The Migration: Reflections on Jacob Lawrence New York Performances

At The Joyce Theater, Step Afrika! presents *The Migration: Reflections on Jacob Lawrence*, a dance work in dialogue with Lawrence’s painted chronicle of the Great Migration and the Black communities shaped by that movement. The performance traces departures, labor, and collective survival through percussive footwork and ensemble patterning, with Lawrence’s visual language as a frame rather than a script. In New York, where Lawrence lived and worked in Harlem, the piece lands as local history as much as national memory. Its clearest insight is how rhythm can function like reportage, carrying detail without narration.