Porch Portal Blues is a site-specific sculpture, dance, and song-cycle work inspired by the life and artistry of North Carolina Blueswoman Algia Mae Hinton (1929-2018). Renowned for her Piedmont finger-picking guitar style and dynamic buck dancing, Hinton's porch parties—captured in the 1980s by ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax—epitomized the convergence of music, dance, and community. Rashida Bumbray reimagines Hinton's porch as literal and metaphorical architecture: a liminal space of memory, creativity, and resistance. Drawing on Zora Neale Hurston's participant observation strategies, the performance transforms the porch into a portal, a site of ritual and transformation. Through live improvisational music, dance, and archival projections, an ensemble of musicians, vocalists, and dancers convenes to engage the ghosts of Hinton and her contemporaries, channeling the spirit of the Blues to confront the ruptures of our current sociopolitical moment.
Caretakers of Land/Land Acknowledgement: Lumbee, Piscataway, and Cherokee
Estimated Artist Fee:
