Project X is a Glasgow based dance collective, co-directed and by Ashanti Harris, Rhea Lewis and Mele Broomes, that champions dance and performance from the African and Caribbean diaspora. For the last 3 years, this collective has carried out collaborative work to deliver bespoke workshops, facilitate conversations, produce and curate performances and events in Scotland and beyond.
Their name is inspired by the fact that their elders in the civil rights activist emancipation movement used the letter X in place of their slave surname as an act of refusal and empowerment. The Company also sees it as a symbol of infinite impossibility, based on the letter X also being an algebraic term form for any number,
It is particularly poignant at the time of their celebrating three years of proud accomplishments, that they are simultaneously enraged by an incident involving brazen brutality against a black man that has shocked and shaken the world.
Witnessing and experiencing racial inequality is something familiar to the trio but they try to remedy this through democratising the art sector in Scotland and beyond by creating educational contexts to understand the history, heritage and contemporary African and Caribbean cultures through dance.
The work of Project X is ongoing even though the Covid-19 pandemic, so please visit their newly launched website to see details of projects, contacts and how to support this vibrant young organisation.
Irene Brown
Radio Summerhall Arts 