Choreographer/Director Ogemdi Ude is seeking performers for her new work “Major”, premiering at New York Live Arts in Fall 2025 and touring in 2026/2027. Major is a dance theater project engaging the history and physicality of Southern majorette dance as a means of physically investigating Black femme memory, sexuality, and sensuality. How can we resolve opposing histories and journey home through the body? How do we perform femme identity and define femme community? Major integrates majorette and contemporary movement, documentary theater, and a live marching band in a project that preserves, transforms, and continues the creative practices and stories of the folks who taught the team how to be proudly Black and proudly femme.

Seeking Black femme-identifying performers, inclusive of cisgender, transgender, non-binary, agender, and genderqueer identities. Performers should have a minimum of 2 years of professional experience and be based in NYC or the surrounding area. Performers should be skilled movers/dancers, audacious and risk taking improvisers, ready to engage in both physical and intellectual research, and have experience with and/or comfort in working with text/language. Performers do not have to have experience practicing majorette dance, but should have some knowledge of the form. Performers are expected to be clear and accountable communicators, community oriented, and respectful of a variety of identities.

Performance Schedule:

January 11th, 2025: New York Live Arts Live Artery Festival Showing
March 2, 2025: Community engagement event at Brooklyn Arts Exchange
November 2025: New York Live Arts Premiere

2026/2027 tour dates TBD

Invited Auditions: September 27th from 4:45-7:15pm 
Callbacks: September 28th from 12:30-4pm 
Location: Manhattan, details shared upon invitation

Rehearsal rate: $35 per hour
Performance Fee: $350 per performance

Auditions are via invitation only. To be considered, please fill out this Google Form by September 22, 2024. Any questions? Email majordance2025@gmail.com

In the Google Form you will be asked to answer a series of questions and upload the following:

• A photo of yourself

• A resume

• ONE 2 minute performance or improvisation video of you in any Black/Afro-Diasporic dance form of your choosing. This definition is expansive - it could be a formal form like majorettes/vogue/hip hop/West African, or more informal like twerking in your room or exploratory movement to music by Black artists. 

• ONE 2 minute performance or improvisation video of you in contemporary/modern/postmodern dance

Rehearsal Schedule:

October 1st - 6:30-8:30pm
October 21st - 25th - 10am-6pm
November: Nov 12th 5-9pm and Nov 19th 5-9pm
December 16th - 19th - 4-9pm
January 6th-10th - 5-9pm
February-May 2025: Bimonthly rehearsals, TBD
June 2025: Weeklong residency, TBD
July-August 2025: Weekly rehearsals, TBD
September-October 2025: Bimonthly rehearsals, 2 weeklong residencies, TBD
November 2025: Tech and Premiere, exact dates TBD

Adequate availability/scheduling flexibility expected for hiring. Conflicts with determined rehearsal schedule will be considered on a case by case basis.

Access:

All performers are required to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Auditions, rehearsals, and performances are mask optional. Regular COVID testing is encouraged. 

One of Major’s rehearsal spaces is not accessible for wheelchair users/those who require mobility support as it is on the second and third floors of a building with no elevator or ramp.

About Ogemdi 

Ogemdi Ude is a Black queer femme dance, theater, and interdisciplinary artist, educator, and doula based in Brooklyn. Her performance work focuses on Black femme legacies and futures, grief, and memory. Her work has been presented at The Kitchen, Gibney, Harlem Stage, Danspace Project, Abrons Arts Center, BRIC, ISSUE Project Room, Recess Art, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Center for Performance Research, and for BAM's DanceAfrica festival. She has taught at The New School, Princeton University, Sarah Lawrence College, MIT, and University of the Arts. She is a 2024/2025 BAX Artist-in-Residence. She has been a 2022-2024 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence, a 2021 danceWEB Scholar, 2021 Laundromat Project Create Change Artist-in-Residence, and a 2019-2020 Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU Resident Fellow. In January 2022 she appeared on the cover of Dance Magazine for their annual “25 to Watch” issue. Most recently, she has published a book Watch Me in a collection edited by Thomas DeFrantz and Annie-B Parson entitled Dance History(s): Imagination as a Form of Study published by Dancing Foxes Press and Wesleyan University Press.