The crowd is quiet as composer and sound designer Everett Saunders commands stage left. Toward the close of the hour-long performance at the Roy and Edna Disney Cal/Arts Theater (REDCAT) in Downtown Los Angeles, the real-life and theatrical emcee is on his knees using the floor as his imaginary paper, frantically scribbling from right to left in quick cursive hand movements.
At the end of every new line, he slides his hand from left to right, as he mimes pushing the carriage of a typewriter back to begin the next line.
Saunders also lyricizes the same meditations from earlier in the performance. These meditations set the scene for his story as a young emcee in Philadelphia on Girard Avenue.
He finishes another line and scoots backward.
Another, and he sheds a layer of clothes; leaving only his sweatpants and a white long-sleeve top.
Traces of Moses Sumney’s haunting melody, “Doomed,” echo in the background: “Am I vital, if my heart is idle? Am I doomed?”
Suddenly, a beam of yellow light radiates from above the emcee and he glows in its warm hue. Standing up, his lyrics become slow but no less emphatic.
Finally, he looks up at the light and proclaims his final lyric, “God is the roots,” and he walks away from the crowd, the stage returning to darkness.
In this latest showcase of “Prophet: The Order of the Lyricist,” running Sept. 21 to 23, dancer and choreographer Marjani Forté-Saunders and Saunders, known commercially as 7NMS, put forth a multimedia piece that marries Saunders’ journey with the collective history of Black lyrical expression. With the collaboration of dancer Marcella Lewis, movement composer Sabela Grimes, media designer Meena Murugesan and photographer Marc Winston, “Prophet” combines dance, lyricism, audio samples and visual projections. This performance seeks to inspire artists to continue on their journey no matter the setbacks. Yet, one does not have to be an artist to walk away from this piece believing in the power of fortitude and the possibility of redemption.
The inspiration behind this piece came before their first workshop sessions. Having met in 2008, when she was dancing for the Urban Bush Women and he was in the music industry, the two later married in 2014. Forté-Saunders told Ampersand LA it was the hours of conversations and storytelling within their partnership that led to an initial interest in exploring new work.
In the very beginning, they thought this would culminate in a book and an album. Saunders has been working on a music-centered podcast called “Live from the Writer’s Bench” since 2013. This show featured conversations about things like the different levels of emceeing; from rapping to emceeing to becoming a lyricist. The hosts also discussed music’s connection to social issues. Saunders recalls doing one episode about Trayvon Martin, who was shot and killed in early 2012.
During the performance, this influence is seen when Saunders takes the audience to “emcee university.” He demonstrates a boot camp consisting of running, spitting (freestyle rapping) and reciting verses. Saunders does this to show that emceeing is not a ‘soft skill,’ but one that carries cultural weight and reverence to the Black Americans who developed it.
This is followed by a conversation that takes place completely through audio bites and samples. Discussing how the therapeutic nature of rap can enable someone to turn their life around, one specific voice likens this process as a “cultural arts programs.”
In this way, the duo wanted to create something about the art and journey of emceeing itself, and Forté-Saunders suggested they create the work for the stage. This led them to the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York in 2019. This was supposed to be the duo’s first residency before they moved on to others scheduled for 2020. However, as COVID hit, these plans were upended.
Luckily, the Saunderses were able to do satellite residencies from home over the pandemic. This was with the support of their presenting partners’ three different grants which helped the couple finance a home studio. The duo was able to continue living on their art, as they had been doing for years.
As things began opening up, they did an initial tour of “Prophet” at three locations: Experimental Media Performing Arts Center in upstate New York, Kelly Strayhorn Theater in Pittsburgh and Abrons Arts Center in New York City.
During their recent residency at the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance this fall, they reworked “Prophet” to include two dancers. In previous versions, Forté-Saunders was the emcee’s lone shadow, but Marcella Lewis joined in these recent shows as the second dedicated mover on stage.
The piece opens with a duet between Forté-Saunders and Lewis. Each dressed in matching costumes of long, sleeveless jackets and sheer, oversized top hats, their movements begin as slow and methodical but steadily increase in pace. As the two communicate through their grooves and gestures, they build off each other until the bass kicks in.
When Saunders appears on stage, the dancers become complements to his spoken testimony. Whether acting out the emcee’s words or serving as aesthetic frames, Forté-Saunders and Lewis play with the shape, tempo, levels and scale of their movements in beautiful form. What is most impressive, however, is that there are not two but three dynamic dancers in this piece. Saunders himself expresses his stories physically, in which he has multiple moments on stage where he is simultaneously dancing and orating. Saunders told Ampersand LA that this was not originally the plan.
While he has danced for choreographers before and worked in the dance world for over 10 years, he said he initially didn’t want to move next to Forté-Saunders and Lewis. Through the insistence of Forté-Saunders and Grimes, he eventually agreed. But he had one condition: ”I don’t want to go on stage and attempt to be a dancer. I don’t want to look like I’m trying to be a dancer, because I’m not a dancer. I’m not trained. I don’t have that background. But I can move according to how I am feeling pulled to move,” he said.
Around the halfway point of the performance, a chilling moment occurs. The emcee progresses from a crawl on all fours to a standing position in no less than five minutes. This progression takes him from one end of the stage to the other, and he never buckles or rushes a transition. Like a wave, he unfolds inch by inch until he is upright.
As a dancer, I know the amount of control it takes to move slowly – and especially the kind of slow where you don’t realize someone is moving until they’re on the other side of the stage. When you put this kind of movement on the floor, you’re creating friction with your whole body – muscle and bone – to simulate the illusion of floating. It leaves audiences speechless and dancers bruised.
In the end, Saunders said the decision to have him dance was for the best. He tells the stories of multiple people in his life who have since passed, which Saunders describes as a heavy and weighted experience. Therefore, dancing allows him to balance that burden.
“I think movement just helps my relationship to the character, to the performance, to the embodiment of just this release,” he said.
These characters are referred to as the “three kings” within the piece. These are the real-life figures who guided Saunders when he was on the brink of homelessness and struggling to find his path. One of these kings, a Yoruba priest named Abdul, led him to find God outside a bodega in Philadelphia. While Abdul has since passed from cancer, Saunders says this performance allows him to share his mentor’s lessons on a grand scale.
The idea of passing on generational wisdom gets at one of the central themes of this piece: preserving bloodline through art. In this way, the show, to me, is art about the art (of emceeing) itself. And while we see poems about poetry and books about writing, I think we see less of this work on stages. Due to dance generally being a less literal art form, I think there is a high bar to pulling this off because the performer may lose their audience within the meta layers of the story. However, “Prophet” uses timing to its advantage and does not run so long that there’s an intermission. It’s a 60-minute marathon that keeps your attention the whole time. Even if you couldn’t relate to the story at the beginning, we all know what hope feels like at the end when Saunders walks into the sun.
It is from these lessons and stories that Forté-Saunders and Saunders ask artists, and anyone watching the “Prophet,” to not give up their passions. Saunders wants artists to walk away feeling validated for their work, even if it hasn’t been recognized by the world yet. Forté-Saunders especially calls out to those artists innovating within forms dominated by Eurocentrism.
“I’m wanting folks to walk away inspired to sprout. I want them to walk away with the relationship to their practice as persistence – to stay, to stick it out, to ride it, to seek all of the pockets and ways that this might show up. It might not look the way that you want or the way that you see right now, but your sight is limited,” said Forté-Saunders.
The next steps for the duo will be the release of their book in 2023 and, later on, a musical album of “Prophet: The Order of the Lyricist” on digital and vinyl release.