Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

The Annenberg Center is inviting the Vessels creative team and ensemble of New Orleans for a technical residency and Philadelphia debut. Vessels is a ritual performance in which the artists invoke their African ancestors and respond to the question of “what does freedom sound like in the space of confinement?” Enslaved African people, stripped of many of their ritual tools for enlivening their spirits, maintained the power of their voices. Vessels is envisioned as an arc and performative journey between the floating prison of the slave ship and the world of the spirit. It is a work of speculative history – an act of remembrance and imagination to contribute towards intergenerational healing.