Rashaad Newsome Shade Compositions, relevant to Project 8, in a bit of a stretch...

5min. excerpt from Shade Compositions 2009 from RASHAAD NEWSOME on Vimeo.

...Newsome also records the more pedestrian street theater of urban female body language in an ongoing piece called Shade Compositions, which he has performed internationally. For this piece he choreographs women performers who act out body language typical of urban environments.

"My interest lies in cultural signifiers," says Newsome. "I'm fascinated by ghetto body language used by black and Latino women and how it is integrated into popular culture all around the world and how that transcends class levels. When does it become a part of contemporary global culture and when does it lose that lower-class stigma?"

Newsome casts women from the streets of cities like Paris, New York, and Atlanta and films them in screen tests acting out these gestures before he includes them in a group performance. In live stagings the performers stand together, with a few initiating the first moves and corresponding verbal sounds and then more following, each standing in place and repeating their move. Some snap their fingers and jerk their heads, and others thrust their hips out and call out expressions like "Girrrrrrl!" Newsome records all these sounds with a Nintendo Wii gaming machine that he hacked into, using the wand controller as a bespoke conductors' baton. He takes these live sounds, along with some that he prerecorded, and loops them back during the performance until they overlap, recycle, and crescendo in a rich remix.

"For Shade Compositions certain women would be hesitant to get into character or perform the gestures," Newsome says. "It proved that this body language has a stigma. They’re kind of embarrassed that they do it."

Everywhere he travels he picks up on and records regional gestures, like the mutations of American hip-hop body language he found in Paris's North African baneuil neighborhoods. In this way Newsome acts as an anthropologist, scouting and observing the way urban women interact in globally connected but sometimes marginalized societies. And he has even slyly incorporated men into Shade Compositions. (from The Advocate)