The Cedar Presents

A CRIPPLE'S DANCE by Freaque with Seaberg and Izell Pyramid

Sunday, December 16th 2018 Doors: 7:00 PM / Show: 7:30 PM

All Ages

$15 General Admission

This is a seated show. General Admission tickets are available online, by phone, and at Electric Fetus and The Cedar during shows.

Please note: This show has been moved to Sunday, December 16. All tickets for purchased for original Friday, November 30th date will be valid at the door. If you cannot make the rescheduled date and need a refund, please contact boxoffice@thecedar.org.

A Cripple's Dance by Freaque

"A Cripple’s Dance" is a music and dance performance put together by Freaque (Gabriel Rodreick) with help from the Minnesota State Arts Board’s Artist Initiative Grant. 10 years ago Gabriel sustained a C5 Spinal Cord Injury which left him paralyzed from the armpits down. “A Cripple’s Dance” is an expression of his desire to dance, move and reconnect with his body post injury. 

The music will be performed by Gabriel Rodreick (Freaque, Undoers, Treading North), Jack Stanek (Undoers, Treading North), and musicians from the Kremblems Collective, Bailey Cogan (26 Bats!), Karl Remus (Lucid van Guard), and Warren Thomas Fenzi. 

The dance will be performed by Gabriel Rodreick, Angelique Lele, and the movers of Kelvin Wailey (Leila Awadallah, Emma Marlar, and Laura Osterhaus). 

This groundbreaking performance is a piece that grapples with living with a spinal cord injury, a topic that is rarely touched on by the music and dance community. Through music and dance, the audience will experience an expedition through anger, fear, longing, and eventually arrive in a place of acceptance and contentedness. A place where you can dance without a care in the world.

Seaberg

Seaberg is a hip-hop, jazz punk, and neo-soul band fronted by black genderqueer guitarist, Taylor Seaberg, Paraguayan drummer, Carlos Kelley, and bassist, Joshua Maxwell . Often soulful and punk driven, the group carries a vibrant energy. Under their former name of "People Will Dance," Seaberg's in-studio performance of their song "Vibes" was featured in City Pages' Local Frames and the Local Current blog's Friday Five music video roundups. Seaberg has also performed at an MPR sponsored album release show for Chastity Brown's "Silhouette of Sirens" at The Fitzgerald Theater, a Greenroom Magazine sponsored show for Oshun, as well as Minneapolis Institute of Art's Third Thursday Art + Lit events.

In late 2016, Seaberg released their first demoed recordings. The name of the EP--'The People Will Dance Tapes'--nods towards the origins of the band while looking toward the future. Songs like 'Fool's Gold' pay homage to the stylings of jazz guitarist George Benson melding social commentary about hook up culture along with breakup blues. Taylor showcases their auto-biographical lyrical abilities on tracks like 'I Don't Know' and 'Run.'

When not performing with the full band, Taylor can be found performing their solo original music under the same name.

Izell Pyramid

Maybe the only thing more beguiling about Izell Pyramid than his stage presence is his indecipherable personality. Below the lavish sleep mask and spools of Auto-Tune is a careful, deliberate songwriter and a socially vigilant observer, a Twin Cities music veteran who’s striking out into anonymity for the sake of his art. 

“The music is so much bigger than the person I am—I’m just a dude,” Pyramid says. “I’ve been let down by meeting people that I thought were super ethereal, crazy minds, and they ended up being kinda shitty. I never want anyone to have to go through that with me.” 

What we can tell you about Izell Pyramid is that it’s actually a duo—a pair of siblings in their 20s from south Minneapolis. One sings and performs, and the other maneuvers the beats. The rest, for the time being, is hidden from view. 

Pyramid’s first big splash came on Bobby Raps and Corbin’s 2015 EP, Couch Potato, where Pyramid took over the vocals on “Blame the Internet.” But Pyramid claims most people mistook his subdued croon for Corbin’s own. It’s an easy mistake to make: Pyramid and Corbin are equally enigmatic, and all three vocalists are students of Ryan Olson’s warbly next stage of the Minneapolis Sound. 

“We’re all just sad, angry, weird kids,” Pyramid says with a chuckle. 

Released on September 29 via Olcott’s Totally Gross National Product, Pyramid’s debut EP, Priestcraft, already has over 60,000 listens on Soundcloud, even though the cagey local still hasn’t scheduled a show to promote it. 

Perhaps that’s because a kind of truth emerges from the artifice. There’s an elemental humanity to the way Pyramid sings “I want to be free, but you won’t let me” on “Running,” his voice bursting into a panoply of anguished melodies, that makes you want to strip away all the unnecessary bullshit in your life. It’s like an incantation breathed from the throat chakra of a futurist monk. 

Before emerging under the pseudonym, Pyramid was a materialistic rapper who recorded Lil Durk-style joints with Audio Perm. But adopting a shroud of new-age spiritualism has allowed Pyramid to access a truer form of expression. The pyramid is a powerful and divine symbol, and the artist beneath the mythology uses the guise to drive himself closer to a truer expression. 

“This is real heart music,” Pyramid says. “It’s a tough emotional process for me to get in the zone and write songs and stand on stage. The name lets me encompass the whole vibe.”