Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
MARTY CLEARA multimedia show explores Muhammad Ali, the boxer, the braggadocio, the humanitarian, the cultural icon.
Like so many other people, Marlies Yearby had always admired Muhammad Ali's style. Not just the graceful but devastating way he approached his fights, but his trademark vocal patter and his courageous and unwavering humanitarianism.
But when she sat down with composer Craig Harris to start work on Brown Butterfly, a multimedia celebration of Ali's life and career, Yearby's admiration deepened.
"I started looking, and I started seeing all these cross-references," said Yearby, the Tony-winning choreographer of the Broadway and touring productions of Rent. "When you look at Ali in the ring, and then you look at the popular entertainers of the day, people like James Brown, Jackie Wilson and Tina Turner, you see that they influenced him and he influenced them."
Probably no other sports star has ever incorporated art into his athleticism to such a degree, Yearby said. And certainly no other athlete has had such a dramatic effect on art and popular entertainment.
Ali's impact on the culture is one of the themes of Brown Butterfly, a touring show that debuted in Harlem last year. It's slated for one performance at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center's Ferguson Hall on Saturday.
Onstage, it's largely a dance piece featuring three men and three women. Musicians are on stools in the four corners of the stage to represent the boundaries of the boxing ring.
Three video screens show Ali in action, both in and out of the ring. Montages of his contemporaries in sports and popular culture show the audience that Ali was both a product and a shaper of his time. The only words you'll hear are Ali's words, mixed as samples, Yearby said. "So you'll hear Ali's voice, and sometimes you'll even hear his breathing."
Even the use of samples is something of a tribute to Ali, Yearby said. It was through Ali's vocal rhythms, his good-natured braggadocio and his improvised rhymes that mainstream America got its first taste of what would become hip-hop. Rapping and sampling was already, in Ali's heyday, popular among poor black kids but was seldom heard outside of urban basements.
Because improvisation was so essential to Ali's art and persona, Yearby said, Brown Butterfly leaves room for musicians and dancers to create fresh work onstage.
Though it celebrates Ali's athletic prowess and his art, Yearby said Brown Butterfly is foremost a tribute to a man with the vision, intelligence and courage to risk everything for what he believed in.
"He was such a humanitarian in his activities outside of boxing," she said. "He was a man who said, "I need to be the man that I am.' He did that in the ring, he did that in front of the camera and he did that by becoming a Muslim."
PREVIEW: Brown Butterfly, 8 p.m. Saturday, Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center's Ferguson Hall, Tampa. Tickets are $22.50-$32.50 plus service charge. Call 813 229-7827 or go to www.tbpac.org