Becoming Daddy AF (work-in-progress) by David Roussève/REALITY. Co-presented by MASS MoCA and Jacob’s Pillow, 2025. Pictured: David Roussève. Photo: Ryan Harper.
SUPPORT
Becoming Daddy AF is a National Performance Network Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, Kelly Strayhorn Theater, National Center for Choreography at The University of Akron, and MASS MoCA with Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, more information at www.npnweb.org.
Becoming Daddy AF was created with support from Danspace Project, UCLA’s Chancellor’s Research Fund and The Chancellor’s Arts Initiative.
Becoming Daddy AF is made possible with generous support from the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project with lead funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and the Mellon Foundation, and a MAP Fund creation grant.
Booking contact:
George Lugg, Producorial & Management Support
georgelugg@gmail.com
213-446-9556
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In celebration of 2025 as his 40th anniversary as professional choreographer, writer, and performer, David Roussève will create his first evening-length solo in more than 20 years. Becoming Daddy AF, premiering fall 2025, is a meditation on life's purpose created and performed by a queer African American man acutely aware of the finite time he has left on the planet. Like strands of DNA, it connects elements encoded in Roussève’s body, including 600 years of family genealogy (which he recently traced to 1400s France, Portugal, and Germany, with branches in Mali, Senegal, Haiti, and Cuba), his roller coaster journey as a queer HIV+ cis man, and the shattering suicide of his former husband of 26 years—along with solo excerpts from 35 years of REALITY repertory, and a new movement vocabulary exploring the meaning of virtuosity for a 63-year-old body. It is the portrait of a man defying death, but somehow unable to unabashedly embrace life. Ultimately, Becoming Daddy AF hopes to generate dialogue around the elusive nature of love and the very meaning of existence; along the way posing questions that viewers can ponder for themselves around the nature of an ‘archive,’ ‘legacy,’ ‘fulfillment’, and even ‘liberation.’
Becoming Daddy AF moves Roussève into new artistic terrain and will be one of his most compositionally adventurous works ever. The piece is structured as nonlinear chapters that move freely through time, place, and character, using a fragmented form of queer storytelling to challenge the conventional ways narratives evolve. The work features character and genre leaps that may be initially bewildering, but ultimately lead to a deeply resonant thematic crescendo. Roussève explores the ever-evolving definition of love in Becoming Daddy AF, as a recently divorced queer man in his sixties interacting with dating and sex apps for the first time, amid a broader society that seems devoid of ‘love’ while enmeshed in the struggle for social justice. Propelled by Roussève’s research into his genealogy, the piece delves into the explosive and intricate relationships between whiteness, melanin, freedom, and life fulfillment. Becoming Daddy AF also explores the nature of an archive, as the documentation of artistic production but also the chronicler of a life. Roussève revisits 40 years of repertory to ask whether a choreographed work is fixed and impenetrable; or whether like a personal memory it is malleable, fallible, and open to reinterpretation through the shifting social, political, artistic, and personal lenses of a new era.
Roussève’s recent group works for his company REALITY have developed a movement language that melds fluid and sequential techniques with street, modern, and jazz dance. Becoming Daddy AF expands upon this kinetic terrain by adapting that language to an older body containing less technical prowess, but an abundance of kinetic and real-world wisdom. As part of this new vocabulary, Roussève will develop a gestural language deepening and rearticulating the hand-based gestures that have been the core of his choreography’s emotional resonance across four decades. The stage action is augmented by large-scale digital imagery, which unlike the choreographer’s past works has no surface connection to the narrative, but instead deepens a larger thematic arc surrounding longing, impermanence, and the very nature of life and death. Sound design supports the steep emotional shifts of Roussève's monologues with a mix of propulsive hip-hop, R&B, classical music, and an original on-going tapestry of abstract sound.
Becoming Daddy AF will showcase a wildly talented, all Los Angeles-based collaborative team. Queer performance/installation maker Julie Tolentino (faculty CalArts School of Art, Whitney Biennial 2022, and original REALITY company member), will act as dramaturg and bring both a wildly different compositional perspective to the work and a deep understanding of Roussève’s artistic aims. In their first artistic partnership, video will be by LA-based Bessie Award recipient, video and dance artist Meena Murugesan known for her compelling collaborations with many of SoCal’s most noted contemporary movement artists including CONTRA-TIEMPO, Marjani-Forte Saunders, taisha paggett, Lionel Popkin, and d. Sabela Grimes. Longtime collaborator Chris Khul will create lighting that constantly shifts to reflect the evening’s leaps between formal, pedestrian, intimate, and deliberately garish modes.
Becoming Daddy AF is conceived as a modular work that can fit in a wide range of spaces. While the video, sound, and backdrops can fill the largest of theaters, the visual elements can be downsized for performances in more intimate venues. Roussève is excited to perform the work not only in theaters, but in nontraditional site spaces and galleries for which it can easily be adapted.
Community engagement is at the core of Roussève's artistic mission, and he has extensive experience in planning and conducting educational and engagement activities with communities across the spectrum of age, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and cultural background. The first work fronting Rousseve’s personal relationship to HIV, aging, and queerness, Becoming Daddy AF addresses a multitude of viewer communities with themes touching on queer health, LGBT+ mental health and suicide prevention, aging, the definition of ‘Blackness,’ social justice, and the nature of existence and fulfillment. Roussève looks forward to working with presenters to craft original activities for their specific communities.
Roussève’s last evening-length solo The Ten-Year Chat (2001) was hailed by critics and audiences worldwide. Time Out London called it a “masterpiece,” noting that “Roussève binds humor and deep poignancy with threads of narrative about his own life... I would beg you all to go and see him and become better, fuller, richer people.” The Washington Post called Roussève “...one of the modern dance world’s great stage personalities.... He combines a powerful physical presence with an uncanny ability to channel the experiences of the weakest and most marginalized among us.” LA Times’ Charles McNulty wrote “The Struggles of Black Americans—oppression and abuse, poverty and neglect, AIDS and alienation—register in the body of this dancer/choreographer... Dante’s collective notion of ‘our life’ is particularly apt as Roussève moves from the personal to the historical and on to the universal.”
Credits
Written, Choreographed and Performed by David Roussève
Dramaturgy by Charlotte Brathwaite
Video design by Meena Murugesan
Sound design by d. Sabela grimes
Lighting design Christopher Kuhl
Costume design by Leah Piehl
Technical direction by Christopher Kuhl
Sound and Video Engineering by Padra Crisafulli
Early stage dramaturgy by Julie Tolentino
Additional production support from Gurmukhi Bevli, Harper Justus and Leanne Iacovetta Poirier
Management and producorial support by George Lugg
Collaborators
CHARLOTTE BRATHWAITE – DRAMATURGY (she) is an award-winning artist and director whose genre-defying works illuminate the realities and dreams of those whose stories have been silenced or ignored. Working at the intersection of dance, theater, music, film, ritual, and installation, her practice centers storytelling as a site of resistance, remembrance, and radical possibility. She began her artistic journey as a dancer—foundational experiences that continue to shape her movement- and music-driven storytelling. Brathwaite has created work alongside Meshell Ndegeocello, adrienne maree brown, Kyle Abraham, Peter Sellars, Malick Welli, and currently collaborates as dramaturg for David Roussève/REALITY. Her performances, films, and photography have been presented internationally at the Holland Festival, Park Avenue Armory, The Shed, Baryshnikov Arts Center, HAU Berlin, La MaMa, the Whitney Museum, and 1-54 Marrakech. She is the recipient of awards from the Doris Duke Foundation, United States Artists, Creative Capital, the Princess Grace Foundation, and others. Brathwaite holds an MFA from Yale. She is also an educator and Co-Founding Director of Malidoma Popenguine, a space for art and community in Senegal. www.charlottebrathwaite.com
MEENA MURUGESAN – VIDEO DESIGN (they) are an interdisciplinary artist based on Tongva-Kizh land, colonially known as Los Angeles. Meena creates art installations at the intersection of video art, textile art, live performance, and social issues. Their work grapples with multimedia collage, contemplative documentary, textile art, improvisation, somatic bodywork, collective creation, and brahminized bharatanatyam. Meena centers an anti-racist, anti-caste, feminist, queer, land back, liberatory creative practice. They research interlocking systems of apartheid - across caste, race, gender, religion, ethnicity, and species - to interrogate hierarchical structures of power. This inquiry informs their current project, Dravidian Futurities, a speculative multimedia installation examining Dravidian-African connections, casteism, colorism, trance rituals, and the ancient submerged landmass of Kumari Kandam / Lemuria. Meena’s solo work has been supported through grants and artist residencies, including The Mellon Foundation, CHIME, Pieter, UCLA, Canada Council for the Arts, CALQ and SODEC. Their video art has been presented at The Getty Museum, Broad Museum, MOCA LA, BlackStar Film Festival, 651 Arts, Jacob’s Pillow, SOPHIENSÆLE, Underground Museum, REDCAT, ODC, Abrons Arts Center, NYLA, EMPAC, ICA Philadelphia, MCA Chicago, Danspace, Wesleyan University, UCLA, Tangente, and MAI, among others. www.vimeo.com/meenakshi
D. SABELA GRIMES – ORIGINAL SOUND (he) is a choreographer, transmedia storyteller, writer, composer, costume designer, and educator. His interdisciplinary practice centers improvisation and collaboration, drawing from Black and Afro-diasporic vernacular, Hip Hop, street, and social dance traditions. He is the creator of Funkamental MediKinetics, a movement system taught at USC’s Glorya Kaufman School of Dance, where he also teaches composition, dance histories, and fashion and materiality. Sabela’s work explores the poetics of assemblage, speculative practice, and Black cultural epistemologies across performance, visual media, and sound. He co-directs Parable of Portals with Meena Murugesan, a transmedia performance constellation inspired by the writings of Octavia E. Butler. He is a 2023 USC Associates Award for Artistic Expression recipient, a 2021 Bessie Award recipient for Outstanding Performer, a 2017 County of Los Angeles Performing Arts Fellow, and a 2014 United States Artists Rockefeller Fellow. Sabela loves pancakes, speculative fiction, and his kinfolk.
CHRISTOPHER KUHL – LIGHTING DESIGN and TECHNICAL DIRECTION (he) Christopher Kuhl is an acclaimed theater, dance, opera, installation artist and designer. He has developed work which has been produced and presented at Santiago a Mil Chile, Queer Zagreb, Sydney Festival, Hebbel am Ufer, Centre Pompidou, Hong Kong Arts Festival, Edinburgh International Festival, On the Boards, Fusebox Festival, Walker Arts Center, Sundance Film Festival, and Santa Fe Opera, among others. Recent work includes Trade / Mary Motorhead (Prototype Festival, LA Opera, REDCAT), Human Measure (HOME Manchester, Canadian Stage), Confederates (Oregon Shakespeare Festival), The Carolyn Bryant Project (REDCAT), Voices from the Killing Jar (Long Beach Opera, Los Angeles Philharmonic), The Hunger (Abbey Theatre, BAM), The Object Lesson (New York Theatre Workshop), Home (BAM), The Institute of Memory (Under the Radar), Straight White Men (Young Jean Lee’s Theatre Company, The Public Theatre, Kaai Theater), John Cage Song Books (San Francisco Symphony, Carnegie Hall), and Soldier Songs (Holland Festival). His work has been recognized with three Bessie Awards, two Los Angeles Ovation Awards, and the Center Theatre Group’s Sherwood Award. Kuhl is an Associate Professor at UC San Diego in the Department of Theatre and Dance. He is from New Mexico and a graduate of California Institute of the Arts.
LEAH PIEHL – COSTUME DESIGN (she) is an award winning costume designer working in film, television, and theater. She holds an MFA in Costume Design from California Institute of the Arts and a BA in Political Economy from UC Berkeley. Theater and art credits include Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Mark Taper Forum, Pasadena Playhouse, Redcat, South Coast Rep, BAM, Geffen Playhouse, Centre Pompidou Paris, ArtBasel Miami, and the Whitney Biennial. Leah is a member of Motion Picture Costumers Local 705 and United Scenic Artists Local 829.
JULIE TOLENTINO – EARLY DRAMATURGY (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist working in durational performance, installation, scent & object-making, texts. Her work has been exhibited in the 2022 Whitney Biennial (with Ivy Kwan Arce), Participant, Inc., The Kitchen, Performance Space New York, The New Museum, Aspen Art Museum, Nevada Art Museum, Thessaloniki Biennial, Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Museum of Contemporary Art – Macedonia, Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Volume, Fulcrum Arts, homeLA, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, The Lab (SF) amongst others. Collaborative projects include Visual AIDS Duets Book series with Kia LaBeija; Movements in Blue with the What Would An HIV Doula Do? Collective; and the Safer Sex Handbook with Cynthia Madansky. Tolentino initiated and ran the Clit Club from 1990-2002. She is the current senior editor for the Provocations in TDR – The Drama Review (since 2012). They received a MFA as the University of California at Riverside’s Dean’s Distinguished Fellow in Experimental Choreography in 2020.
PADRA CRISAFULLI – SOUND AND VIDEO ENGINEER (they) creates theatrical experiences as a sound designer, composer, director, and generative artist, and is most energized when mixing the unexplainable with the unavoidable. Past productions have been seen at: Japan Society NY, Playwrights Horizons, La Jolla Playhouse, Park Avenue Armory, National Museum of Serbia, Prague Quadrennial, and Edinburgh Fringe Festival. They are a Hæth Grant recipient through Possum Creek Games, an IDEAS grant recipient through Qualcomm Institutes, and were awarded the Triangle Rainbow Theatre and the Riant's Best Director Award for their online work.. MFA in Sound, UC San Diego. BFA in Directing, Carnegie Mellon University.
GEORGE LUGG – MANAGEMENT & PRODUCORIAL SUPPORT (he) is a producer, curator and consultant who has been working in the field of contemporary performance for more than 30 years. He currently works for David Roussève/REALITY and Emily Johnson / Catalyst, and served as a consulting producer for CalArt Center for New Performance from 2019–2024. His active projects include the world premiere and touring of David Roussève’s Becoming Daddy AF, and Emily Johnson’s Speculative Architecture of the Overflow, scheduled to premiere at REDCAT in Los Angeles in fall of 2026. Other recent projects include Emily Johnson’s Being Future Being (2022); Daniel Alexander Jones’ Altar no. 1 (2021); Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol’s El Camino Donde Nosotros Lloramos (The Road Where We Weep) (2020); Faye Driscoll’s Come On In (2020); Faye Driscoll’s Thank You For Coming: Space (2019); the Zhigaagoong/Chicago edition of Emily Johnson’s Then a Cunning Voice and A Night We Spend Gazing at Stars (2019), among others. He served twice as Lead Program Consultant in the Performing Arts for the Creative Capital Foundation (2020 & 2012), as a Hub Site Representative for New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project (2012–14), and on the U.S. curatorial teams for the National Performance Network’s Performing Arts Asia Project (2011) and Performing Americas Project (2009–10).