VISION

By harnessing the Black community's inherent creative spirit, The Black Iris Project will encourage and inspire youth of color to pursue art, movement and music as an expressive outlet and means for collective healing, as well as educating audiences about how Black history relates to the modern Black journey.  

MISSION

The Black Iris Project's mission is threefold: create original ballets and arts education curriculums that directly address and celebrate diversity; provide a performance platform for Black artists to collaborate and share their personal stories with their respective communities; and provide ballet training to the Black community as a means of developing structure, focus and discipline through teamwork. 

WILD

Inspired by Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s novel Where the Wild Things Are, WILD follows the journey of several young men as they struggle to break free from the systemic injustices that permeate Black and Brown communities. Using physical movement to illustrate and honor the history of Black bodies moving through space while encountering oppression, this cutting-edge contemporary ballet will incorporate poetry, reflective journal entries, visual art, and original music, WILD transforms the young men’s personal stories into an artistic dance work which is intended to be a reclaiming of time, unity, space, and Black culture. 

Click here to learn more about “WILD”

THE STORM

THE STORM centers on the disruption caused by tumultuous hurricanes that have taken place in the United States over the last fifteen years and the Middle Passage. Drawing inspiration from hurricane Katrina (New Orleans) and Harvey (Houston), this new ballet focuses on the stories of communities who are displaced during occurrences such as these and how they come together in the wake of tragedy. THE STORM had its world premiere on August 16, 2019 at the Miller Outdoor Theatre in Houston, Texas, as part of a headlining Black Iris Project program, featuring a collection of The BIP's social-justice works. THE STORM has been generously commissioned by the Ford Foundation, with additional developmental support provided by the Bronx Council on the Arts, Vineyard Arts Project, New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, METdance, and a 2019-20 CUNY Dance Initiative residency at Lehman College. Twenty-two minutes in length and featuring a cast of 8 dancers, THE STORM is performed to Sergei Rachmaninoff’s orchestral composition Isle of the Dead.

Madiba

Based on the life of South African anti-apartheid activist and humanitarian Nelson "Madiba" Mandela, MADIBA—set to award-winning composer Carman Moore's original score which premiered at Carnegie Hall in February 2015—features a cast of fourteen dancers. The production also features Yale School of Drama graduates, costume designer Montana Levi Blanco and lighting design by Alan C. Edwards. MADIBA premiered in July 2016 at New York Live Arts as part of The BIP’s self-presented debut season. The BIP was later personally invited by American Ballet Theatre Principal Dancer, Misty Copeland to perform MADIBA at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as part of the Ballet Across America festival in April 2017.

Black Iris

BLACK IRIS, inspired by Georgia O'Keeffe's Black Iris III painting and set to Felix Mendelssohn's "Piano Trio No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 66", was commissioned by the Joffrey Academy of Dance, and premiered on March 10, 2013 in Chicago, Illinois as part of McQueen's 2013 Joffrey Ballet's Choreographers of Color Award. The work honors the unique challenges of Black womanhood found in life, work, and even ballet, while also demonstrating the persevering human spirit. BLACK IRIS is inspired by and dedicated to Mary McQueen, Ann Tinsley, and Beverly Anderson, three Black women who to McQueen exemplify the perseverance, determination, confidence, and faith that is distinctively Black and woman.