Harriet's Gun 2: Shapeshifting Towards a Radically Imagined Black Future

Dance Mission Theater’s Liberation Academy presents
Harriet’s Gun 2
Shapeshifting Towards A Radically Imagined Black Future
An online dance festival featuring 16 dance artists

Curated by Sarah Crowell and Adia Tamar Whitaker
And featuring emcee, Rhodessa Jones

Sat-Sun: May 18-19, 2024
5pm PST / 8pm EST

Two days, two distinct line-ups!

Tickets are by donation, $0-$100. (Registration is required. $10 or $20 donation is suggested.)

Harriet’s Gun: Shapeshifting Towards a Radically Imagined Black Future was first presented in March 2021. We are excited to bring this online festival back in 2024 due to audience demand. This year our theme is WE OUTSIDE! To us this means, a study, an activation, an inspiration map of how we move into spaces of power and crown ourselves. This is the Black Future.This is a resistance to the consumption of Black suffering. An acknowledgment of that suffering as a launch pad into new life, without giving suffering all the power. This is Black folks in full-bodied Black joy, wings spread. It is us in the full bloom stage of shapeshifting. It is an unapologetic arrival into our brightness. The tears and fire that make us rainbows. The sweetness of freedom savored.

About Harriet’s Gun
Harriet Tubman always carried a gun and an ivory handled sword on her liberation missions. Harriet’s gun was insurance, protection, a wand, an anchor, a shield, an antenna, a sage bundle, a way out, a motivator, and a guard rail. In the same way, Harriet’s Gun, Shapeshifting Towards a Radically Imagined Black Future, offers a collective space for artists to define, speak and move power into the Black future and out into the world

Co-curated by Liberation Academy co-director, Sarah Crowell, Artistic Director Emeritus of Destiny Arts Center in Oakland, CA and Dance Mission resident artist, Adia Tamar Whitaker, Artistic Director & Founder of the Brooklyn-based performance ensemble Àṣẹ Dance Theater, Harriet’s Gun features a spectrum of world class Black artists from around the country, with Rhodessa Jones spinning the web for the evening as the Mistress of Ceremonies and homegrown San Francisco storyteller. A panel with the artists follows each performance.

Saturday artists include amara tabor smith, Mud Water Theater, Kiazi Malonga, Efaya Sampson, Tendayi Kuumba, Sydney L. Mosley, Hattie Mae Williams, Alayo Dance Company and CubaCaribe, and Kara Mack.

Sunday artists include AfroUrban Society, Rochelle Jamilah, Push Dance Company, Bernard Brown, Jade Charon, Destiny Arts, Jasmine Hearnm J. Bouey, and Kara Mack.

This year’s performances will be dedicated to Robert Henry Johnson, a prolific Bay Area Black choreographer who passed away in 2023. We are also honoring the lives of Papa Zak Diouf from Diamano Coura, Chief Yagbe Awolowo Onilu, Mozel Zeke Nealy, Malonga Casquelourd, Carlos Aceituno, and Iyanifa Omo Osun Ifadayo Olaberinjo Efaya Makala Sampson.

This festival is made possible in part with support from Dream Keepers, San Francisco Arts Commission, and Grants for the Arts. Photo of Efaya Makala Sampson by Tracie Dawn Williams, Flier design by Christine Joy Ferrer.

Event Venue

Online