Dancer-choreographer, educator, and artist organizer Alanna Morris spoke with curator, creator, and performer Davóne Tines ahead of his performance at the Minneapolis Institute of Art on May 1. Tines and his band The Truth will premiere RITUAL, featuring Tines’ work MASS + THE TRUTH in dialogue with Mia’s Giants exhibition.
This interview took place on April 14, 2025, and has been edited for the Liquid Music blog by Amy Chatelaine.
Alanna Morris: I thought since this musical contribution is surrounding the Giants exhibit, Giants might be a good place to start.
Davóne Tines | Photo: Mohammed Ainan
Davóne Tines: Yeah, I just love the idea of Black folk putting their resources towards collecting works from our broader diasporic world, that are reflections and incarnations of us. I think it's beautiful, and I think it's complicatedly beautiful in a world where objects and art are commerce. There's something about the gain of resources from capitalism, utilizing that to purchase and hold certain objects, but the fact that it's a transference of those resources to artists with the multiplying factor of adding value to those objects in a greater context — that has really interesting implications. Being involved with this project is going to make me think about that more.
Morris: I listened back to the conversation that the Deans (Swizz Beats and Alicia Keys) had with the curator of Giants (Kimberli Gant). Swizz talked about the theme, “the giant in you”: how often, artists of color aren't giant collectors of our own culture. This idea of collecting and sharing an archive is what I experienced you doing through sound and performance in your most recent recital, the ROBESOИ project.
Why Paul Robeson, for you? And what is it like to be a curator and connoisseur of the work of your own culture?
Tines: Well, I'll start speaking about that ancestor by talking about another one.
As a Black, male, gay artist who does things that are a little bit out of the box, it's very helpful and necessary and grounding to find ancestors. Often I'm asked, Who do you look up to in opera? And I'm like, Nobody. Those aren't my idols.
But I do find people connected to that world. One of them is Langston Hughes, for utilizing his poetry to encapsulate Blackness in a way that just hadn't been done before. I've done a lot of work connected to Langston Hughes, including making a fully staged musical called The Black Clown, based on his very underseen poem. In 320 words, he outlines the idea of Black people being oppressed by the caricatures they're assumed into, and then places that narrative within 300 years of American history. He walks through that timeline, and then shows deliverance from that structure by a Black man realizing that he and his people have survived. All of that, in 320 words. That's why I consider him a genius.
I wanted to get as many people as possible to understand that poem. So we made it a Broadway-style musical that has an all-Black cast, all-Black band, and just so much vibrant music. It’s very beautiful. But it also punches you in the gut with its truth.
That deep dive with Langston Hughes has been pivotal and foundational for me.
Davóne Tines in The Black Clown | Photo: Richard Termine
Mr. Robeson is somebody who I've been shying away from contending with for a while, partly because when I was a younger singer, people were like, You sound like Paul Robeson, do you sing Old Man River? And I was like, I don't know who that man is, and I don't know what that song is. It felt like a very cursory assumption.
I had a bit of scant knowledge about Robeson being an activist and part of the socialist movement, but I got to know a lot more about him during the pandemic. And of course I was blown away by really listening to his voice, and understanding the depth of his work in America and abroad, trying to unite working peoples of the world. And I was like, Oh, and he was a pro football player and an international activist, doing Shakespeare on the West End, but also performing on Broadway in New York. In his time, he was one of the most famous, if not the most famous Black person in the world. But not many people know about him today. So part of my work is trying to reawaken visibility for Robeson, and also contending with him as my own individual self, as a young Black artist who's been assumed into his legacy.
Our voices might be in a similar range if I decide to sing a certain way, and yeah, I’ve always done socially engaged work – which people always misconstrue is activistic work. It’s a hard line to toe between activist work and other work, because I do make things that are very pointed and try to change people. But wasn't Beethoven doing the same thing? Like, why write Ode to Joy which has the words, “Let us bring together what has torn apart,” unless you're trying to socially move people? All art should do that if it's present.
Aside from the superficial connections to his voice, the point of connection I found is Robeson’s vulnerability. I was like, Oh, you're a person. You did all these great things, but you're a human that was weighed down by the world. And that is a reason I can assume myself into Robeson’s lineage, because I've dealt with similar situations. I’ve survived those things, and I'm still here. I know that the triumphal return from those places of darkness is something I will always respect and continue to try to share with people, which is partly an inspiration for the MASS program.
Morris: Yeah, to share the art itself with people is wonderful, and then what do I take away when I go home at night? Socially engaged art is like, I want you to be immersed: I’m inviting you to be in dialogue, to have a conversation. And it’s going to meet you in your blood, in your guts.
Tines: It’s very overt. What we do in classical music or in theater is so abstract, right? It's in languages that people commonly don't speak, or delivered in ways people don't commonly engage. So, just in my own artistic practice, I don't need to make things more abstract. The medium is abstract itself. In fact, our job is to use that medium to make clarity. And also, I want to have a real connection with people, in real time. I've learned that from certain colleagues I love and trust, and it's also what turns me on as a performer. Like, I'm fine in rehearsal — I show up for work, I do my job. But on performance day, I show up, you know? My spirit as a performer comes alive when I have to communicate something to people. I feel that energy. I respond to it. It feeds me. My alchemy attunes to the context.
Morris: I also saw this theme in the Giants exhibit: the words collect, protect, respect. Could you respond to those three words in light of what you’re bringing to Mia on May 1 through RITUAL?
Tines: “Collect” is picking and choosing the right things, the things that you respond to. And then “protect” is putting them in a context that protects their meaning, or protects a space for them to be engaged. I can protect a song by having my technique and skill at a certain consistent place when I interpret or replicate those pieces. It's done with a care that protects their integrity. That also is intrinsically tied to “respect,” because if you do that, you are respecting the art.
Specifically with MASS — there are so many ways I could talk about this, but maybe it's nice to talk about it in a new way. So that structure, the structure of the Catholic Mass with all those Latin titles. I asked a composer friend, Caroline Shaw, to write a miniature Mass. Usually Masses can go on for 25 minutes. I was like, Nope, just one little version of everything, after the essence of it. Distill it.
The Credo Latin text is the longest text. To her credit and genius, Caroline distilled it down to one word: Believe. And it's like, Oh, cool, that does the same thing, delivered with clarity and conviction. You could just say, “I believe.” As a listener, I can take that with me. So I wanted to distill all these things into their nuggets of meaning.
“My spirit as a performer comes alive when I have to communicate something to people. I feel that energy. I respond to it. It feeds me. My alchemy attunes to the context.”
In MASS + THE TRUTH [featured in RITUAL], each section is defined by you, and you can enter it in three different ways: You can hear the word “kyrie” and know what that means. You can hear me sing a Kyrie, which kind of gives you its aesthetic flavor. Or you can read the question that's associated with the word Kyrie, which is, What are you worried about? So if you can't read that kind of nuance in music, if you don't know Greek or Latin, you can just read the question in English. All of the questions are very open ended; they're formed in a way to make sure everybody can enter. Because everyone has worried about something, so everyone can answer that question.
I guess how an artist or an art collector would collect Blackness and put it on display, I do that sort of curation through musical choices. I originally chose music from either Baroque composers that wrote liturgical music or Black composers, both passed on and current, so that these very different times and cultures could have an ongoing conversation about spirituality. So you can be like, Bach wrote about it this way, and Margaret Bonds wrote about it this way. They're all talking about the same things, but this is how they chose to do it. And then it's for the audience to have the deeper conversation within themselves of, well, who did it better? And it's often whatever touched you.
MASS is decidedly Blacker. It's saying, We can do Mass too, and this is how we choose to do it. You can see if going to that service on Sunday morning touched you, or if this thing touched you. And it's not about competition, but about the curiosity of the effectiveness of certain modes of doing a ritual.
The Truth. Photo courtesy the artists.
Morris: I'm seeing so many parallels between the Giants exhibit and this MASS + THE TRUTH project. Both involve radical curatorial choices that are deeply personal, and that are very pro-Black. But your choices in MASS are also about the framework it's tethered to. Could you say more about that?
Tines: One of my many, many jobs after undergrad was singing for the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in DC. It's the best paying choir job on the east coast.
But sitting there on so many Sundays, I was like, Why am I here? What am I getting out of this? I wish I was just going to my home church in northern Virginia with my family and eating Sunday dinner, but I'm here in DC. So I was like, I need to find something in this for me. I don't know if it's religious, but I can't just be sitting here collecting a paycheck knowing that I'm missing out on a deeper spiritual journey that I could be having with a community I love.
So I started interrogating what it was that I was sitting in. And I was like, if you look at the text, if you look at these rituals, it's basically a process for dealing with human problems.
Like, a Kyrie is, you need mercy, you need help. Or you're worried about something. So a Kyrie is just the question, What are you worried about?
Agnus Dei, Lamb of God, is sacrifice: What do you need to give up to change that problem?
A Credo is belief: Do you believe that change is possible?
A Gloria is being thankful for the change, or even the possibility of change.
A Sanctus, which means holy, is the fact that I identified something I needed to change within myself or the world, that I had steadfast belief that the change was going to happen, and that I reached the other side to say “Glory."
All the stuff inside of the Catholic Mass — the certain storytellings, the certain white cultures — you can leave behind, or you can look at as metaphorical. But the structure itself is sound, I think. And a proof of that is that it's a ritual people have invested in doing for centuries. So it behooves me to try to understand what that is.
That's what I came away with: I wanted to make a non-denominational Mass and walk people through the steps of dealing with their problems. So I gave the title of each section a question. It’s hopefully always very clear, I’m going to sing this song at you, but this question is where you need to be.
“I’m excited for that possibility of conversation between Alicia Keys, Swizz Beatz, and myself as curators working in different mediums, and what it means for the audience to witness that conversation.”
Morris: I grew up Evangelical, and I've personally never been part of a Mass. Yet MASS + THE TRUTH feels so relevant for me. Hearing the song, reading the quotes, meditating on the meaning, and getting this distilled version. Even the 100 works in the Giants collection – that's still a type of distillation. I'm seeing how powerful this whole experience is going to be for folks.
Tines: Yeah, it's an archive put in conversation with another archive, right? The archives are very different mediums, and I deeply believe that everything is a metaphor for everything else.
And so there might be ways that you read the MASS that allow you to read the Giants collection a certain way, and there are ways that reading the Giants collection will change how you read the MASS.
I'm excited for that possibility of conversation between Alicia Keys, Swizz Beatz, and myself as curators working in different mediums, and what it means for the audience to witness that conversation.
Morris: And for our eyes, our hearts, to be opened by Black artists.
You started our conversation by reflecting on the collection and dissemination of resources in this capitalistic, marketplace-type economy, and how we as Black artists don't often get to be a part of that. There's a nuance in there, which is, do we want to be? And you are doing something very different, in my opinion: you're doing soul work, you know? When I was listening to Swizz and Alicia, they were saying the way they curate is from the heart. That’s definitely what I felt. So thank you for doing this heart-centered work that's also deeply intellectual and so tethered to history.
Any last words you want to say?
Tines: Thank you. I just hope people bring their full selves, and their problems, to the show.
Davóne Tines and The Truth: RITUAL
Thu, May 1, 2025, 7:30 pm
Minneapolis Institute of Art
Borman Gallery, 2nd Floor Corridor
FREE, tickets not required
Alanna Morris | Photo: Canaan Mattson
Alanna Morris is a dancer-choreographer, educator, and artist organizer. After a 10 year career with TU Dance, she founded the arts & cultural organization, I A.M. Arts to support critical dance performance, (w)holistic education, and community life. Alanna is Director of the Roots and Wings Institute for Embodied Wisdoms, which launched in 2024, empowering creatives and nonprofits with project management and elevating individual wellness through integrated health services. The Institute is the home of Black Light Research: a methodology of ritualized living and performance practice. Morris is an adjunct professor at Hamline University.
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Website: alsoanoperasinger.org
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