Raphael Xavier - Skiff

Challenging the idealistic concepts of maturity and hip-hop dance, Raphael Xavier returns to Cleveland with his newest creation, Skiff. The hour-long work features Xavier and guest artists, including some of Northeast Ohio’s own dancers, in a unique piece that blends contemporary dance with breaking in an exploration of the aging body, race, privilege, and power while encouraging conversations of identity, legacy and lineage.

Xavier, a breaker and choreographer, contextualizes the work through the lens of Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, the classic novel about a fisherman’s relentless battle with a giant marlin. With original spoken word interwoven with Hemingway’s text, Xavier draws parallels between the fisherman’s search and his own journey to build a dance career utilizing the artform of Breaking. Skiff also draws inspiration from Winslow Homer’s The Gulf Stream, the iconic 19th century painting of a Black man in a small, rudderless fishing boat engulfed by a restless sea as sharks circle.

Tickets at Raphael Xavier - <i>Skiff</i> | DANCECleveland | Modern and Contemporary Dance in Cleveland, OH