Step Afrika! The Migration: Reflections on Jacob Lawrence

Washington DC’s celebrated step dance company celebrates its 30th anniversary with a powerful production that tells the story of the Great Migration through Black dance forms, bold visual art, and vivid theatricality. The Migration is based on Jacob Lawrence’s famous series of paintings from the early 1940s that explored the Black American migration experience in a modernist style with a distinctive earth-tone color palette. Set to an uplifting soundtrack that includes music by Nina Simone and John Coltrane, gospel, and West African drumming, the movement traces a historical arc from Africa to the post–Civil War South to a new life in the North, the choreography a mix of stepping, tap, body percussion, and modern dance. “A life-affirming evening of theater” (DC Theatre Scene).