Spotlight on Ayodele Casel
Ayodele Casel’s Chasing Magic was recommended for Lab 1: Time by Thảo Nguyễn, who said: I first found artist and tap dancer Ayodele Casel deep in the pandemic. She had released a virtual performance of a tap show called Chasing Magic. I watched it and was moved to tears. Anyone with that command of time and that command of body is so remarkable to me. She brings on a lot of different collaborators. They’re musicians on instruments or they’re other dancers. It’s beautiful——the idea of people’s own sense of time interacting with someone else’s, and the creation of a different pulse that would not exist without the interplay of two different pulses. And it’s so joyful. If you can do that for people, it's such a gift. I’m just such a fan of people who want to create joy for other people.
A scene from Chasing Magic
Video courtesy Ayodele Casel
Ayodele Casel is an award-winning and critically acclaimed tap dancer and choreographer named one of the New York Times’s “biggest breakout stars of 2019.” Born in The Bronx and raised in Puerto Rico, her practice centers highly narrative works rooted in expressions of selfhood, culture, and legacy. Her projects include her concert and Bessie Award-winning film Chasing Magic, her one-woman show While I Have the Floor and her theatrical and film series Diary of a Tap Dancer. She serves as a tap choreographer for the Broadway revival of Funny Girl, which garnered her a 2022 Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Choreography.