Cultural Program

On Friday (March, 27), a multifaceted dance, Jazz, and Poetry performance will take place in the School of Arts in Bremen (Dechanatstraße 13-15).

The evening will set off with the premiere of "Generation", a multigenerational dance, music, and lecture demonstration. Featuring Christine Witte, along with three of her most talented dance students from Bremen and along with her 10-year-old daughter Josephine, "Generation“ tells a vivid and autobiographical tale of intergenerational legacies. "Generation“  is Witte's personal homage to her teachers, while at the same time exploring and exemplifying a wide range of dance techniques – from Afro-Caribbean dance styles to Jazz dance, from the Dunham to the Horton Technique.

Chistine Witte studied in New York at Alvin Ailey and performed within the context of a scholarship with its world-famous Company. Witte was a master’s student of Katherine Dunham, Tally Beatty, Joan Peters,Vanoye Aikens, and other major African-American (modern dance) performers. Furthermore, Witte was engaged by Ornette Coleman for the latter’s tour "Civilization" in New York and the Perugia Jazzfestival.

Witte works with groups from Ghana, Benin, Tobago, Cameroon, and Senegal. She is the founder and head of the celebrated Bremen-based School of Performing Arts Corpa with which she, amongst others, organizes anti-violence, anti-drugs, and anti-discrimination dance projects for unprivileged youngsters and for the unemployed. Finally, Witte is devoted to fostering talents in the youth company Empower your dreams.

After the dance demonstration "Generation", a dynamic jazz and poetry performance will take place, featuring poet Melba Joyce Boyd, bassist Marion Hayden, and Michael Sievert, a Bremen-based jazz composer and musician.

The reading will be in English and German and read to original jazz compositions by Hayden and Sievert.  The poetry is derived from Boyd’s German experiences when she was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Bremen and about jazz figures and experiences. 

Poet Melba Joyce Boyd is Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Africana Studies at Wayne State University in Detroit. Author of eleven books, including two biographies: Wrestling with the Muse: Dudley Randall and the Broadside Press (2004) and Discarded Legacy: Politics and Poetics in the Life Frances E. W. Harper, 1825-1911 (1994); and six books of poetry, the most recent of which are Blues Music Sky of Mourning: the German Poems (2006) and Death Dance of a Butterfly (forthcoming, 2009). Her poem, “This Museum Was Once a Dream,” is inscribed in bronze in the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit; and lines from “We Want Our City Back,” are engraved in the sculpture “Transcending: Michigan’s Tribute to Labor.” Boyd is the author of more than 50 essays on African American literature, film and culture. She is also the writer, producer and director of the documentary film, The Black Unicorn: Dudley Randall and the Broadside Press.  Her most recent work is Roses and Revolutions: The Selected Writings of Dudley Randall (2009).  She was a Fulbright Scholar at the Universität Bremen in 1983-4.
                   
Jazz bassist Marion Hayden, was born in Detroit, MI, Marion Hayden is one of the nation’s finest proponents of the acoustic bass.  Hayden is a graduate of the University of Michigan.  An early lover of jazz, Hayden was mentored by master trumpeter Marcus Belgrave and began performing jazz at the age of 15. She has performed with such jazz luminaries as Nancy Wilson, Roy Brooks, Hank Jones, Benny Golson, Frank Foster, Jon Hendricks, James Carter and Sean Jones.  She is a co-founder of the touring jazz ensemble Straight Ahead. Hayden is on faculty at the Department of Jazz and Contemplative Studies at the University of Michigan School of Music and has served as a clinician and adjudicator at universities across the country. Current projects include: the touring company of Too Hot To Handel, the release of her critically acclaimed recording “VISIONS” featuring Kirk Lightsey, Steve Turre and Ralph Peterson, RUTH – a sacred work and  SANJO! a tribute to the African masters of song .

Michael Sievert was born in 1953 Chemnitz/GDR.  He is a composer, saxofonist,  and percussionist. He studied saxophone, percussion, composition and world music at Creative Music Foundation, Woodstock, N.Y. USA.  He works as a performing musician and composer throughout Europe, USA and Africa since the 80´s.  He is the founder of the World Music Orchestra and several New -Jazz groups like Freeport, Sievert-Herchenbach-Dix, Zeitfuge and many others.  His discography includes: “Duanelessness,” “Alternating Current,” “Paintings,” “l'affaire flibustier,” “Pulse,” “Das Interview des Jahres!” “en vacances,” and “Sirius C.”