"Doxology Ring Shout: A Praise Dance for the Doxy." 8 p.m. Sept. 13, 3 p.m. Sept. 14. $5-$15. Baldwin Burroughs Theater, John D. Rockefeller Building, Spelman College, 350 Spelman Lane S.W., Atlanta. nbaf.org.
On the praise ground, where a mall parking lot crisscrosses a swamp, a group of women gather to dance. They move counterclockwise in a circle as their footsteps create a sacred rhythm, invoking a power to save the world.
The scene recurs in “Doxology Ring Shout: A Praise Dance for the Doxy.” Styled as a kind of ritual, the multimedia dance opera draws from the Ring Shout, a traditional form of worship, to tell a modern-day myth.
Conceived, written and directed by Paul Carter Harrison and choreographed by Dianne McIntyre, the National Black Arts Festival world premiere will be Saturday and Sunday at Spelman College’s Baldwin Burroughs Theater.
Harrison has nurtured the project for 20 years, and this third iteration is closest to his initial vision. McIntyre’s dance narrative joins with music by Dwight Andrews and digital images by Philip Mallory Jones. Atlanta-based T. Lang Dance, Spelman students and guest principal dancer Johari Mayfield will perform with an ensemble of singers and instrumentalists.
McIntyre has incorporated the Ring Shout into several previous works, including the Alliance Theatre’s 2003 “Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats.” The religious form’s origins were in Africa, and it developed in the United States during the time of slavery, she said.
Drums were largely banned in those days, but people continued to mark sacred rhythms with their bodies, or by beating a stick on the floor. They chanted and sang; their shuffling feet created rhythms of praise.
People in parts of Georgia and South Carolina still practice the Ring Shout, and its purpose — spiritual invocation — has endured. “Doxology” shares this goal, but reimagines the Ring Shout in a contemporary situation.
That situation is the story of Doxy, a woman of singular vitality. She must learn to let go of selfish desires in order to channel the divine energy of a matriarchal deity, bringing procreative power and hope to a broken community.
Images such as water, fire and a woman’s hands washing the world flow across screens to music that ranges from medieval chants and modern atonal sounds to Haitian beats and rhythm ’n’ blues.
McIntyre has been involved with interdisciplinary works since the 1970s and ’80s, when her Harlem studio was a gathering place for dancers, musicians, poets and visual artists. McIntyre choreographed Harrison’s 1974 Obie Award-winning “The Great MacDaddy” and has since worked extensively in modern dance, theater and film.
She is considered the third major female African-American modern dance choreographer, after pioneers Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus. Scholars also have noted her ability to conjure African epic memory in dance.
McIntyre said the Ring Shout has always fascinated her. But it’s hard to know how worshippers moved 200 years ago; extant drawings are few. While the music developed into blues, jazz and soul, the movement hasn’t appeared as much in mainstream culture. This may have been out of respect for the form, or because its contained movements were not considered dance.
As with the Ring Shout, “Doxology” aims to produce a spiritual epiphany. To achieve this, McIntyre returns to the circle dance several times throughout the work.
“It’s connected to the link with African-Americans, Americans, and the motherland of Africa,” she said. “It brings about a type of … ritual, a prayer. Coming back to it, over and over again … causes a kind of synergy to bring about that shift.”
McIntyre has worked closely with Harrison to clarify his intent at every moment in the performance. She said she hopes to create “a type of openness” in her choreography, known for striking dynamic and sculptural qualities.
“It can be more broad than what the words are saying,” she said. “So you have several layers in the movement that bring it to a more universal experience for the audience.
“Because that’s what dance can do. It can sweep people away.”
