the company
“Fist and heel is clapping and stomping, shouting and hollerin’ – and the manipulation of energies.”
–Reggie Wilson
Reggie Wilson/ Fist & Heel Performance Group is a Brooklyn-based dance company that investigates the intersections of cultural anthropology and movement practices and believes in the potential of the body as a valid means for knowing. Our performance work is a continued manifestation of the rhythm languages of the body provoked by the spiritual and the mundane traditions of Africa and its Diaspora, including the Blues, Slave and Gospel idioms. The group has received support from major foundations and corporations and has performed at notable venues in the United States and abroad.
Denied their drums, enslaved Africans in the Americas reinvented their spiritual dance traditions as a soulful art form that white and black authorities dismissed as merely ‘fist and heel worshipping’.
the director
REGGIE WILSON (ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, CHOREOGRAPHER AND PERFORMER) founded Fist & Heel Performance Group, in 1989. Wilson draws from the cultures of Africans in the Americas and combines them with post-modern elements and his own personal movement style to create what he often calls “post-African/Neo-HooDoo Modern dances.”
His work has been presented and workshops taught nationally and internationally at many venues. This list is a sample and by no means exhaustive: Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York Live Arts, Summerstage (NY), Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Summer Stages Dance @ ICA Boston (MA), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, UCLA Live, Redcat (CA), VSA NM (New Mexico), Myrna Loy (Helena, MT), The Flynn (Burlington, VT), Contemporary Arts Center (New Orleans), Dance Umbrella (Austin, TX), Linkfest, Festival e’Nkundleni (Zimbabwe), Dance Factory (South Africa), Danças na Cidade (Portugal), Festival Kaay Fecc (Senegal), The Politics of Ecstasy, and Tanzkongress 2013 (Germany).
Wilson is a graduate of New York University, Tisch School of the Arts (1988, Larry Rhodes, Chair). He has studied composition and been mentored by Phyllis Lamhut; Performed and toured with Ohad Naharin before forming Fist and Heel. He has lectured, taught and conducted workshops and community projects throughout the US, Africa, Europe and the Caribbean. He has traveled extensively: to the Mississippi Delta to research secular and religious aspects of life there; to Trinidad and Tobago to research the Spiritual Baptists and the Shangoists; and also, to Southern, Central, West and East Africa to work with dance/performance groups as well as diverse religious communities.
POWER
POWER is Wilson’s new evening-length dance performance work. It reimagines compelling core Shaker values, contributions, practices and histories through a postmodern American lens. This work builds and expands on his investigations related to the early evolution of African American spiritual worship. Points-of-inspiration for this work include Black Shaker Eldress Mother Rebecca Cox Jackson, Shaker foundress Mother Ann Lee, The First Great Awakening and American Utopianism, Binary Opposition, and foundational research from his work The Littlest Baptist. This evening-length work is created with 8 dancers, 3 vocalists, lighting designer Jonathan Belcher and 2 costume designers (Naoko Nagata, Enver Charkatash).
Some of Wilson’s key motivating questions: What would the worship of Black Shakers actually have looked like? How were the general, core Shaker tenets of “heaven on earth” realized (social activism, pacifism, gender equality, celibacy and the confession of sin)? What are our misunderstandings about Shakers? These questions center and obsess around the black leader Eldress Mother Rebecca Cox Jackson as well as Shaker foundress, Mother Ann Lee. Both women, leading followers in 17th Century America where one wouldn’t assume there were women in such key positions, even less, black Shakers. Limited documentation exists on specific black Shaker practices (pre-Civil War and Industrial Revolution America) but Wilson’s research seems to indicate correlations of Africanist retentions with Shaker beliefs and practices. These might include beliefs in a dual-Godhead, formations/patterns in worship, Shout retentions, fractal movement patterns, progressive thought and hard work, innovations, and advancements in technology as acts of worship.
The premiere of POWER took place at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival and coincided with Fist and Heel’s 30th Anniversary (founded 1989).
CITIZEN
‘What does it mean to belong’ and ‘What does it mean to NOT want to belong’, are core questions of Reggie Wilson’s investigations for his new evening length dance work, CITIZEN. In CITIZEN, Wilson drills down into the human desire to belong with exponentially expanding questions. ‘Do the injustices in today’s America engender a feeling of belonging? What supports belonging? Is belonging solely something internal, inside the individual? Is a sense of belonging or not belonging, a private or a public matter? How is my experience as a Black, 48-year old male in America compared to a black 30-year old male or a 23-year old black male’s experience , reality of America, different? What makes our experiences different, race, class, religion, gender, location, ancestry, language…? Do I change to belong? What do I change? Is change necessary? Does knowing the past help now, how? Do I become an anonymous individual if I belong? Belong to what… Where? Why? How? Who?’ This work takes these ever-expanding questions out of the theoretical and cerebral, and confronts them on kinesthetic, personal, individual, and macro levels, to offer alternatives. CITIZEN promises to engage and compel while igniting disruptive, uncomfortable perspectives on our compassion and humanity.
MOSES(ES)
Moses(es) is Reggie Wilson/ Fist and Heel’s rich evening-length work– choreographed for nine, set to live and Diasporic-influenced, layered vocalizations– that asks: how do we lead and why do we follow. This work’s filtered through the multiple iterations of Moses represented in religious texts + in mythical, canonical + ethnographic imaginations.
The Reclamation
The Reclamation is a repertory program which includes a total of three earlier works of Reggie’s.
In 2025 it will be 36 years that choreographer Reggie Wilson has been shaping ideas and crafting movement to engage audiences. This project is steeped in Wilson’s searching through and examining the foundational ideas from his very early works that were often more gestural, solo and intimate. He is examining what was, to see how far it has gone/evolved and identifying what might be missing or what is now needed as Fist and Heel re-establishes its way forward in the current times.
Wilson has selected 3 of his early works as original source materials to explore: Red Raspberry from 1987; Big BRICK: a man’s piece from 2001, and the duet 2012. These are 3 deep movement investigations that were created in very different times and contexts. Red Raspberry was a solo, Big Brick a male quartet, and the duet (a duet), will be transformed into a new 70 minute group work for 6-8 dancers with live recordings of Fist and Heel vocalists.
He along with a group of Fist and Heel performers (multi-generational) are using studio time to purposefully examine his early choreographic propulsions; searching deeper depths and higher heights of what the body can hold, explore and share. The process to-date has been made-up of: Going from remembering previous works, to remounting/reconstructing them in part or in whole, to dismembering/dissecting sections and ideas, all with the goal to reconfigure the discoveries into something new. The group is searching for where, and how these foundational ideas have evolved to-date and if they are still functional and impactful parts of Wilson’s idiomatic movement expression.
In Wilson’s re-claiming of his actual early movements, the group is discovering, seeing, feeling/getting-to-know and appreciating, an alternative set of connective tissue that leads to an underestimated fluidity in Wilson’s choreography. The studio work also includes re-membering the questions Wilson asked when he created the early works. To this information he is layering/implementing his current creation approaches and how he organizes his inspiration materials in developing The Reclamation. He’s looking at what works now, similarities/dissimilarities to his process before, and what are the approaches that need to be added/subtracted from the creation and development of the current work.
The Reclamation will have its world premiere in NYC April 4-5, 2025.
COMMUNITY SHOUTS
Stimulating, transformative sing-a-longs where participants restore and connect to their rhythmic voices and bodies. The Shouts unearth some of the origins, functions and interconnections through tales and songs from Africa and the African Diaspora (the Caribbean and American south).
CREATIVE HEALING WORKSHOPS
Company members guide and participate in creative writing, and/or movement workshops for young people and seniors.
OPEN REHEARSALS AND POST-PERFORMANCE DISCUSSION
Audience, performers and choreographer make contact on a more intimate level, either in the studio or post-performance, during which time audience members and performers have an opportunity to exchange perspectives and further understand Wilson’s process and presentation.
MASTER CLASSES AND WORKSHOPS
Choreographer Reggie Wilson teaches Master Classes in his particular movement idiom, merging contemporary Technique and post-modern structures with rhythmic folk traditions. Wilson also conducts workshop intensives in Dance Composition.
LECTURES
Wilson delivers engaging and informative lectures on his career arc, research (kinesthetic and academic), and on various cultures and communities of the African Diaspora.
LECTURE/DEMONSTRATIONS
This consists of various themes related and relevant to the presented performance.
