “technology and race, exploitation, and mystical anarchy, where hackers are artists and activists.” As The New York Times put it, it is, “about being together.”
Saul Williams in “The Motherboard Suite” 2021 – Photo by Maria Baranova, Courtesy of New York Live Arts.
Saul Williams has been breaking ground since his debut album, Amethyst Rock Star, was released in 2001 and executive produced by Rick Rubin. After gaining global fame for his poetry and writings at the turn of the century, Williams has performed in over 30 countries and read in over 300 universities, with invitations that have spanned from the White House, the Sydney Opera House, Lincoln Center, The Louvre, The Getty Center, Queen Elizabeth Hall, to countless, villages, townships, community centers, and prisons across the world.
Bill T. Jones in Saul Williams’ “The Motherboard Suite” 2021 – Photo by Maria Baranova, Courtesy of New York Live Arts.
Artistic Director/Co-Founder/Choreographer: Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company; Artistic Director: New York Live Arts, Bill T. Jones’ many awards include Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Choreography for Black No More; 2014 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award; 2013 National Medal of Arts; 2010 Kennedy Center Honors; a 2010 Tony Award for Best Choreography of the critically acclaimed Fela!, and in 2010 Jones was recognized as Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government.
Performing one of his solos at The Ford, d. Sabela grimes is a “choreographer, writer, composer and educator whose interdisciplinary performance work and pedagogical approach reveal a vested interest in the physical and meta-physical efficacies of Afro-diasporic cultural practices.” (press release) Also stated in the press release, “Audio sampling as citation is a critical compositional tool used in Sabela’s dance and music making endeavors. His compositions employ technology to create unusual sound-shapes that twist the form and function of modern sound design and maintain the custom of “versioning” found in Afro-diasporic music traditions.”
d.Sabela grimes/eletrogynous – Photo: Roger Martin Holman for LA Dance Chronicle
I caught up with grimes via telephone as he was waiting to catch a flight out of Ohio where he was taking part in The National Center for Choreography – Akron. When I asked how he became involved with The Motherboard Suite project he said that it was a combination of several things. Before he became involved in dance, grimes was part of the Spoken Word circuit and therefore has known Williams for approximately thirty years. “Also, when he was doing the album Encrypted & Vulnerable (released July 2019) my son and I were in that music video,” said grimes. “So it is possible that the seed was planted then.” He was not around when Williams and Jones were working out the details of this project but said “Who tapped me on the shoulder specifically, I don’t know, but I am really happy to be a part [of it].”
At The Ford, grimes is performing to Williams’ We Get What You Deserve which was not his first choice but it was designated to him by the creative team (Williams, Jones and Janet Wong) who organized The Motherboard Suite. “When the project first started, I was going to do Encrypted & Vulnerable but it was in the cards for me to do We Get What You Deserve. It is very exciting.” grimes added that he loves every song on Williams’ album.
Saul Williams’ “The Motherboard Suite” 2021 in Times Square – Photo by Maria Baranova, Courtesy of New York Live Arts.
There is a phrase in the press release that reads “Music and movement combine for a night of vivid Afrofuturism.” I asked grimes to speak to what the term Afrofuturism means for him.
“Part of what I feel is it gives language to something that has always been in flow,” he said. Williams, Jones and grimes have been doing this with their art long before the term Afrofuturism was first coined. “It points people in the direction to kind of understand it – maybe more from the esthetic point of view whether it’s sonically or visually. I have to say that it has been in our creative practices for a couple of decades now, and for Bill, much more than us.”
Another beautiful quote by d. Sabela grimes that stayed with me reads, “Each experience realizes quantum Blackness as a means to play within the nowness of recurring futures.” I wanted grimes to let our readers know what it means for him.
“It’s really me playing with this idea of how Blackness operates, more from the perspective of the quantum field, in the way I approach my work” he began. “There’s a way that we think about Blackness in this country and really the way it’s been utilized. Europeans tried to give definition to what Black means in this country for slavery reasons or to build certain social constructs. But within the experience there’s something a little bit more full and dimensional. I really feel like people experience a timelessness and at the same time a temporality with this. Just trying to point us in the direction of what to think about what fullness and what questions and affirmations of what Blackness is and is not or could be. What a Black’s past is, future and present bound up together.”
Saul Williams’ “The Motherboard Suite” 2021 in Times Square – Photo by Maria Baranova, Courtesy of New York Live Arts.
He went on to say that the term Afrofuturism comes from a combination of all these questions and some of his influences like Octavia E. Butler, Grace Jones, Saul Williams and many other people he has been around who have been thinking through these ideas, being in this idea, questioning it, pushing against it. “So that is the dark matter, the unseen that I like to play with,” he added. “More as an intention than a methodology.”
grimes designed his own costume for his solo in The Motherboard Suite. He described how Williams and those around him who were part of this project had been thinking about and constructing many different ideas so when he went into costume development, grimes was imagining being a part of those worlds and the worlds that Williams’ songs summon up in his head. “As a choreographer, I tend to think about materiality and fabric early in the process, so the costume doesn’t come at the end of putting movement ideas together. I tend to start early thinking about drape and weight, movement and motion,” grimes explained. He added that when one sees it, they will understand how the costume inspired his choreographic vision.
Saul Williams’ “The Motherboard Suite” 2021 in Times Square – Photo by Maria Baranova, Courtesy of New York Live Arts.
Now on the faculty at USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance, grimes teaches a course that he created called Movement Improvisational Strategy for Materiality. It is a course that is part of a fashion partnership between several other USC art schools. He also teaches Hip-Hop, Dance History and Improvisation at the Kaufman School.
Although there are not a lot of dance jobs out in the country right now, grimes is very impressed with the younger generation of dancers. “They are creating a lot of pathways for themselves,” he said. Part of being in the dance business is for dancers to be able to reinvent themselves, become the next wave or trend makers and grimes is excited to see this new generation become part of that tradition. If there is not a job, create one.
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WHAT: Saul Williams’ The Motherboard Suite
WHO: Music by Saul Williams, Directed by Bill T. Jones, and choreography by Maria Bauman, Kayla Farrish, Marjani Forté-Saunders, d. Sabela grimes, Jasmine Hearn, Shamel Pitts, and Jade Solomon Curtis.
WHEN: August 9, 2024 at 8:00 PM.
WHERE: The Ford, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd E, Los Angeles, CA 90068
TICKETS range from $25 to $55. To purchase tickets, please click HERE.
For more information about Saul Williams, please visit his website.
For more information about The Ford Theatre, please visit their website.
Written by Jeff Slayton for LA Dance Chronicle.
Featured image: Saul Williams’ The Motherboard Suite 2021 in Times Square – Photo by Maria Baranova, Courtesy of New York Live Arts.
