Ogemdi Ude: MAJOR
Friday, June 19 | 6PM
MAJOR had its NYC premiere at New York Live Arts in January 2026. This celebratory Juneteenth performance will take place at the Prospect Park Boathouse as a co-presentation between Danspace Project’s Platform 2026: Secret Gardens and Prospect Park Alliance’s ReImagine Lefferts initiative. This outdoor iteration kicks off MAJOR‘s summer tour of outdoor performances that delve into how technique, effort, and mastery can be attempted, achieved, and abandoned in pursuit of cultural belonging. Ude’s cast of all Black femme dancers and collaborators embraces majorettes as a form and fundamental relic of Black girlhood. Together they pursue the intimate journey of returning to bodies that they thought were lost. A fierce investigation of physical memory, sexuality, sensuality, and community, MAJOR is a nuanced love letter to the folks who taught the team how to be proudly Black and proudly femme. The Chord Archive is showcased alongside performances, a physical and digital documentation of the creative process and personal historical accounts from former majorette dancers.
Prospect Park Alliance is the nonprofit that sustains, restores and advances Prospect Park, Brooklyn’s Backyard, for the diverse communities that call Brooklyn home. The Alliance’s ReImagine Lefferts initiative is transforming the park’s historic house museum to explore the legacies of resistance and resilience of the Indigenous people of Lenapehoking, whose unceded ancestral lands the park and house rests upon, and the Africans enslaved by the Lefferts family. Learn more at prospectpark.org.
Danspace Project presents new work in dance, supports a diverse range of choreographers in developing their work, encourages experimentation, and connects artists to audiences. Platform 2026: Secret Gardens, co-curated by Executive Director and Chief Curator, Judy Hussie-Taylor and Program Director and Associate Curator, Seta Morton, is the 17th Danspace Project Platform to date.
MAJOR was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and the Mellon Foundation. MAJOR is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council.
Before you visit:
Accessibility at Danspace Project
Covid Safety at Danspace Project
Ogemdi Ude is a dance and interdisciplinary artist, educator, and doula based in Brooklyn. Her performance work focuses on Black femme legacies and futures, grief, and memory. Her work has been presented at Kampnagel, The Kitchen, Gibney, Harlem Stage, Danspace Project, Abrons Arts Center, BRIC, ISSUE Project Room, Recess Art, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Center for Performance Research, and for BAM’s DanceAfrica festival. As an educator, she has taught at The New School, Princeton University, Sarah Lawrence College, and University of the Arts. She is a 2025 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Choreography, 2025 Princess Grace Honoraria in Choreography, 2025-2028 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, 2024 NEFA National Dance Project Production Grant recipient, and a Live Feed Residency Artist at New York Live Arts. She has been a 2024/2025 BAX Artist-in-Residence, 2024-2025 Leslie Lohman Artist Fellow, 2022-2024 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence, 2021 danceWEB Scholar, 2021 Laundromat Project Create Change Artist-in-Residence, and a 2019-2020 Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU Resident Fellow. In January 2022 she appeared on the cover of Dance Magazine for their annual “25 to Watch” issue. Most recently, she has published a book Watch Me in a collection edited by Thomas DeFrantz and Annie-B Parson: Dance History(s): Imagination as a Form of Study published by Dancing Foxes Press and Wesleyan University Press.