A group of dancers on stage performing a contemporary dance piece. One dancer is being carried by a male dancer, while another dancer in a pink dress extends her arms towards them. Three dancers in gray, futuristic costumes with covered faces stand in the background. The backdrop is lit with a gradient of green.

Repertory

Greenwood

CHOREOGRAPHER

WORLD PREMIERE

New York City Center, 2019

MUSIC

Emmanuel Witzthum

SOUND DESIGN

Robertson Witmer

COSTUMES

Doris Black

LIGHTING

Jack Mehler

REHEARSAL ASSOCIATES

Mikhail Calliste, Derek Crescenti, Stephanie Guiland, Jamal Story

RUN TIME

35 Minutes

Donald Byrd's fifth commission for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater draws on the Company's theatrical roots and its legacy of addressing social injustice. The title references a 1921 tragedy in the segregated Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma—one of the country's most affluent African American communities known as "Black Wall Street" at the time.

On May 30, 1921, a young Black man was arrested for attempted assault on a white teenage girl in the elevator of a Greenwood office building. The next day, a newspaper report about the arrest incited an armed white mob, and matters escalated quickly.

Over the next day, the mob grew and burned much of the neighborhood to the ground, killing as many as 300 Black people and leaving another 10,000 homeless. Afterward, the Tulsa Race Massacre was erased from the nation’s memory, but the story resurfaced in anticipation of the event’s centennial in 2021. 

The world premiere of Greenwood was made possible with generous support from an anonymous donor, and The Fred Eychaner New Works Endowment Fund.