Featuring Brinae Ali, The Baltimore Jazz Collective

The Baby Laurence Legacy Project is an evening-length performance that investigates and celebrates the artistic genius of Donald “Baby Laurence” Jackson, a Baltimore-bred game-changer, and his impact on tap dance and jazz music. This production aims to redefine the relationship between technology, tap dancing, and jazz music to build a platform for sharing Laurence’s largely forgotten story with audiences. The work honors his artistic genius and probes the social context that led to his alcoholism, chronic drug use, continual incarceration, poverty, and early death at age 53. Songs from his album, such as “Baby at Birdland” and “Delilah’s Theme,” will be reimagined with new arrangements and choreography. The Baby Laurence Legacy Project will reveal to audiences how Laurence embodied the bebop aesthetic, which channeled defiance of the white gaze and a self-referencing Black consciousness as in the music of Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Max Roach, and Charlie Parker.

Baby Laurence Legacy Project: Tracing Steps was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Mellon Foundation.

• Robert W. Deutsch Foundation
• Chamber Music of America
• Maryland State Arts Council
• Johns Hopkins University Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts
• Johns Hopkins University Peabody Jazz Department
• Creative Alliance
• Baltimore Jazz Alliance