Some performances stay with you long after the curtain closes, when movement and dance become a vessel for truth-telling. “A Mother’s Rite,” choreographed by Emmy award-winning artist Jeremy McQueen and performed by acclaimed dancer Fana Tesfagiorgis, is one of those rare works.
When McQueen first dreamed up the Black Iris Project he wasn’t simply choreographing dance — he was designing a vessel for healing, resistance, and radical Black imagination. In a time when mainstream ballet still struggles with inclusion, the Black Iris Project is a force of disruption and grace.
“I created the Black Iris Project as a safe space for Black artists to feel seen, heard, and empowered,” he told The Times. “It’s about giving our stories the stage they’ve long deserved.” This summer that vessel finds sacred ground on Martha’s Vineyard again.
Set to Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” and developed in collaboration with playwright Angelica Chéri, “A Mother’s Rite” is a solo ballet that tells the story of a Black mother grappling with the unimaginable loss of her son to police violence. Though fictional in narrative, it is grounded in the very real and very painful lived experiences of families across this country. This is not meant to be just a performance; it is an emotional ritual and meditation on grief that stands as an act of protest.
The Martha’s Vineyard performance is more than a New England premiere. First developed on-Island in 2018 during a creative residency at Vineyard Arts Project, the ballet now comes full circle. This time it will be staged at Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs, a space with deep cultural roots in the Black Vineyard community.
Co-presented by the Black Iris Project and 651 Arts and sponsored by Vineyard Arts Project, the July 26 performance promises to be both an artistic and a spiritual offering. Oak Bluffs, long considered a haven for Black families, artists, and changemakers, offers a fitting backdrop for a work that invites us to mourn, to witness, and to heal.
Tesfagiorgis, a former soloist with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, brings “A Mother’s Rite” to life with staggering vulnerability and power. Her embodiment of maternal loss, anchored by McQueen’s stirring choreography, offers audiences a rare opportunity to engage with the emotional toll of racial violence through the lens of Black motherhood.
At its core the ballet invites us to sit with discomfort — to bear witness to grief and generational trauma. But it also offers something deeper: space for empathy. Space for truth. Space for healing.
“Audience members are going to be moved profoundly in ways they’ve probably never experienced before,” McQueen said. “Angelica and I did so much research to bring this story to life with care. We so often hear about young people slain due to police brutality, but rarely do we sit with what it’s like for a mother to lose her child … This ballet gives people an opportunity to be in their feelings. A lot of times we run through life in fight-or-flight mode, never truly sitting with how our experiences have shaped us. But if we want to heal — if we want to mend generational wounds — we have to talk about mental health. We have to create space for grief. And for grace.”
This philosophy of using ballet as a tool for truth-telling and transformation is at the heart of the Black Iris Project. The result is a work that doesn’t just tell a story. It demands that we witness it.
The birth of the Black Iris Project
McQueen originally created a ballet titled “Black Iris” as a commission with the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago. It was his first large-scale pointe work and one of the only classical ballets that centered the Black experience.
“I wanted to talk about what it means to be Black through ballet,” he said. “Most classical ballets are fairy tales or fables. Black Iris was inspired by three real women — my mother, my godmother, and my aunt. They raised me. They shaped me. They embodied Black excellence.”
The name was drawn from “Black Iris III,” a painting by Georgia O’Keeffe that McQueen discovered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art shortly after learning that his mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer: “The bottom half of the iris was dark and grounded and the top half was light and blooming. It reminded me of my mother, her strength, her softness, her scars, her spirit.”
McQueen also faced resistance when casting a young Black dancer named Nardia Boodoo as the lead. “We’re often told to blend in even though we stand out. Our bodies — our curves, our power — don’t always match the traditional mold. But I wanted Nardia to shine. Not to shrink. Not to fit into someone else’s box.” That decision became a turning point. “The more we connected about our experiences as Black people in ballet and in life, the more I knew this had to become something bigger,” he said. “So in 2016 I built a collective. A space where we define what ballet can look like in the 21st century.”
That space became the Black Iris Project, one of the only Black-led ballet companies in the United States.
Today, McQueen and his collaborators bring ballet into conversation with the community. From Lincoln Center to church sanctuaries, from Kennedy Center to neighborhood libraries, their performances meet audiences wherever they are.
“As Nina Simone said, ‘It’s the artist’s duty to reflect the times,’” McQueen noted. “I’m doing just that through movement, through memory, and through honoring the people who made me who I am.”
A homecoming in Oak Bluffs
When asked what brought him back to Martha’s Vineyard, McQueen didn’t hesitate.
“I’ll be honest — I didn’t really know much about the Vineyard before my first residency at Vineyard Arts Project,” he said. That lack of awareness, he shared, isn’t uncommon. “So many Black folks I know have asked, ‘What’s on Martha’s Vineyard for me?’ because our stories haven’t always been taught. But the more I came, the more I learned about Oak Bluffs, about the Cottagers, about Black legacy here. And I knew I had to return.”
He completed two residencies that first summer, one of which supported the early development of “A Mother’s Rite” in 2018. “It was transformative,” he said. “Not just creatively but spiritually.”
And though the Island lacks large-scale performance venues, McQueen sees opportunity, not limitations.
“We’ve performed in the Bronx, in churches, in community centers,” he said. “We don’t wait for perfect conditions, we go where our people are. If there’s a church and a floor and a community willing to gather, we’ll make it work.”
Union Chapel, with its stained glass and soaring ceilings, may not be a traditional ballet venue. But it has soul. And soul is what this ballet needs most.
“A Mother’s Rite” is on Saturday, July 26. Doors open at 7 pm. Performance begins at 7:30 pm. Union Chapel, Oak Bluffs, 55 Narragansett Ave. Tickets must be purchased online, at https://www.blackirisproject.org/mv2025, in advance. Use promo code MVTIMES at checkout to receive a special discount.