Daddy AF is a National Performance Network Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, Kelly Strayhorn Theater, National Center for Choreography at The University of Akron, and MASS MoCA with Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, more information at www.npnweb.org. Daddy AF was created with support from Danspace Project, UCLA’s Chancellor’s Research Fund and The Chancellor’s Arts Initiative. 

Daddy AF is made possible with generous support from the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project with lead funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and the Mellon Foundation, and a MAP Fund creation grant.

Booking contact:

George Lugg, Producer
georgelugg@gmail.com
213-446-9556

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In celebration of 2025 as his 40th anniversary as professional choreographer, writer, and performer, David Roussève will create his first evening-length solo in more than 20 years. DaddyAF, premiering fall 2025, is a meditation on life's purpose created and performed by a queer African American man acutely aware of the finite time he has left on the planet. Like strands of DNA, it connects elements encoded in Roussève’s body, including 600 years of family genealogy (which he recently traced to 1400s France, Portugal, and Germany, with branches in Mali, Senegal, Haiti, and Cuba), his roller coaster journey as a queer HIV+ cis man, and the shattering suicide of his former husband of 26 years—along with solo excerpts from 35 years of REALITY repertory, and a new movement vocabulary exploring the meaning of virtuosity for a 63-year-old body. It is the portrait of a man defying death, but somehow unable to unabashedly embrace life. Ultimately, DaddyAF hopes to generate dialogue around the elusive nature of love and the very meaning of existence; along the way posing questions that viewers can ponder for themselves around the nature of an ‘archive,’ ‘legacy,’ ‘fulfillment’, and even ‘liberation.’

DaddyAF moves Roussève into new artistic terrain and will be one of his most compositionally adventurous works ever. The piece is structured as nonlinear chapters that move freely through time, place, and character, using a fragmented form of queer storytelling to challenge the conventional ways narratives evolve. The work features character and genre leaps that may be initially bewildering, but ultimately lead to a deeply resonant thematic crescendo. Roussève explores the ever-evolving definition of love in DaddyAF, as a recently divorced queer man in his sixties interacting with dating and sex apps for the first time, amid a broader society that seems devoid of ‘love’ while enmeshed in the struggle for social justice. Propelled by Roussève’s research into his genealogy, the piece delves into the explosive and intricate relationships between whiteness, melanin, freedom, and life fulfillment. DaddyAF also explores the nature of an archive, as the documentation of artistic production but also the chronicler of a life. Roussève revisits 40 years of repertory to ask whether a choreographed work is fixed and impenetrable; or whether like a personal memory it is malleable, fallible, and open to reinterpretation through the shifting social, political, artistic, and personal lenses of a new era.

Roussève’s recent group works for his company REALITY have developed a movement language that melds fluid and sequential techniques with street, modern, and jazz dance. DaddyAF expands upon this kinetic terrain by adapting that language to an older body containing less technical prowess, but an abundance of kinetic and real-world wisdom. As part of this new vocabulary, Roussève will develop a gestural language deepening and rearticulating the hand-based gestures that have been the core of his choreography’s emotional resonance across four decades. The stage action is augmented by large-scale digital imagery, which unlike the choreographer’s past works has no surface connection to the narrative, but instead deepens a larger thematic arc surrounding longing, impermanence, and the very nature of life and death. Sound design supports the steep emotional shifts of Roussève's monologues with a mix of propulsive hip-hop, R&B, classical music, and an original on-going tapestry of abstract sound.

DaddyAF will showcase a wildly talented, all Los Angeles-based collaborative team. Queer performance/installation maker Julie Tolentino (faculty CalArts School of Art, Whitney Biennial 2022, and original REALITY company member), will act as dramaturg and bring both a wildly different compositional perspective to the work and a deep understanding of Roussève’s artistic aims. In their first artistic partnership, video will be by LA-based Bessie Award recipient, video and dance artist Meena Murugesan known for her compelling collaborations with many of SoCal’s most noted contemporary movement artists including CONTRA-TIEMPO, Marjani-Forte Saunders, taisha paggett, Lionel Popkin, and d. Sabela Grimes. Longtime collaborator Chris Khul will create lighting that constantly shifts to reflect the evening’s leaps between formal, pedestrian, intimate, and deliberately garish modes.

DaddyAF is conceived as a modular work that can fit in a wide range of spaces. While the video, sound, and backdrops can fill the largest of theaters, the visual elements can be downsized for performances in more intimate venues. Roussève is excited to perform the work not only in theaters, but in nontraditional site spaces and galleries for which it can easily be adapted.

Community engagement is at the core of Roussève's artistic mission, and he has extensive experience in planning and conducting educational and engagement activities with communities across the spectrum of age, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and cultural background. The first work fronting Rousseve’s personal relationship to HIV, aging, and queerness, DaddyAF addresses a multitude of viewer communities with themes touching on queer health, LGBT+ mental health and suicide prevention, aging, the definition of ‘Blackness,’ social justice, and the nature of existence and fulfillment. Roussève looks forward to working with presenters to craft original activities for their specific communities.

Roussève’s last evening-length solo The Ten-Year Chat (2001) was hailed by critics and audiences worldwide. Time Out London called it a “masterpiece,” noting that “Roussève binds humor and deep poignancy with threads of narrative about his own life... I would beg you all to go and see him and become better, fuller, richer people.” The Washington Post called Roussève “...one of the modern dance world’s great stage personalities.... He combines a powerful physical presence with an uncanny ability to channel the experiences of the weakest and most marginalized among us.” LA Times’ Charles McNulty wrote “The Struggles of Black Americans—oppression and abuse, poverty and neglect, AIDS and alienation—register in the body of this dancer/choreographer... Dante’s collective notion of ‘our life’ is particularly apt as Roussève moves from the personal to the historical and on to the universal.”