“You’re Having Too Much Fun So We’re Gonna Have to Kill You,” a performance by Center for the Arts 2021–2022 artist in residence Toshi Reagon, premiered at the CFA Theater last Friday, Oct. 7 at 8:00 p.m.. This event, referred to as a work-in-progress by Reagon, served as a culmination of her year-long residency at the University.

Based in Brooklyn, Reagon—a musician, composer, producer, and storyteller—has an expansive and diverse career. Before coming to Wesleyan, she was in residence at Carnegie Hall, the Palais Garnier in Paris, and Madison Square Garden. However, you can just as easily find her in a small cafe or music festival.

“Toshi has been the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts award for music composition, OutMusic’s Heritage Award, the Black Lily Music and Film Festival Award for Outstanding Performance, the Association of Performing Arts Professionals (APAP) Award Merit for Achievement in the Performing Arts, and the 2021 Herb Alpert Award for Music,” read the program I was handed as I entered the theater.

Needless to say, Reagon is an established performer. Here at Wesleyan, her work revolves around disco and how it exists at and celebrates the intersection of Black and queer identity. She also interrogates the “disco sucks” movement, emphasized by the Disco Demolition Night held in 1979 at Comiskey Park in Chicago, which garnered tense anti-Black and homophobic backlash. Her performance bridged these two conversations together, emphasizing the importance of love and community throughout. 

Upon entering the CFA, I could immediately hear upbeat music playing. As I walked closer to the CFA Theater, I saw a DJ booth set up in front of the building. People were standing outside chatting with the DJ, Bill Coleman, and moving to the beat. You could feel the pulsating energy lying just beneath the surface, the party was about to begin! The outside of the theater itself was lit up in bright neon colors, inviting me to go in.

Taking my seat, I was curious about what Reagon’s “work-in-progress” would entail. I had heard about the iterations of workshopping the piece had gone through, and I was excited about Reagon’s interpretation of a “final” or “complete” piece. The set was simple: chairs with various instruments and music stands next to them filled the stage. The songs from outside were also playing loudly in the theater. My friends and I found ourselves lip-synching to “Funkytown” by Lipps Inc. and “Lady Marmalade” by Labelle before the performance even started!

The show combined music, both singing and instrumental, dancing, or rather, movement, and theatrical yet intimate storytelling. It revolved around the characters of Uncle J and his nephew purchasing an “Almart” store with the goal of making it into a space full of schools and houses, or in short, a community. Along the way, they face criticism from other communities, dealing with harsh and jagged slurs thrown in their direction. As for the telling of the story, short segments of dialogue or Reagon’s narrative were interspersed with lively music with Reagon encouraging the audience to get out of their seats and dance along.

“I loved how Toshi shifted the idea of how an audience was supposed to behave and the performance became much more like a dance hall where the band was leading us through various songs but we were participating in the creation of the mood,”  Jaydie Halperin ’23 wrote in an email to The Argus. “There was a bit of reluctance at first and Toshi kept saying things like ‘you can get up and dance, this is your house,’ and that propelled people to not just sit and absorb but move as the music was moving them.”

Additionally, some of the songs included student dancers, which was really exciting to watch. One piece that comes to mind is a song where the three main singers, apart from Reagon, each sang through a different phrase: “I went downtown,” “starlight explode,” “your fear, your face.” Over time, the three phrases overlapped and blended together into a rhythmic tune. Over the course of the song, the dancers, who began the routine on the stairs of the aisles, came down to the stage swaying and moving to the steady beat. It culminated in the dancers taking center stage and spinning in a circle together. At the same time, the vocalists built the song up through a crescendo and maintained that intensity for a few minutes. Then, two of the singers stopped singing while the other dramatically decrescendo-ed to end the piece.

Many of the musical moments were quite upbeat. I loved seeing not only the dancers dancing along but the singers as well. One piece was a powerful song about a soldier and the vocalists were stomping and moving their bodies along to the beat. I could tell they could feel the music deep within their souls. This also profoundly engaged the audience, with many audience members jumping out of their seats and clapping along to the beat. 

“Toshi’s performance felt, to me, very anachronistic in the way it combined thoughts on the current political climate with the historical burning of disco records,” Erin Byrne ’24 wrote in an email to The Argus. “Watching the band perform and the audience dance my biggest takeaway was that Black joy prevails.”

One moment from the show that resonated with Danielle Nodelman ’24 was the finale.

“I would say one of the most memorable parts for me was the finale when everyone and everything came together,” Nodelman wrote in an email to The Argus. “The song was electric, the dancers were all onstage, and everyone in the audience was dancing together in a moment of collective joy and celebration.”

Even after the show, the celebration continued. Outside the theater, Coleman resumed his role as the DJ and there was one big dance party outside the CFA Theater. I’m pretty sure I saw a conga line forming at some point. The crowd sang along to songs like “I Will Survive,” “Hot Stuff,” and “Gimme Gimme Gimme.” It was such an energetic and lively scene that was an absolute pleasure to be immersed in.

Halperin also reflected on the show and this experience.

“I definitely took away a sense that disco was a community and a style that was meaningful to so many people that was essentially taken out purposefully,” Halperin wrote in an email to The Argus. “I think we forget how great the music of disco is because of a kind of negative association it has in media. But dancing outside after the concert in a big group with little kids to people old enough to have lived in the disco era I was like ‘yeah, this music is really fun!’” 

From seeing how much fun the performers were having to the 150% engagement of the audience, this event left me with a profound sense of joy. I just couldn’t stop smiling even as I was walking back home. Reagon and her team did a wonderful job balancing the seriousness of the events surrounding the era of disco and the pride and love of feeling the music of the genre in your body, letting it rattle deep into your soul.

One of Reagon’s quotes from the program spoke to this deeper purpose to the performance.

“We’re not saying to spend 24 hours a day in Disco, we saying spend 24 hours a day with your soul activated and let the vibrations your body can make be your conductor and your collective salvation on earth.”
Sabrina Ladiwala can be reached at sladiwala@wesleyan.edu.