Fashion and textile artist Bayo Agbelekale (I.B. Bayo) will collaborate with the vertical dance company BANDALOOP to craft a large-scale textile installation and set design, fashioning an integrated fabric world within which BANDALOOP’s vertical dance theater piece LOOM will be performed.
Born in Osogbo, Osun State, Nigeria, part of the ninth generation of a traditional Yoruba weaving family, I.B. Bayo learned his trade from generations of cloth artisans. At Niké Center for Art and Culture in Osogbo, he studied batik cloth dying, quilt making, reverse appliqué, and clothing design. He now adapts these techniques to create uniquely designed clothing.
In addition to I.B. Bayo, the core creative team for LOOM includes artistic director and choreographer Melecio Estrella, vocalist and theater artist Chibueze Crouch, composer Ben Juodvalkis, visual technologist Osman Koc, and BANDALOOP dancers and riggers. Also collaborating are climate scientists and regenerative textile artists. Project themes will be spun from ancestral weaving mythologies and traditional techniques of textile creation, the ecological and social impacts of industrialized global fast fashion, and the technological fibers that connect our digital lives.
Founded in 1991 by Amelia Rudolph and now under artistic direction of Melecio Estrella, BANDALOOP creates spectacular, site-specific, vertical dance works for an annual home season and for touring productions around the world.
Pictured: Melecio Estrella of BANDALOOP dancing; photo by Brooke Anderson