Choreographer Conversations: Du'Bois A'keen
Du’Bois A’Keen is a creative director, choreographer, producer and filmmaker. He is the founder and director of A’KEEN BRAND, a creative agency and production company. A Georgia native and now a New York City-based artist and business man, A’Keen started his professional dance career touring, teaching and performing for five years with Urban Bush Women, also working as the company’s marketing and branding strategist. As a solo dance artist and choreographer, he has had works commissioned by a number of notable dance companies, universities and opera companies. In 2018 A’Keen made his operatic debut as choreographer and guest artist with the Arizona Opera for Charlie Parker’sYardbird, a work he returns to in 2020 with the New Orleans Opera. He was a 2017 IFP Screen Forward Lab Fellow, a 2018 NYTV Featured Artist and choreographer for FOX’s Dance Squad. He has been a guest artist/teacher/lectuerer at Florida State University, New Rules Conference, Darton State College, Irvine Valley College, University of the Arts Philadelphia, and Rhema International Ministries, to name a few. A’Keen is also a singer-songwriter for jazz, Gospel and Contemporary Christian albums, as well as for notable musicians and playwrights. A’Keen has created a world premiere on Red Clay Dance Company for its “Visions & Voices” program. INCARNATION 1 explores the body as archive, altar and access point, set in the present-future but experienced in retrospect, caught in time lapse. The work asks: How do we prepare ourselves to be good ancestors? What are we downloading to pass on? The work is set to music by Kingsley Ibeneche, Moses Sumney, Shake, and Jessie Reyez; costumes concept is by Camry A’Keen, styled by KFleye.
What inspires you to make new work? When did that first happen for you?
For me the creative or choreographic process always starts with flashes of images and words. Those images and words eventually come together and start to tell me some type of story. This is when the creative process begins for me. Theatre director Peter Brooks talks about things beginning with a formless hunch. For me it’s more like an informed itch that I must scratch. There is a relentlessly haunting nature to those initial ideas. It’s like everything in life starts to tell the story that’s forming. Every conversation, experience, interaction—they all start to water those initial seeds. This is when I know it’s time to manifest a new work.
When you are creating a new work, do you come to rehearsal with your work already choreographed, or do you come with ideas that evolve with the dancers?
Both. I like to think of what I bring in as seeds that, through the creative process, will be watered and nurtured for blossoming.
How does it feel when you see a new work of yours performed for the first time?
When I see a new work of mine. I’m always immensely grateful to have been a vessel. To bring something from the ether to the Earth. To have been a part of manifesting something that didn’t exist before. I see my work as a process of creating with the Creator, so when I see that work come to fruition, I think, Glory to God.
What’s next for you after the “Visions & Voices” performances?
So many things. My wife Camry and I just released our newest published book that we co-wrote and designed together, THINK- i am whatever i think. So we have several book-signings and readings coming up for that. And actually, at the exact same time as INCARNATION 1 is having its world premiere, I’ll be debuting an opera I choreographed and will be performing in, Charlie Parker’s Yardbird, with the New Orleans Opera. And much much more!