The Fruits of Our Labor — Step Afrika!’s awe-inspiring and soul-stirring world premiere dance spectacular — was specifically conceived to coincide with, and respond to, the 250th anniversary of a nation that was largely built on the labor of enslaved people. As such, that title is doing a lot of really deep work. For one thing, the idiom’s implication that “hard work will be rewarded” evokes the fable that America is a “land of opportunity” for one and all. For another thing, the pronoun “our” can be read as both “Americans in general” and “Black Americans in particular,” a double meaning that was deliberate, as Step Afrika! Founder C. Brian Williams, who came up with the title, confirmed for me. Both antecedents of “our” are profoundly at play in the 80-minute show now on stage at Arena. And the performance contains exactly the truth, passion, and resistance to tyranny that was absent from the recent vainglorious semiquincentennial celebration.
If you’ve never seen DC-based Step Afrika!, now is your chance. Its unique, globally renowned work is built on stepping — a propulsive, percussive dance form that turns performers’ whole-body stomps, claps, slaps, and shoutouts into enthralling storytelling. (The current company members, all extraordinary, are Kwadjo Bediako, Nya Christian, Jerod Coleman, Ariel Dykes, Terrence Johnson, Conrad R. Kelly II, Jayden King, Jemeema S. Montrose, Keondre Pascal, Keanu Powell, Ericka Still, Joseph Vasquez, Pelham Warner Jr., and Robert Warnsley, with Agyei Keita Edwards.)
Jakari Sherman and Conrad R. Kelly II, inspired by South African choreographer Vusi Mdoyi, direct The Fruits of Our Labor with astounding power. It begins in a somber, dimly lit space strangely devoid of color. The four-sided Fichandler Stage is hung with mournful charcoal-gray flaglike banners and strips of singed fabric suspended like shredded shrouds (set design by Colleen Doty). One of the square Fichandler’s four seating sections has been converted into a multi-tiered stage, where the show begins explosively as ensemble members in black quasi-military garb and cartoon-like white gloves step madly to pounding drums and electrifying white light (costumes by Cierra Coan, lighting by Yannick Godts). It’s a shocker of an opener — certainly a contrast to the company’s annual festive and lighthearted holiday extravaganzas (running at Arena this year from December 4 to 23).
The Fruits of Our Labor incorporates several solemn texts, beginning with an excerpt from a famous sermon, “The Eagle Stirrith Her Nest,” by African American Baptist minister C. L. Franklin (Aretha’s father). It draws on a passage in the Book of Deuteronomy in the Hebrew Bible in which an eagle, symbolizing God, cares for humanity as for her eaglets. While the parable about God’s loving care is intoned in a pulpit voice and company members step in humbled dependence on God, the stark white image of the United States’ iconic bald eagle appears projected under their feet. The irony is glaring: God the biblical eagle can be depended on to take care; the nation, not so much.
Compelling sound, movement, and light imagery compounds in power. Lyrical strains of “Oh, say can you see?” … a trio dancing barefoot, modern-dance style, on drumheads … outbursts of brutal, relentless drumming … brusque phalanxes of athleticism and synchronized salutes … raw Hendrix-style wailing guitar … the Pledge of Allegiance as shout-and-response … clusters of flag stars spilled like afterthoughts in light upon the floor.
Color creeps in here and there, notably in U.S. flags worn as costume accessories (an online content warning assures, “An American flag is used as a dancing prop, but is not desecrated on stage”).
What states of being are these performers representing? Who are we to see in them? What is their collective story? What of their apparent bottled rage and outrage might we recognize and acknowledge? What to make of the revolutionary solidarity that the ensemble resembles? Less a chorus than a cadre. Less an act than a pact.
Who are they? And who, after all, are “we”?
About midway through the show, a woman in the company enters and, for the first time, engages us, the audience, personably (as opposed to presentationally). The show is like “an album,” she tells us, which feels quite apt. In the ensuing interval, she introduces us one by one to the company, by name and hometown: Mr. This, Miss That, each entering to our applause. It is a brilliant dramatic pivot that fundamentally alters our presumed relationship to the show.
A subsequent highpoint is a scene that touches on the 15th Amendment (1870), which protects the right of American citizens (though not women) to vote regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Upon the tiered stage sit four scribes with oversized quill pens scritching out sounds on drumheads as if on parchment. It is a stunning percussive background for a choreographed passage that includes the ensemble intoning poignantly, “We don’t know what to do.” The scene also references the now-imperiled Voting Rights Act of 1965, making The Fruits of Our Labor uncontrovertibly more patriotic than any recent spectacle of presidential vanity.
In counterpoint to those spectacles, the show also references Frederick Douglass’s famous 1852 speech in which he said, “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.” The words slowly become visible, inscribed upon the tiered set, when delicately illumined by the cast’s blacklight flashlights.
An even more stunning piece of stagecraft mimes ensemble members shot dead, their corpses then laid out in casket-like light rectangles across the floor. In the audience there were gasps.
The complex meaning in the titular pronoun “our” gets a surprise resolution in a scene that centers on the self-evident truth that “WE is the most powerful word in the Constitution.” And further, “WE have the task to try to improve this great nation of ours.”
The show ends with the kind of clap-along infectious joy and exuberance we have come to expect from Step Afrika! Only by now the pronoun “our” deliberately includes all of us — instilled by Step Afrika!’s embodied eloquence, which always surpasses words.
Running Time: Approximately 80 minutes with no intermission.
The Fruits of Our Labor plays through November 1, 2026, in the Fichandler Stage at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater, 1101 Sixth St SW, Washington, DC. Purchase tickets (starting at $47) online; by phone at 202-488-3300, Tuesday through Sunday, 12-6 PM; or in person at the box office, Tuesday through Sunday, two hours before the show begins on performance days. Tickets may also be available at TodayTix.
Arena Stage’s many savings programs include “pay your age” tickets for those aged 35 and under; military, first responder, and educator discounts; student discounts; and “Southwest Nights” for those living and working in the District’s Southwest neighborhood. To learn more, visit arenastage.org/savings-programs.
View The Fruits of Our Labor program here.
The Fruits of Our Labor
By Step Afrika!
Directed and choreographed by Jakari Sherman with Conrad R. Kelly II and Vusi Mdoyi
CAST
Kwadjo Bediako, Nya Christian, Jerod Coleman, Ariel Dykes, Terrence Johnson, Conrad R. Kelly II, Jayden King, Jemeema S. Montrose, Keondre Pascal, Keanu Powell, Ericka Still, Joseph Vasquez, Pelham Warner Jr., and Robert Warnsley, with Agyei Keita Edwards
