Solange Knowles is serious about her Blackness—as she should be. And we love it.
The Houston-bred songstress’s latest venture finds her teaming with the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) for the “Eldorado Ballroom” music series.
Named after Houston’s Black music hall in the city’s Third Ward section where Knowles grew up, “Eldorado Ballroom” will feature performance art, dance, films, and concerts.
“The program takes an anomalous approach to celebrating the intergenerational expressions of experimental and transcendent performance through the decades, “Knowles wrote on her Instagram account.
“My dedication to reverencing and preserving the works of Black practitioners through Saint Heron continues with a lineup consisting of contemporary and historic creative revolutionaries whose artistry and innovation has left a profound mark on music and performance art.”
She added: “Eldorado Ballroom” takes its name from a historic Black music hall in my native neighborhood, Houston’s Third Ward, where my love for performance began. Each night is programmed to calibrate new artistic territory exploring themes that fulfill my own personal practice. With these seven shows, the multi-generational audiences of Saint Heron and BAM’s communities will experience celebratory and tributary performances that honor the blueprints of these themes in tandem with younger generations reinventing the genres today.”
Solange also spoke with Vulture about connecting with BAM.
“The Black voice is a sacred vessel. Being able to have an opportunity to honor it through all of these different conventions is just a dream job, the “Cranes in the Sky” singer said to Vulture. This is such fulfilling work. And I feel like bringing it back to Houston, bringing it back to my childhood.”
She continued: “The Eldorado Ballroom was a historic music venue in Third Ward, and that’s where my love for performance really started. As a child growing up in a neighborhood so rich with Black history and Black artistic history, I was immersed in that. I got to live, eat, and breathe that through the ways that my parents really nurtured my interest for arts. So I feel like each night of the series is building off an offering that has informed my own practices, whether that’s through an R&B night or an artist like Autumn Knight, who’s from Houston, who’s challenging the lines between audience and artist through performance art.”
BAM President Gina Duncan released a statement to Rolling Stone: Through Saint Heron, she is reshaping the way that we experience culture in bold, unexpected, and experimental ways.”
Below are the dates for the showcase.
3/30 Kelela, Res, and KeiyaA
3/31 Autumn Knight and Maren Hassinger
4/1 Autumn Knight and Maren Hassinger
4/4 “Unseen Nuyorican Pictures”
04/5 “Coeval Dance Films”
4/7 Twinkie Clark & The Clark Sisters; Mary Lou Williams work performed by Artina McCain, and Malcolm J. Merriweather with Voices of Harlem; Angella Christie
4/8 Archie Shepp, Linda Sharrock, and Claudia Rankine
9/22 Classical and opera works of Julia Perry and Patrice Rushen; featuring Davóne Tines