1N5 and the Art Academy of Cincinnati College of Art & Design partnered to bring Acclaimed Director-Choreographer Darnell Pierre Benjamin to campus. On Friday, November 6th, Darnell captivated students with his performance of 13th & Republic, an interactive operatic radical dance film. Featuring the original music of Cincinnati composer Kaleel Skeirik and the evocative poetry of Tyrone Williams, the piece follows a single character who embodies the victims of excessive police force and interacts with an ensemble of dancers and a chorus of singers to tell their story. Abstracted and refocused, sometimes told out of time, sometimes painfully in time, the story carries the audience through the performance to answer the question, “Where do we go from here?”
