In this collaboration, celebrated choreographer Ronald K. Brown and acclaimed pianist Jason Moran brought together their respective ensembles — Brown’s Evidence Dance Company and Moran’s Bandwagon jazz trio — for the world premiere with live music of The Subtle One, a work commissioned and developed by Duke Performances. Named after Allah, the piece has its dancers move like angels in the wind, the live music tossing them across the stage. Set to a musical suite of the same name, this potent work reflects on the presence of our ancestors, a “mystical, understated look at the human condition” (The New York Times). 

The Subtle One was paired with selections from Brown’s One Shot, based on photographer Charles “Teenie” Harris, who documented the life of one African-American community over a span of forty years. One Shot is set to music by Ahmad Jamal and Mary Lou Williams, played live by the Bandwagon.

Brown’s Grace, one of the most popular works in the repertory of the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, opened the evening, a rapturous depiction of a journey to the promised land set to recordings by Duke Ellington, Roy Davis, and Fela Kuti. 

Hailed as a “modern dance savior” by the New York Times, Brown fuses the form and rhythm of African dance with contemporary choreography. Brown finds an ideal collaborator in Jason Moran — a composer, bandleader, MacArthur Fellow, and GRAMMY nominee — whom The Los Angeles Times describes as “a startlingly gifted pianist with a relentless thirst for experimentation.” For the first time, the whole program was performed on February 20 and 21, 2015, at Reynolds Industries Theater.