Red Clay Dance celebrates women in dance with return of La Femme Festival

Backstreet Boys, Beyoncé, Mary J. Bilge, Black Eyed Peas, Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, Gwen Stefani, Megan Trainor, Usher and Pharrell Williams.

Dancer, music video director and choreographer Fatima Robinson has collaborated with all those musical giants and more, and that’s just the start. She has also provided choreography for Target, Pepsi and other big-name corporate commercials, not to mention work on Broadway, Super Bowl halftime shows and such films as “Dreamgirls” and “Anchorman 2.”

The show-biz dance luminary will be spotlighted as part of Red Clay Dance Company’s La Femme Dance Festival, a biennial celebration of women in dance that is back March 14-16 for the first time since the COVID-19 shutdowns.

Raymond Jerome Photo

“She’s an ‘OG,’ a legend,” said Vershawn Sanders-Ward, the Chicago company’s founding artistic director and chief executive officer. “A lot of the choreography we see today is heavily influenced by her.”

Robinson gets many requests to take part in events like this one, but she has to turn most of them down, because her schedule is so intense.

“This one felt special and I’m happy to be doing it,” she said. “I’m trying to open myself up a little bit more to the educational and mentorship side of me.”

She will take part in a “fireside chat” March 14 as part of a VIP opening reception at the Arts Club of Chicago and will present a sold-out masterclass for professional dancers at Red Clay’s Center for Excellence, 808 E. 63rd St., the next day.

The La Femme festival, which was first presented in 2013 in conjunction with the Chicago Park District, was designed to celebrate Women’s History Month and showcase Black female dance creators.

“I was really still struggling to find platforms and spaces that were really highlighting the essence of our work,” Sanders-Ward said, “and I really wanted to show the diverse voices of Black female and African diaspora choreographers.”

Choreographers for the first four festivals — a mix of Chicago artists and invitees from elsewhere — were chosen through an open call with a curatorial panel making the picks. But since this edition of the festival marks Red Clay’s 15th anniversary, Vershawn made the selections on her own.

The event culminates March 16 with a resulting three-work program at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance. Although the eight-member, Africa American dance company has appeared there previously on group line-ups, this is its debut as a resident company at the Millennium Park venue.

Red Clay will present the world premiere of Sanders-Wood’s “Unconditional Conditions,” which examines the juxtapositions between what she calls the “persona and the shadow” — everyone’s public face vs. private side.

MReid Photography

“It became even more amplified as we came out of the pandemic, when people were trying to figure out how to be with each other again,” she said. “What parts of myself might have changed or evolved? And what parts of myself do I allow others to see?

Also featured will be the Chicago premiere of “Portraits in Red,” a solo piece by Paris-based choreographer Wanjiru Kamuyu, and the world premiere of “Her Womb” by Michelle N. Gibson. The latter explores birthing in the both natural and metaphorical senses and incorporates the second line, a procession-like, African American social dance seen at funerals and events in the choreographer’s native New Orleans.

The star of the festival, though, will be Robinson, who calls herself a “child of hip-hop.” The Little Rock, Arkansas, native moved with her family to Los Angeles at age 4.

When she was older, she and a group of her friends started taking part in dance contests at 18-and-older, no-alcohol clubs.

Director John Singleton saw them in action and promised to put them in a movie. “We’re like, ‘Yeah, whatever,’ she said. “And it ended up being ‘Boyz in the Hood.’ ”

They just were just extras in that iconic 1991 film, but a few years later, Singleton was looking for a choreographer for another project. By then, Robinson had done some work with R&B and hip hop artists, and he hired her for Jackson’s now-famous music video, “Remember the Time.” Robinson was just 21 at the time.

One of Robinson’s most recent high-profile projects is providing the choreography for the 2023 film version of the Broadway-musical adaptation of Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple,” her second movie musical. “Whenever I get to do a musical,” she said, “I really get to show off a bit, because so much of it is telling the story through dance, and I really love working in that way.”