REGGIE WILSON

Reggie Wilson is Executive/Artistic Director, Choreographer, and Performer of Fist and Heel Performance Group. His work draws from the cultures of Africans in the Americas and is combined with post-modern elements to create what he calls “post-African/Neo-HooDoo Modern dances.” Wilson has lectured, taught, conducted community workshops, and has been presented nationally and internationally. He is the recipient of awards including a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award and a Joyce Foundation Award.

The Company’s name is derived from enslaved Africans in the Americas who reinvented their spiritual traditions as a soulful art form that white and black authorities dismissed as merely ‘fist and heel worshipping'.

Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group is a Brooklyn-based dance company whose mission is to create, research, develop, and present new performance work that investigates the intersections of culture and movement practices. The Company’s body-of-works draw from the spiritual and mundane traditions of Africa and its Diaspora; Fist and Heel believes in the potential of the body as a valid means for knowing.

The choreography of Reggie Wilson displays rigor, structure and craft in a postmodern dance vernacular. His choreography expands the limitations of textbook definitions of ‘black dance’ and range from strict dance pieces to full, all-inclusive performance art pieces with arranged vocalizations, text, and inclusion of other media. Fist and Heel’s performance works strive for authenticity and respect of Reggie Wilson’s creative vision.

The Company has received support from major foundations and corporations and has performed in the United States and abroad at notable venues including Dance Theater Workshop, New York Live Arts, Brooklyn Academy of Music, REDCAT, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, and Festival Kaay Fecc in Senegal.