Vessels
- Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts
- Office of the Provost, Penn Live Arts
-
Visiting Artists Grant
In an article from the Inquirer that came out during Vessel’s residency at the Annenberg Center, Shaun Brady wrote that “The inspiration for Vessels came from a talk by poet Nikki Giovanni, who pondered how millions of enslaved people arrived on these shores with their sanity intact. The first thought that leaped into Mwase’s mind was ‘song,’ and she set out to investigate how singing offered at least a spiritual escape from suffering.” Rebecca Mwase and Ron Ragin created Vessel over a four-year period, culminating the residency at Annenberg Center.
Kicking off their two-year programming arc entitled The Philadelphians: Migrations that Made Our City, the Annenberg Center presented the east coast premiere of Vessels, a seven-woman harmonic meditation on the transcendental possibilities of song during the Middle Passage of Slavery.