Ephrat Asherie collaborates with Grammy award-winning pianist and composer Arturo O’Farrill on the company’s newest creation, Shadow Cities, a reflection on the beauty, vastness, and joy of the in-between. Bringing together Asherie’s innovative and rigorous choreography with O’Farrill’s singular and mesmerizing sound, Shadow Cities is a beautiful extension of Ephrat Asherie Dance’s dedication to working with live music. With a cast of six dancers and four musicians, this work explores what it means to stay afloat in the in-between.

“We are split between cities, memories, and generations; we are an amalgam of cultures, fully embodied and fragmented all at once; our movements are concurrently malleable and explosive, our identities fixed and infinitely fluid. Whether as immigrants, BIPOC identities, or first-generation Americans, this feeling of in-betweenness connects everyone in the work as we ask how and why—halfway between so many disparate extremes in time, space, and state—we often feel our most enlivened selves. It is from this vivid place that Shadow Cities comes to life.” – Ephrat Asherie

About the Artists

Ephrat Asherie

Ephrat “Bounce” Asherie, a 2016 Bessie Award winner for Innovative Achievement in Dance, creates work for the dynamic group of multifaceted dancers in her company Ephrat Asherie Dance (EAD). Rooted in various Black and Latine vernacular dances, including breaking, hip hop, house and waacking, EAD is dedicated to exploring the inherently complex and dynamic qualities of these forms. Asherie’s singular way of creating “compact bursts of choreography with rapid-fire changes in rhythm and gestural articulation” (New York Times), brings forth work that is aesthetically innovative, physically rigorous and unceasingly curious.

Artist Website | Instagram

Arturo O’Farrill

Arturo O’Farrill, pianist, composer, and educator, was born in Mexico and grew up in New York City. Arturo’s professional career began with the Carla Bley Band and continued as a solo performer with a wide spectrum of artists including Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Bowie, Wynton Marsalis, and Harry Belafonte. In 2007, he founded the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance (now Belongó) as a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the performance, education, and preservation of Afro Latin music. Arturo’s composition “Three Revolutions” from the album Familia—Tribute to Chico and Bebo received the Best Instrumental Composition Grammy in 2018. Arturo’s album, Fandango at the Wall in New York, won another Grammy award in 2023.

Artist Website | Instagram