BLACK GRACE

FROM CANNON’S CREEK TO JACOB’S PILLOW

FRIDAY, AUGUST 12 @ 7:30PM & 12:30AM

Neil Ieremia began dancing after years of rheumatic fever left him weak and homebound. Studying dance while growing up in a time when second-generation Samoans were raised with “a rugby ball in one hand and a beer can in another,” says Ieremia, wasn’t easy but he persevered.

“Staying at dancing school was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do,” he says. “It was just soul-destroying for a young proud Samoan/New Zealand Creek boy to be chuckled at and not quite get it. . . this ballet. My body wasn’t built to do that. I can’t put my thighs together. Have you seen the size of them? I dare you to find a Samoan man that can.”

Find out more »