As America sits poised to nominate its first black or female president, Idris Ackamoor and Rhodessa Jones, two prominent artistic voices in American race and gender politics for the past thirty years, make a timely return to Philadelphia. While pundits crank out sanitized narratives of multi-culturalism and gender equality in sweeping gestures, Jones and Ackamoor track a decidedly personal political history of this country through the romantic, professional, political, and sexual relationships that have guided them through decades of conflict and struggle. Part house party, part TV talk show, and part cabaret, The Love Project is an interactive experience that testifies to the network of human relations that define our times. The Love Project comes to the Bride on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, March 6th, 7th and 8th at 8pm. Tickets are $25. Bride members receive a 50% discount on tickets; Students and seniors with ID receive a 25% discount on single tickets. For tickets and information, call the Bride box office at 215.925.9914 or visit www.paintedbride.org. The Bride is located at 230 Vine Street in Old City, Philadelphia.

The Love Project represents the collaboration of four distinguished artists. Long-time creative partners and one-time romantic cohorts, Ackamoor and Jones have collaborated for most of their lives in performance, music, dance, and education. For the Love Project, they have partnered with Pearl Cleage, acclaimed author of What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day, and her husband Zaron Burnett Jr., writer and director of the Just Us Theater Company. These four artists, working together and separately across the country since the late 70s, converged upon this single project to reflect on how various kinds of love—romantic, familial, racial, platonic, spiritual, and sexual—shape contemporary life and politics.

The production first appeared as a work in progress at the National Black Theater Festival this past August to the delight of a sold-out audience. It has continued to evolve since then, shifting in response to the context of its presentation. As Ackamoor and Jones preside, they depend on audience members to enrich the experience with their own songs and narratives, creating what Ackamoor describes as a “Chorus of Love”. Jones underlines these ambitions, remarking: “My deepest fantasy is that The Love Project is a cabaret piece that encourages a public forum—an evening of words, music, and movement that can expand to include live performance in the moment.” Jones and Ackamoor are particularly enthusiastic about returning to Philadelphia, a city whose political and racial divisions demand this production.

While The Love Project is their first truly interactive work, Ackamoor and Jones have sparked animated conversations at the Bride before. At the Women’s Theater Festival in 1997, they presented The Legend of Lily Overstreet, Jones’ comedic lamentation on her days as a peep show dancer. The work captured Bride audiences with its hilarious audacity, while posing serious questions about race and sexuality. Ackamoor and Jones are masters of transporting audiences out of their daily lives in order to provide greater critical perspective upon the daily struggles that consume them. Jones has gained international notoriety for developing original theater within prisons as part of her Medea Project, allowing inmates to reflect upon their incarceration.

Jones and Ackamoor have been collaborating since the late 1970’s. Ackamoor had just founded the San Francisco based performance ensemble Cultural Odyssey and Jones had recently finished the early versions of Lily Overstreet. The two artists merged their endeavors, developing a repertoire of highly acclaimed works under the auspices of Cultural Odyssey over the next thirty years. “Cultural Odyssey Dazzles! Jones and Ackamoor make sense of life by making beautiful music of the human experience,” proclaims the San Diego Tribune, while the New York Times writes “the material shimmered with intelligence, wit and humanity.”

Creating New Performance Workshop
with Rhodessa Jones and Idris Ackamoor
Tues., March 4th, 6 to 8:30pm
Join the artists behind the Love Project for a theater workshop for professional, aspiring and closet performers. The class introduces the performance styles and training processes of Ms. Jones and Mr. Ackamoor, using sound and movement exercises as a point of departure for creative exploration. The evening concludes with a five to ten minute mini-performance created during the process. In addition, participants will receive information regarding “personal survival strategies for performing artists”

About Rhodessa Jones
Born in Florida to a migrant laborer family, Rhodessa Jones soon became an outspoken actress, teacher, singer, and writer. For over twenty-five years, she has served as Co-Artistic Director of the San Francisco-based performance company Cultural Odyssey. She is the Founding Director of the award winning “Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women”, a performance workshop designed to achieve personal and social transformation for incarcerated women. Jones has taken the project to numerous prisons, including those in Johannesburg South Africa and Turin, Italy, developing original theater with inmates who reflect upon their past, present, and future lives. Later this spring, she will return to Johannesburg, South Africa for a residency inside women’s correctional institutions, as part of the Urban Voices Festival. A scholar of art for social change, Jones has taught at venues as diverse as Lowell Prison for Women in Florida, Yale University, and UC Berkeley. In 2007, she served on the faculty of the Women’s Studies Department at the University of Maryland. In the spring of 2004, Ms. Jones was honored with an Honorary Doctorate Degree from California College of the Arts. Last year, Jones earned a United States Artists Fellowship to support her creative work.

About Idris Ackamoor
Idris Ackamoor is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, actor, tap dancer, director, and producer. He is the Founder and Executive/Co-Artistic Director of Cultural Odyssey. An accomplished tap dancer, Idris’ signature performance is his uncanny ability to combine tap dancing with playing his saxophone simultaneously. In duet with his artistic partner Rhodessa Jones, he has performed at such prestigious venues as La Mama Theater and the Public Theater in New York City, Yale Repertory Theater, in New Haven, Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago, and the National Black Theatre Festival. Idris has also performed with percussionist Don Moye of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, dancer/choreographer Bill T. Jones, writer/poet Ntozake Shange, tenor saxophonist Chico Freeman and many others. In November 2003 he was presented with a "GOLDIE Lifetime Achievement Award" from the San Francisco Bay Guardian. He is the recipient of the prestigious AUDELCO Board of Director's Award "for 20 years of dedication in creating, producing and presenting original Theatre Performance Art” and was awarded the Black Theatre Network's Presidential Pathfinder Award to honor his contributions to the field of performance. He is also the recipient of three National Endowment for the Arts Grants in jazz performance and composition and several San Francisco Art Commission Individual Artists Awards. Ackamoor has released three albums: Homage To Cuba (2004), Centurian (2000), and Portrait (1998).

The Painted Bride Art Center works with artists to create and present programs that affirm the intrinsic values of all cultures, the inspirational and healing powers of the arts, and their ability to affect social change.

For photos and more information contact: Thom Yarnal, Marketing Director at 215.925.9914 x 17 or thom@paintedbride.org