Raphael Xavier - Skiff

Raphael Xavier returns to Cleveland with his newest creation, Skiff. The hour-long work features Xavier and guest artists, including some of Northeast Ohio’s own dancers, in a unique piece that blends contemporary dance with breaking in an exploration of the aging body, race, privilege, and power while encouraging conversations of identity, legacy and lineage.

Xavier, a breaker and choreographer, contextualizes the work through the lens of Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, the classic novel about a fisherman’s relentless battle with a giant marlin. With original spoken word interwoven with Hemingway’s text, Xavier draws parallels between the fisherman’s search and his own journey to build a dance career utilizing the artform of Breaking. Skiff also draws inspiration from Winslow Homer’s The Gulf Stream, the iconic 19th century painting of a Black man in a small, rudderless fishing boat engulfed by a restless sea as sharks circle.

This powerful and unique dance performance will open your mind and have you fishing for the answers as to just what moves you. Don’t miss your chance to see Xavier paint a picture with movement across the stage and take you on a journey across the sea to a world of breaking, poetry and creativity.

“...Xavier captivated his audience with the impassioned lyrical delivery of a hip-hop artist.” - The Broad Street Review