The African-American experience infuses our culture in every art form. Here's an opportunity to take a defining moment in our cultural history and to use it as a perspective on the past as well as the future. Jump in to a program that has music, poetry, literature, theater, dance -- the possibilities are limitless!

Romare Bearden Tomorrow I May Be Far Away, 1967

I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset. The Negro Speaks of Rivers (to W. E. B. DuBois) --- Langston Hughes

About the program

The Harlem Renaissance -- centered in New York City in the early part of the 20th century – marked the rise of African American visual art, literature and theater, music, and dance. Moving beyond the period of slavery and from the then-rural South to the urban North, African Americans were speaking through art in their own voices, and in the process radically changed the way much of American culture would look, sound, and move forever afterward.

From the early jazz of Basie and Ellington to the modern dance of Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus, African Americans molded new art forms that defined America’s contributions to the arts. Through writers and poets like Paul Lawrence Dunbar and Langston Hughes we learned the unique possibilities of the dialect and rhythms of the African American experience, and through William H.Johnson and Romare Bearden there was an explosion of line, rhythm and color in painting and collage.

With a packet of materials that allows teachers to make multiple curricular connections. Phillip Cherry takes his own experience as an African-American actor and builds upon it in a program that tells an important part of our story as a nation and orients students’ to the profound influence that African-American artists and art forms have had on the world. A great program for intermediate through HS, and a natural for schools seeking to reinforce important opportunities like Black History Month!

Availability:	October - November, 2006 / February - March, 2007
Costs for programming:	$840 / 4 programs $400/workshop day (4 workshops/day)*
Program format:	Assembly/workshop
Audience limit:	250/elementary 300/MS & HS 30/workshop
* Prices above reflect significant subsidy from New Performing Arts' fundraising with arts education supporters statewide and nationally.

About the Artist

Phillip Cherry brings a passion for drama and the arts and their role in the community to his program. A passionate educator as well as a seasoned actor, Phil uses the arts as a vehicle to emphasize the importance of building team skills and communication skills, while encouraging an appreciation for all aspects of the arts through his own love of theatre, poetry, and literature.

Among his many other accolades, Phillip Cherry has been Neighborhood Arts Director for the Fund for the Arts, founded the Nontraditional Tour Theatre of Louisville, and was director of the Portland Youth Limelight Theatre of Neighborhood House in Louisville. In addition to his many stage credits, Phil has numerous TV and film appearances and has worked with such actors as Al Pacino, Bill Murray and Ashley Judd.