Dance
In ZORA. More on Medium.
Charm’s dances supercharged Super Bowl halftime and the Grammys. Now? She has her own music.
Charm La’Donna is the choreographer behind many of your favorite stars. From The Weeknd’s Super Bowl halftime show to Dua Lipa’s mesmerizing Grammy showcase, La’Donna creates the signature moves that keep an audience entertained while also giving life to potential TikTok routines. She is also a music artist.
La’Donna, originally from Los Angeles, started creating dances for her friends at age 14 or 15 and eventually attended an arts high school. Now after working with a who’s who of music, including Rosalia and Kendrick Lamar and planning Dua Lipa’s Grammy performance, she is prepped to release her own EP this…
Jemel McWilliams speaks on his journey
Jemel McWilliams is the live-show artistic director responsible for some of your favorite performances, including Janelle Monáe’s “You Make Me Feel” at the 2019 Grammy’s and Lizzo’s “Juice” at the 2019 GLAAD Awards. An advocate for body positivity, McWilliams is known for his signature free-flowing movements and aims to create movements that help artists express themselves through visual storytelling.
To celebrate Black Music Month, ZORA spoke with the extraordinary dancer to learn the story of his career and what it’s like to work over the past decade with iconic Black female artists, including Beyoncé, Alicia Keys, Lizzo, and Janelle Monáe.
…
Leiomy Maldonado joins Megan Thee Stallion, Jameela Jamil, and Law Roach on HBO’s new competition show
Leiomy Maldonado made history more than 10 years ago as the first trans woman to compete on MTV’s America’s Best Dance Crew. The Bronx-born dancer, along with her troupe Vogue Evolution, reintroduced the world to voguing — the dance style that comes out of New York’s ballroom scene that many still believe Madonna discovered.
“Around that time, there were videos circulating of different artists having people try to vogue in their music videos,” Maldonado tells me over the phone. …
This seminal work is a part of our radical tradition and is still prescient
On what would have been Ntozake Shange’s 70th birthday, a crowd filled The Public Theater in NYC to witness For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf performed in the round. For Colored Girls is a dramatic expression, coined by Shange as a choreopoem, telling the story of seven women (each represented by a color) through poems, prose, and dance.
At the top of the show, Lady in Brown opens with the poem “dark phrases.” She introduces what it means to be a colored girl in this world. Lady in Brown calls out that she is from…
Though I loved to dance, I felt pressured to conform to a particular kind to make strides in the industry
The lights dim. An anticipatory hush settles over the audience. The air feels warm and sweet. The string section begins their quick and staccato phrasing of the overture, launching us into ballet’s beloved holiday tradition, “The Nutcracker.”
This is the moment my mom would pinpoint as the beginning of my love of dance. I was only two years old, and she bravely took me to see Texas Ballet Theater’s “The Nutcracker.” We didn’t make it past Act I, but she insists that the lush orchestrations of Tchaikovsky’s composition filtered into my brain. …
