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When choreographer Donald Byrd wanted audiences to face up to this country's history of racism and prejudice, he didn't pull any punches.
He created a work he calls "The Minstrel Show: Acts for Coons, Jigaboos and Jungle Bunnies." An African-American himself, he even made the African-American dancers in his company put on blackface, and he invited members of the audience to come on stage to tell the latest racist jokes they'd heard.
Little wonder that "The Minstrel Show" galvanized and upset audiences at UC San Diego when the work was presented there last year.
Now it's L.A.'s turn.
"The Minstrel Show" will be seen as part of the festival of Black Choreographers Moving Into the 21st Century, May 6-8 at the Japan America Theatre. Another Byrd work, a different section of "Drastic Cuts" from what was seen here last year, also will be part of the three-day festivities.
"I picked that title because that's what minstrel shows were," the 43-year-old choreographer said in a recent interview. "And also to provide a clue for the audience that the stereotypes are so extreme that they can't possibly be real.
"At the start, I had said that to the dancers. There's no such thing as a `coon,' a `jigaboo' or a `jungle bunny.' That's an invention. There are no people that are those things.' "
Byrd's aggressive stance isn't turning people away. In fact, "Drastic Cuts" has encouraged former New York City Ballet Master in Chief Jerome Robbins to talk to Byrd recently about choreographing for "a large ballet company," Byrd said. The young choreographer has just set a new work, "Cracked Narrative," on Oregon Ballet Theatre (the premiere is May 14) and is "in the middle of a development deal with Columbia Pictures for a film."
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater danced Byrd's "Dance at the Gym," created for the company in 1991, during the recent UCLA engagement. Byrd also has created choreography for two theater works directed by Peter Sellars: Brecht-Weill's "The Seven Deadly Sins of the Bourgeoisie" for the Opera de Lyon in January, and Stravinsky's "L'Histoire du Soldat" seen at the Ojai Festival last summer.
Although born and raised in the South, Byrd said he didn't experience overt racism until he went...