Experience a performance, film, conversation, and book exploration relating to the exhibition Dancing the Revolution: From Dancehall to Reggaetón.

A Day for Dancing the Revolution includes a screening of the short film Lee Perry Now Well Loaded, on one of the key figures of reggae history, Lee “Scratch” Perry. This is only the second time the film has been screened since it was made more than 35 years ago. Afterwards, the director, John Corbett, joins artist Damon Locks to discuss this film and Corbett’s essay in the recently released book Black Ark, named after Perry’s legendary recording studio in Kingston, Jamaica. A book signing follows the events.

The day continues with a special performance of Reggaetón Lento by Awilda Sterling-Duprey. The piece was originally created in 2009 and has continued to evolve over the past 17 years. Reggaetón Lento emerged in direct response to Puerto Rico’s Law 7 (Ley 7), enacted that same year, which triggered mass public-sector layoffs and ignited a broader crisis of austerity, labor unrest, and social precarity across the island. By radically slowing the rhythms of reggaetón, Sterling-Duprey transforms a recognizable Puerto Rican dance form into an embodied meditation on memory, aging, autonomy, resistance, and Afro-Caribbean identity.

First presented at PARTI-DOS in Río Piedras, Puerto Rico, the work was reimagined in 2014 during the Afro-Latin@ Summer Dance Intensive at Columbia College Chicago, integrating projected drawings and Sterling-Duprey’s interdisciplinary concept of “proformance.” In dialogue with Tego Calderón’s “Loíza,” the performance engages questions of racism, inequality, dignity, and freedom. Through improvisation, Reggaetón Lento responds to each site, audience, and moment, reaffirming the body as a living archive of memory, resilience, cultural knowledge, and transformation.

About the Participants

John Corbett is a writer, curator, and producer based in Chicago.  He is co-owner of Corbett vs. Dempsey, an art gallery in Chicago. Corbett is the author of several books, including Extended Play: Sounding Off from John Cage to Dr. Funkenstein (Duke, 1994), Microgroove: Forays into Other Music (Duke, 2015), A Listener’s Guide to Free Improvisation (University of Chicago Press, 2016), and Pick Up the Pieces: Excursions in Seventies Music (University of Chicago, 2019). Corbett’s work as a music producer includes his label, the Unheard Music Series, which existed from 1999 until 2006, and Corbett vs. Dempsey, an ongoing label issuing CDs of new and historical jazz, experimental music and improvised music. He has organized many musical events and festivals, most recently a series at the Art Institute of Chicago and stand-alone events at the Guggenheim Museum of Art, NYC, and the Menil Collection, Houston.

In the summer of 1990, Corbett spent a weekend in Zürich, Switzerland, with Lee “Scratch” Perry, the legendary producer and performer who helped invent dub reggae. Corbett made a short film—part documentary, part cinematic poem—all while Perry was working his inimitable verbal magic.

Damon Locks is a Chicago-based visual artist, educator, vocalist/musician. He attended the Art Institute of Chicago where he received his BFA in fine arts. In 2025 he stepped down from being the Board President on Prison and Neighborhood Arts/Education Project which allowed him to teach art at Stateville Correctional Center for 11 years. He is a 2025 recipient of the Creative Capital Award and the Evolving Democracy Fellowship through Project&. In 2017 he became a Soros Justice Media Fellow. He received the Helen Coburn Meier and Tim Meier Achievement Award in the Arts in 2015. In 2019, he became a 3Arts Awardee. He spent four years as an artist in residence as a part of the MCA’s SPACE Program, introducing civically engaged art into the curriculum at Sarah E. Goode STEM Academy High School. He taught Improvisation in the Sound Department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As well as being a visual artist and solo musician, Locks leads the Black Monument Ensemble, is a member of New Future City Radio and Exploding Star Orchestra, and cofounded the bands Trenchmouth and The Eternals.

Awilda Sterling-Duprey is a visual artist, dancer, choreographer, and performer based in Puerto Rico. Rooted in Afro-Caribbean ritual, Yoruba cosmology, and jazz improvisation, her work positions the body as an archive of memory, resistance, and spiritual continuity. Trained at Pratt Institute (MFA, 1979), she emerged as a leading voice of the decolonial Caribbean avant-garde, cofounding Pisotón, Puerto Rico’s first experimental dance collective. Her acclaimed series …blindfolded (2019–present), featured in the Whitney Biennial, translates jazz into movement-based mark-making.