13th & Republic

Acclaimed Director-Choreographer Darnell Pierre Benjamin will lead a creative team of dancers and singers to develop the piece. Featuring the original music of Cincinnati composer Kaleel Skeirik and the evocative poetry of Tyrone Williams, the piece will follow a single character who embodies the victims of excessive police force, and interacts with an ensemble of dancers and a chorus of singers to tell their story. Abstracted and refocused, sometimes told out of time, sometimes painfully in time, the story carries the audience through the performance to answer the question, “Where do we go from here?”

A multimedia, interactive film, 13th & Republic is slated to release online by the end of 2020.

Poster art by Nytaya Babbitt

This project is made possible in part by state tax dollars allocated by the Ohio Legislature to the Ohio Arts Council (OAC)

Additional generous funding for this project is provided by Xavier University Take It On 2020, and Christ Church Cathedral