Baker & Tarpaga Dance Project

When Birds Refused to Fly is a contemporary, evening-length dance theater project, choreographed by Olivier Tarpaga, set to the music of Orchestre Super Volta. Super Volta’s music reflects the celebratory, postindependence fevers raging across sub-Saharan Africa in the 1960s and 70s, in stark contrast to the painful struggle African Americans faced during their fight for civil rights in the United States. This physical piece explores multiple facets of generational transformation culturally and geographically; examining what it is to build up and break down in the name of change.