Name: Roar Shack Live!: Koollooꓘ
Start: 2025-01-28T18:45:00-08:00
End: 2025-01-28T21:00:00-08:00
Location: 34 7th St

$Roar Shack Live!: Koolloo\ua4d8$

Koollooꓘ is a new performance project led by Babatunji with TLES synthesizing experimental movement, sound, and performance.
About this Event

On the 5th show of our Roar Shack Live! season, The Living Earth Show is honored to present the world premiere performance of Koollooꓘ.

Led by legendary movement artist Babatunji, Koollooꓘ is a performance trio comprised of Babatunji and the musicians of The Living Earth Show (Travis Andrews and Andy Meyerson) exploring the boundaries of sound, movement, theater, and performance.

In its premiere incarnation, Koollooꓘ has built a site-specific work for The Roar Shack, using physical space as a character for Babatunji's choreography and movement, The Living Earth Show's new music and sounds, and the trio's shared exploration of the boundaries of what live performance can do.

We're honored to give the keys of The Roar Shack over to Babatunji this month. He's made something amazing that we've never seen before, and we're really excited to share it with you.

Capacity for this show is EXTREMELY LIMITED (since a variety of the spaces that have been used for seating need to be reserved for movement), so make sure to get a ticket ASAP!

Babatunji is a dance artist, choreographer, and creative innovator based out of Oakland. Though never formally trained as a child, Babatunji was always moving his body to the beat. At the age of 15, he discovered the art of hip hop. Following this epiphany of love, he grew up through his teens breaking and popping on street corners in Hilo, Hawai’i. After being “discovered” by a local dance instructor, he began his formal training in various styles of dance, including ballet. This would inevitably lead him to Lines Ballet’s Training Program, and from there, into the company.
For over a decade he has worked with one of the greatest American choreographers, Alonzo King. As a freelance dancer, Babatunji has worked with Post:ballet, Ishida Dance Company, SFDanceworks, tinypistol, Ballare Carmel; as well as performed works by choreographers and artist such as Adji Cissoko, Yue Yin, Danielle Rowe, Brett Conway, Rich and Tone Talauega, David Harvey, Mike Tyus, Vân-Ánh Võ. Additionally, his work for film includes features in Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs’ Blindspotting on Starz, as well as Misty Copeland’s short art film Flower.
Over the past 8 years, Babatunji has developed a unique movement language, blending his background in ballet, contemporary, breaking, and hip hop. He has choreographed for Berkeley Ballet Theater, Boston Dance Theater, Post:ballet, Trolley Dance, SFDanceworks, ZiRu Dance, among other Bay Area companies. As a solo artist, Babatunji has performed internationally, collaborating with visual, sound, and technical artists of countless genres. His work has been seen at Museum of Dance, Lion’s Jaw performance + dance festival, København Danser, and SFJazz in collaboration with Terri Lyne Carrington. In 2015, he was awarded a Princess Grace Award, as well as a Chris Hellman Award for his outstanding achievements and promise in the world of dance.