Up/right

Concept & Artistic Direction: Davalois Fearon
Choreography by Davalois Fearon with the assistance of Jalisa Wallerson
Improvised Movement Scores by Davalois Fearon performed by Dancers
Dancers: Davalois Fearon, Myssi Robinson, Jalisa Wallerson, and Marya Wethers
​Music Direction: Mike McGinnis, in collaboration with Davalois Fearon and Dancers
Musicians: Mike McGinnis (Clarinet, Saxophone), Adriel Vincent-Brown (Drums), Peter Apfelbaum (Piano)
Poetry: Patricia Smith and Davalois Fearon
Visual Art and Projections: Myssi Robinson
General Manager: Tess Montoya
Project Manager: Emma Yeager
Presented by Arts for Art at Vision Festival 2025, heART to RESIST
Premiere: June 5th 2025, Roulette Intermedium, Brooklyn NY
Photo: Eva Kapanadze
"Up/right" is a powerful multidisciplinary dance piece that blends Davalois Fearon’s Afro-Jamaican roots with her professional concert dance experience. Drawing from traditions like Kumina, Doundounba, Congolese, Ska, Reggae, and Dancehall, Fearon weaves these rich movement languages into a seamless flow with postmodern and contemporary dance. The work honors the often-overlooked and uncredited contributions of African diasporic forms to American dance, reclaiming the spaces and narratives from which these movement traditions have long been excluded and segregated.

​"Up/right" is part of the "Finding Herstory Project" and is a direct outgrowth of "Segregated Me", a solo that is the open to "Time to Talk",  a multimedia dance piece rooted in research on American history, dance history, racial identity formation, and systemic racism in American concert dance, academia, and society. The "Segregated Me" solo explores how racial segregation in America has influenced the field of dance, given the existence of dance and “Black Dance” as distinct genres. Movements generated from the pelvis and spine hallmarks of Black dance are juxtaposed with movements initiated from the arms and legs with an upright spine, characteristics of European dance forms such as ballet.

"Up/right", however, moves beyond contrast, presenting an "Integrated Me", where these movement vocabularies coexist freely. This blending actively resists the systemic forces that have marginalized and erased Afro-diasporic influences from dominant narratives of American dance history.

This project is made possible with funds from the Bronx Cultural Visions Fund and Bronx Dance Fund, a regrant program administered by the Bronx Council on the Arts. The creative development of Up/right was made possible by Princeton University Research Assistance funding, Wassaic Project through a grant from NYSCA and funding from Gilman.