Ephrat Asherie Dance: “Shadow Cities”

Ephrat Asherie brings her new collaborative show "Shadow Cities" to the University of Rochester, a work created with Grammy award-winning jazz musician and composer Arturo O’Farrill. Bringing together Ephrat Asherie Dance’s exhilarating choreography that remixes and reconnects various street and club dance styles with live music and an original composition featuring O’Farrill’s trademark Latin jazz sound, "Shadow Cities" explores how we are split between cities, memories, and generations; and how we are an amalgam of cultures, fully embodied and fragmented all at once. While identities are fixed and infinitely fluid, EAD's movements are concurrently malleable and explosive. This work asks how and why – halfway between so many disparate extremes in time, space, and state – we sometimes feel most at home and our most enlivened selves. With a cast of six dancers and four musicians, “Shadow Cities” is a reflection on the beauty, vastness, and joy of the in-between.

This performance will take place on Friday, February 6. 2026 in the Sloan Performing Arts Center at 7:30pm, with a post-show meet-the-artists discussion to follow.

On Saturday, Feb. 7, 2026, Ephrat Asherie will also judge the 14th annual inspireJAM All-Styles Battle at 3pm at Sloan Performing Arts Center. Join DJ Ha-MEEN and the regions most skilled street dancers to see who will claim the 2026 inspireJAM title! For more info: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/14th-annual-inspirejam-2v2-all-styles-battle-tickets-1871718653879?aff=oddtdtcreator

Ephrat "Bounce" Asherie is a NYC-based director, choreographer, performer and b-girl, and a 2016 Bessie Award Winner for Innovative Achievement in Dance. Asherie has received numerous awards to support her work including Dance Magazine's Inaugural Harkness Promise Award and two National Dance Project Awards. In 2019, she was the recipient of a NYFA Fellowship and is currently a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow.

These events are made possible by funding from the NYS DanceForce, the University of Rochester's Schwartz Performing Arts Fund of the Institute for the Performing Arts, the Humanities Project, the Program of Dance and Movement, the Office of Student Life, and the Frederick Douglass Institute.