N/UM Is The Word

Reginald Wilson is not just a choreographer/dancer. He is unapologetically a black choreographer/dancer, who, as an undergraduate at New York University, studied anthropology and sociology.

These multiple pursuits have culminated in the creation of "N/UM," a male solo, which he unveiled on March 3, 1991 at the 6th annual Morningside Dance Festival that was held at the Theatre of the Riverside Church in Manhattan. (The festival showcased more than 25 choreographers from New York and across the country during its February 25-March 7 run.)

The title of the solo, explained [the then 23-year-old ] Wilson, a Milwaukee native, in a telephone interview, came from one of the Khoi-san languages of South Africa and "means an internal healing force."

Reginald Wilson believes "there's a need for some energy, some source to bring us [black people] together. So many black people are in so many different levels of society now that it's hard to find common ground. That's what n/um acted as in the villages. It was a magical healing power, a common ground for everybody. Everybody had access to it."

Wilson made his professional New York debut in 1989 at the lower Manhattan dance loft called Eden's Expressway, prior to a month-long teaching/performance residency in Juneau, Alaska, with the Israeli-born choreographer Neta Pulvermacher.

During the Eden's Expressway engagement, Wilson performed in two ensemble pieces, one of which he choreographed himself, an energetic and percussive work (he clapped his hands and stamped his feet while five female dancers thrashed about the floor, doing various hand and arm gestures) called "Le Mignon Petit Noir Americain" (The Cute Little Black American). The title came from a French magazine reference to the late fashion designer Patrick Kelly. Like "N/UM," it drew on Reginald Wilson's African-American roots. "That piece, and more so the solo, is very much about being black in the nineties. The structure, some of the movement, is taken from black culture. The rhythms, to me, are taken from ideas of African drumming."

This previously unpublished article was written on February 19, 1991.