Danger Run

Danger Run, which depicts the odyssey of Africa's Middle Passage, is Donald McKayle's seventh work for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the most abstract of his social protest works since the 1950s. The dance is set to folk material by the radical contemporary American composer Frederic Rzewski, with old union songs and spirituals embedded in the richly layered score. As Kenneth John Verdugo’s vivid painted backdrop moves upward at the rear of the stage, the journey from African village to American South and northern metropolis is revealed in new images that correspond to phases in the choreography's structure. The African diaspora, slavery, the civil rights struggle, and more come alive in this assemblage of painted villages, skyscrapers, leg irons, cotton bales, and pickets. The dance is divided into four sections:

1. Many Thousand Gone 
2. Run Brother Run 
3. Some Through the Flood 
4. They Keep Coming