MAJOR

TOURING

TOURING

WORLD PREMIERE
Kampnagel International Summer Festival / Hamburg, Germany
August 7-10, 2025

US PREMIERE
New York Live Arts Live Artery Festival / New York, NY
January 7-10, 2026

On the Boards / Seattle, WA
January 29-31, 2026

USC Visions and Voices / Los Angeles, CA
February 4, 2026

Oz Arts / Nashville, TN
February 12-14, 2026

For more information and presenting/touring inquiries, contact Sara da Silva.

TOURING

TOURING

MAJOR is a dance theater project exploring the physicality, history, sociopolitics, and interiority of majorette dance, a form that originated in the American South within Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the 1960s. These Black femme teams accompanied by marching bands created a movement style that requires master showmanship with allegiance to count, undulation, groove, and sensual yet strong performativity. In MAJOR, six Black femmes embrace majorette form - a fundamental relic of Black girlhood - to pursue the intimate journey of returning to bodies they thought lost. Experiments in improvised and verbatim language intertwine with a music score that integrates Southern rap, horns, drumlines, and melodic R&B and soul by Lambkin. The Chord Archive is showcased alongside performances, a physical and digital documentation of the creative process and personal historical accounts from former majorette dancers. A fierce investigation of physical memory, sexuality, sensuality, and community, MAJOR is a nuanced love letter to the folks who taught the team how to be proudly Black and proudly femme.

Cast and Creative Team

Ogemdi Ude - Director/Choreographer
Selah Hampton - Dance Captain/Performer
Chanel Stone - Performer
Jailyn Phillips-Wiley - Performer
Junyla Silmon - Performer
Kayla Farrish - Performer
song tucker - Performer
Camille Phelps - Understudy
Lambkin - Composer
Myssi Robinson - Archivist
Sara Da Silva - Producer
tania “t” saiz perez - Production Stage Manager
Noah Latty - Rehearsal Stage Manager
Simean Carpenter - Set and Lighting Designer
Celeste Jennings - Costume Designer
Fabian Hammerl - Photographer
Lars Zimmerman - Videographer

The creation of MAJOR was supported in part by a commission from New York Live Arts’ Live Feed Residency program. The Live Feed Residency program is supported by Partners for New Performance. The presentation of MAJOR was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and the Mellon Foundation. MAJOR is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation Fund Project co-commissioned by New York Live Arts, On the Boards, Bates Dance Festival, Wexner Center for the Arts, Duke University, and NPN. MAJOR is also co-commissioned by Kampnagel’s International Summer Festival.

Residency and funding support from Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Danspace Project, Mercury Store, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). MAJOR has been supported by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, MAP Fund, a Brooklyn Arts Council grant, the Dance Advancement Fund from Dance NYC, Café Royal Cultural Foundation, and a Support for Artists Grant from the New York State Council for the Arts.