Black History Month Artist Spotlight: Renegade Performance Group

Pentacle celebrates our artists this Black History Month with an interview with Renegade Performance Group! André Zachery (Artistic Director, Renegade Performance Group) is currently an Administrative Support Program artist and was previously part of our ART research project.

What does Black History Month mean to you?

“As a dancer and choreographer in New York City, Black History Month is a reminder that this land has been and will continue to be a “kafou” or “crossroads”. New York City, more than any other city on this planet is a ground-zero of the global African Diaspora. The circumstances that have brought us as Black people together range from a mix of realities. Yet what continues to be created from these exchanges or even collisions at this intersection called New York City is always inspiring. To walk these streets and create following in the legacies of unknown Africans dancing in bondage, the movement in liberated spaces like Weeksville, jazz-joints in Harlem, mambo-clubs in Spanish Harlem, the playgrounds where breakers hit the vinyl in the Bronx, where dancers swerved in discos and loft to mixes on electronic systems of soul music, in dance studios where Black ballerinas in Afros danced a Creole Giselle, to every Labour Day on Eastern Parkway – Black people dancing seems to be a continual and powerful regenerator of the magic found in New York City. At times I am awed to be a part of this magnificent quilt that has been pieced together by so many peoples, communities, and families.”