The Brooklyn Rail

Renegade Performance Group’s 2025 world premiere Against Gravity: Flying Afrikans + Other Urban Legends christened 651 ARTS’ brand-new performance space in downtown Brooklyn earlier this year as its first live performance. A breathtaking multidisciplinary work anchored by André Zachery’s solo dancing, Against Gravity is at once a listening party, a night at the club, a praise and worship session, and a theatrical ceremony. Featured music performer, Okai Musik, calls the ceremony to order as he enters the space sounding a conch shell as a horn. He transitions to playing percussion on a bucket, center stage. His rhythms in shifting tempos drive photo projections on the upstage wall of key figures catalyzing our gathering, including Fred Hampton, Ben (Benji) Wilson, Harold Washington, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Zachery in his youth.

Over the course of the performance, sprawling crates become altars and thrones. Brooks’s poetry in voiceover is a guiding force. Films and projection transport us through multiple landscapes and geographies. The lush soundscape locates us throughout time. The result is a work that embodies and traverses the African diaspora. It is a love letter to self, to Black men and Black community of the past, present, and future, and to Haiti, Chicago, Brooklyn.

At the center of this work is the creative collaboration between André Zachery and Ayinde Jean-Baptiste, with Jean-Baptiste serving as an executive producer, co-director, and co-writer alongside Zachery. Both Chicago-raised in the eighties and nineties, with Caribbean heritage, and finding their professional artistic footing in Brooklyn, their self-described brotherhood allowed them “to have someone to hold [the work] with.”

The three of us chatted just after a meeting where they were visioning for the work’s next steps. Our conversation was as expansive as the work itself, highlighting the importance of relationships between Black men. Jean-Baptiste points to a poem by Haki Madhubuti that starts, “You will recognize your brothers” to describe how he and Zachery met and grew their partnership. This ethos permeates their approach to community building and creative collaboration.

Sydnie L. Mosley (Rail): Lineage is obviously very important to you all and important to the work. Can you talk about your connection to Chicago, Brooklyn, Haiti, and each other?

André Zachery: Ayinde and I grew up together and next to each other, even if we did not meet until maybe 2007, 2008 in Brooklyn. The experiences we shared together, but separately, informed our sense of self and how we were able to move through the world and engage with community.

In that sense of lineage, Ayinde knew that I had not been home in a while simply because we were in the midst of the pandemic. He was able to really say, “This is what’s going on,” and say “Hey, think about this place. Put your mind here.” That helped give the work so much of what it needed.

We were able to then understand our own positioning coming of age in Chicago. We have shared friends, shared language around growing up in the Free South Africa anti-apartheid movement, shared understanding of the refugee crisis because of the US imperialism in Haiti and what that meant for the Diaspora at large, and then our relationship to being Black men artists today, were all woven into this process of making the piece.

Ayinde Jean-Baptiste: Lineage exists in relationship to time. The time when the work was beating on André’s spirit to be born is an interesting time. The stories André just mentioned are reemerging and being honored visibly in Chicago, in ways that didn’t exist when we were young.

There’s a street named after Oscar Brown Jr. They named a street after Benji. They restored Chairman Fred’s gravesite in Louisiana and protected it. The people were doing these things. And then power is also responding to that. Lori Lightfoot named Lake Shore Drive after Jean-Baptiste Pointe DuSable (Chicago’s founder), which is something people have been fighting around for a very long time. But also, when Dré and I left, there was no statue in Chicago for DuSable. In 2009, there was a Haitian businessman in the community who commissioned a statue and then donated it to the city, right?

Skip Gates just dropped this new Great Migrations documentary and my cousin was one of its two producers. It highlights Chicago as a mecca for Black folks over multiple generations post-Reconstruction. These histories, they seem like they’re really far away, but they’re not that far behind us. And they overlap in ways that we don’t immediately understand.

When we’re talking about Michael Brown and George Floyd and Jordan Neely, we’re also talking about Emmett Till, right? We have a line in the show where we draw the connection that Fred Hampton’s mother babysat Emmett Till. We’re not outside of any of these histories. You know what I’m saying? And so when we talk about lineage, it’s not only about a bloodline, but it’s about historical and political legacies as well.

Both my parents came to this country as teenagers. My father’s side of the family landed in the Chicago area in the fifties, and my mother came to Brooklyn in the seventies. They had to figure out what it meant to be Black outside of a Black space; what does it mean to be Black globally in this place where the empire sits?

But I want to transition. I didn’t move to New York to blow up. I moved to Brooklyn to meet myself, and the most transformative thing that happened is I realized I had to make art or I might die. The greatest thing I made and the legacy I left was that I built community. That is the achievement of my years I’ve spent as an adult in Brooklyn.

Rail: Can y’all talk a little bit more about reimagining Black masculinity in the work? I’m thinking about you all’s blood lineages. Ayinde, on the night I attended the performance I met your father, and André, I know you are close with your dad. André, during the talkback, you also talked about how having your son shifted the necessity of this work for you.

Zachery: Having a direct knowledge and relationship with our paternal bloodline—the realities of it, the strength of it, the frailties of it, the truth of it—it’s never been about me holding the space alone in my performance projects. So with this work, Ayinde is here. Now being a father, my son is here. With Dapline as well, there was me and LaMont Hamilton. It was an aim of coming into collaboration and partnership and collectivity. I don’t feel like that is widely recognized.

In terms of Dapline, that was really LaMont’s project. LaMont was the one who said, “Hey, I want to work with someone. Is anyone out there?” and through a mutual friend was like, “Yeah, I know the person.” And literally I walked on two seconds after that happened.

So much of what defines manhood comes from white individualistic maleness that Black manhood has been forced to mold itself into, inflexibly. Almost all the projects I’ve done have not been about me as the individual. They have always been about a hyphenated sense of masculinity, a fluid space of masculinity, queer masculinity, Black trans masculinity, Blackness across different points of origin—direct lineages to the continent, to the Caribbean, the South—and how we all manage to hold the various joys, pains, explorations, things that excite us. That’s never about the “I.”

Because masculinity was always assumed to be about the individual—it’s hard to be like, “Wait a minute, that’s a whole community of Black men who are creating together, not just competing against each other.” So, in spaces of creation, that means there’s trust. If it’s long standing, that’s a lot of love and trust and conflict resolution and that means people are healthy over time. There are people checking in, “Yo, are you drinking your water? Did you get that check-up?”

Those are the small intangibles that are almost never associated with Black men. I’m speaking about the relationships that Ayinde says Against Gravity formed in continuation of Dapline. The NUU K’nynez (David Twice Light Adelaja, Brian “HallowDreamz” Henry, T.J. Rocka Jamez) can check in on Johnnie Cruise Mercer doing something, and that is actually a very big deal in terms of Black masculinity. The fact that those relationships still exist. They are sincere. That is the work. That means the work is successful.

Jean-Baptiste: There’s a sister who works with this organization called West Side United in Chicago, which was trying to deal with the life expectancy gap between the west side and the “gold coast”—the most wealthy area in Chicago—through organizing community partners and healthcare providers. We got to talking about brothers in our age range—we’re out of the eighteen to thirty-five now—we’re in the next part, you what I’m saying? [Laughs] So we are talking about these strokes and these heart attacks and our responsibility to just check on each other for multiple reasons.

One of those reasons is that we know the stressors of moving through these systems—the stressors of, I will say, war—they’re going to manifest at some point. I was talking to my brother-in-law after Against Gravity and he was just like, “Man, I really felt that.” We were talking about some of our own health stuff and I said to him, “Dude, we survived.” Everybody who we came up with ain’t here no more during the times that we’re talking about in the eighties and the nineties. Then to be able to make it through all that and do all the “right” things, and then you got a heart condition, you got high blood pressure, you got… you know what I’m saying? Actually still being here is a baseline of health and wellness and how you can be in the world.

Every generation, hopefully, if they are successful, can make an intervention in terms of what’s possible for the people who come from them or through them or after them. One of the challenges I think for Black men in this hemisphere, at least under these conditions, is balancing the stances and poses that we have had to retreat into to survive, so that maybe we can decouple vulnerability and weakness.

Rail: One of the things that I was most struck by with this work was how every production element had equal weight in the space: the dancing and the sound design and the projection design and the lighting and the costume and films. Each was an equal partner in bringing this work to life. Can you talk about how y’all pulled together the creative team that really manifested this shared sense of values?

Jean-Baptiste: I think about multimedia as the technology we have access to catching up to the oldest ways we ever told stories. It’s the idea of immersion; we doing everything. Sonically, I want that shit to rattle in your chest.

All of my work is about facilitating movement. It was Barbara Ann Teer who articulated this in her conception of Black theater, that it’s not so much performer and audience, but the relation is between activators and participants. There’s a ritual communion space and you’re being invited to consider and respond, but also you’re being moved.

Go ahead Dré, talk about the allstars.

Zachery: So, I love what Ayinde was saying about how each element needs to hit you, it needs to resonate, it needs to move through you in a way. You hear it, you recognize it. You see it, you recognize it. You feel it, you recognize it. You sense it, you smell it, you recognize it. Whether that was with avery r. young composing the soundtrack, where we are absolutely referencing the Mississippi Delta to Chicago Blues line and that importance, right?

A big part of my work and research is semiotics. There’s not a single element of the work, literally or metaphorically, that is not intentional. Because then as much intention as you put between every element, serendipitously, there become these unforced moments that reveal something magical: that energy came together and revealed something we didn’t even know was going to happen.

But that can only happen if you know the elements you’re working with. You have to know how they matter to you and what they mean in the wider culture. That is also something I feel in our field of dance we overlook a lot and we often go into the space of randomness that people kind of misuse, especially in the legacy of Merce Cunningham and John Cage—chance. They were talking about chance, but they knew what they were dealing with.

Working with Mike David T, that was the opportunity for my brother and I to connect on a deeper level, but also to elevate his own skills as a filmmaker and a cinematographer, and it was a space where I was led by him a lot.

Even in the editing process, the community that he’s built, the editor was able to be like, “I see what y’all are trying to do,” and Paul Araki Elliott was able to put some magic together with his editing, and again that’s the semiotics. We knew where we wanted to be—on the 55th Street station, we want to go to Douglass Park, we want to be on the lakefront. Ayinde took me to this beautiful sculpture that’s on 39th. We knew what time of day we wanted because we’re also referencing Igbo Landing. We also knew that we were referencing Salt from Earl Lovelace because we were going to put that passage in. We grew up with the Gwendolyn Brooks poems and texts about the city. So we’re like, “Okay, we can actually go to this location of 47th and Prairie.” And for the people who are actually from Chicago, they’re like, “I know exactly where that’s from.”

Our culture takes work. The phenotype of Blackness doesn’t mean you are going to come in and get it. There are people who know our symbolism, our imagery, our signage and what to do with it, when, where, and how. So when it shows up in a piece like this, I think people think it’s haphazard. Or, “I can just put a whole bunch of things together randomly.” No. Every element was surgically considered between Ayinde and I both.

Jean-Baptiste: But also it’s coming through. A friend of mine talks about process and she’s like, “Yeah, but you might need to take a step back and have a dream about it.”

I want to talk a little bit more specifically about trust and leadership. So Mike connected us to Paul, our editor, but it’s through Mike’s investment in the work and also his own artistic excellence that we admire, that we knew he not gonna send us nobody who’s gonna be bad. When we talked to Paul, he told us before he started working with film, he was a b-boy and his sister is also a dancer, so he’s interested in what we are doing. I was really looking for somebody who had the sensibility to be dancing with Dré.

To be able to then welcome a collaborator whose leadership you can trust—we give thanks for the people who were sent to this work, to work alongside us.

I really am committed to building relational trust and then letting people be great, making space for them to have what they need to bring their own genius and expertise to a work. When you build the understanding, people are clear, people know why we’re doing this, people understand what it is and what it’s for, and then we can just go.

I want to shout out avery—we had a two-hour creative meeting with him to talk about the sounds and the memories and the experiences, and he brought that sound. Carlos Johns-Dávila, our projection designer, I know Dré has had a much longer relationship with. I want to shout out our performing contributor Okai, who has worked with Dré over several years. I was also familiar with multiple dimensions of his artistry, so that was another situation where years of relation translated to a powerful synergy greater than the sum of its parts. And Darin Michelle who was a graphic designer who came through 651 ARTS.

Rail: Can y’all talk a little bit more about working with 651 ARTS? You’ve both had multiple touch points with them over the years, and I think it’s important to uplift you all as Black Brooklyn artists making work with and inside of this legacy organization.

Zachery: Once I arrived in Brooklyn in 2002, one of the earliest institutions that I was instructed to go to and see work was 651 ARTS when they were still housed at the BAM Harvey Theater at 651 Fulton Street. It was so important for me to see what type of artist I wanted to form into, and to understand how they are involved in the community by seeing folks like Eisa Davis and Carl Hancock Rux. 651 ARTS informs me and is kind of my living encyclopedia, showing me what it’s going to take to actually make work that matters. Then, later on, Sydnie, you and I led the New Media Arts Fellowship on the heels of the “Love in the Time of Brooklyn” and “Home in the Time of Brooklyn” series put together by Shay Wafer with a cohort of artists to think about 651 ARTS as a home for them. I’ve been able to see the growth of the space into the venue that they have now.

When I was in my twenties, I wasn’t ready to put my work on the stage of 651 ARTS yet, but now I’m ready to pursue work there and I brought a project that needed developing. That was a twenty year cycle, and I feel good about that.

The work at 651 ARTS is about opening doors and laying pathways for people to be like, “I see myself. I can really touch, hold, and be a part of this work and process.” That to me is the importance of what they provide.

Jean-Baptiste: I didn’t grow up thinking that it was possible for me to be an artist. So I landed in Brooklyn in 2007 and we had Restoration, Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Arts, 651 ARTS, Weeksville Heritage Center, it’s popping! You know what I’m saying. What was happening at Brooklyn Museum was dynamic, so it was really a beautiful time culturally in terms of where I could see and engage with folks and be immersed.

So this opportunity with 651, I was really excited about and proud of in the sense that I’m coming home and the art is bringing me home.

It actually reminded me of what I said before—the greatest thing that I made when I lived in Brooklyn as an adult was community, because when we were there putting the show up, it was a lot of meaningful, powerful reconnecting. People who 651 was excited to have in the space are people who I have deep relations with over time.

You know that cypher at the end of the performance is also a part of that. We’re trying to model something. We’re trying to uphold and to honor the space in the way that we understand what the institution has meant and what it can continue to mean and how it can grow in meaning.

That involves invitation, and a certain number of witnesses; the brilliance of our whole community and a kind of humility to what people bring just by coming in there. It’s something that needs to be highlighted and nurtured and nourished.

Rail: Is there anything you want to share about your dreams for the next evolution of the work?

Jean-Baptiste: We’re getting the film component into festivals. That’s an opportunity for us to really lean into the multidisciplinarity of the work and open some doors to communities that we want to be able to engage with. The Fly Zone workshops, the community engagement workshops, they’re an integral part. We want to invite deep engagement and so we have to figure out what that timing looks like.

We’re also excited because some of our other colleagues and comrades have work that we feel is doing that and we’re paying attention to the conversations where these themes are arising. We know that in any moments of repression, the ways that our ancestors accessed freedom and liberation, they’re always going to come back to us. They’re going to demand to be revoiced. And so, this is a moment like that. And this is a work like that.

Zachery: Part of the work is about helping us relearn how to be together. Something Candace [Thompson-Zachery, spouse] said to me after the Benji screening, is that as tragic as his story was, what was beautiful about it was the way in which the community claimed responsibility for the grief collectively. We need these reminders. So much of the piece is a reactivator of what it means to be together again. That’s another aspect that’s getting lost. “It’s just about Black masculinity.” Well, no, it’s about, let’s come together again, y’all. That’s the magic right there. That’s leaning on the work our ancestors established for us, so we can say, okay now we’re stacking on it.