It gets two performances<\/a> on the International\u2019s opening weekend, Sat., May 2, and Sun., May 3, at the Hill District\u2019s Thelma Lovette YMCA. (The May 2 show is sold out.)<\/p>\n ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1777632069_311_.jpeg\"\/)
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“Be Holding” features two performers reciting the poem, inspired by Hall of Famer Julius \u201cDr. J\u201d Erving\u2019s famous \u201cbaseline scoop\u201d basket in game 4 of the 1980 NBA finals, pictured here, with live music and a small troupe of student performers. <\/p>\n
The International, Pittsburgh\u2019s largest showcase of international art, features work by some 60 artists and collectives. Opening weekend includes a number of performances and special events at the museum and other satellite locations.<\/p>\n
The Carnegie\u2019s Ryan Inouye says he and his fellow International co-curators commissioned the new version of \u201cBe Holding\u201d after seeing the 2023 premiere production.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were just floored by it,\u201d Inouye said. He said the show\u2019s blend of poetry, new music and theater with community performers in a community space expressed the themes of collective effort suggested in the International\u2019s title, \u201cif the word we.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is really emblematic of what we are trying to build within the exhibition,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
‘Black flight and Black genius’<\/p>\n
Gay is known for works like his best-selling 2019 collection \u201cThe Book of Delights.\u201d He\u2019s a basketball player and fan who grew up near Philadelphia, but was just 5 when the 76ers\u2019 Dr. J seemed to defy gravity in a baseline drive against Kareem Abdul-Jabbar\u2019s Los Angeles Lakers that ended in a reverse layup.<\/p>\n
As Gay describes the move, Erving left his feet on the baseline and, finding his path to a straightforward dunk blocked by a Lakers defender, \u201csimply decided, in the air, to knock on other doors by soaring more.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Three](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1777632070_650_.jpeg\"\/)
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Bill O’Driscoll<\/p>\n
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90.5 WESA<\/p>\n
Isaac Walker, Keyaerah Clokey\u00a0and David Gaines rehearse in February at the Trust Arts Education Center.<\/p>\n
\u201cHave you ever decided anything \u2026 anything \u2026 in the air?\u201d Gay asks in the poem.<\/p>\n
Gay studied the play obsessively on YouTube, and produced a poem that marries an anatomy of that moment to thoughts about the Middle Passage, Black flight, music and more. \u201cRoss Gay takes one fluid human gesture and through it expands the lungs of personal and communal history so they might hold all joy, terror, and violence of this world,\u201d wrote the American poet and editor Gabrielle Calvocoressi.<\/p>\n
Before he\u2019d even finished writing \u201cBe Holding,\u201d his friend Brooke O\u2019Hara, a theater artist, convinced him it should also be the basis for a live performance.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a beautiful poem about Black flight and Black genius, and it definitely addresses how we look at each other and how we engage each other through the point of holding and caring for and embracing each other, and through joy,\u201d O\u2019Harra said. \u201cThere are moments when [Gay] kind of analyzes a kind of looking that is about violence and pain, but always is turning back to how do we look with joy, and how do we look at Black images, and understand and experience the Black experience as one of genius and flight and joy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The show was created in collaboration with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Tyshawn Sorey and New York-based new-music quartet Yarn\/Wire.<\/p>\n
‘Embody these moves’<\/p>\n
O\u2019Harra developed choreography for the original show with a small ensemble of high-school students and the Philadelphia-based poets and performers David Gaines and Yolanda Wisher, who performed the text in the premiere production, at Philadelphia\u2019s Girard College.<\/p>\n
\u201cBe holding is a Black epic poem, which we don\u2019t really see many of them. A 90-page poem about a five second YouTube clip,\u201d said Gaines. \u201cAnd Black in a way that it is still human that anyone can get anything from the piece.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Gaines again takes a lead role in the Pittsburgh production, this time joined by Gay himself. Yarn\/Wire will perform the partly improvised score on two grand pianos and a pair of large percussion ensembles including drums, chimes and gongs. And a group of performers from Pittsburgh-area high schools worked with O\u2019Harra to develop their version of the show.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are just letting them embody these moves and see what it looks like on stage or with the music,\u201d said O\u2019Harra during a Sunday rehearsal this past February, in Downtown\u2019s Trust Arts Education Center.<\/p>\n
The general idea is to turn basketball moves into dance moves, to the tune of composer Sorley\u2019s atmospheric score.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like the basketball aspect,\u201d said Isaac Walker, a Mt. Lebanon High School sophomore who\u2019s in the show. \u201cI\u2019m not on a team, but I would say I\u2019m pretty good. And it was an interesting opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Gay learned after publishing \u201cBe Holding,\u201d few young folks recall Dr. J, who retired from the NBA in 1987, let alone his iconic baseline move against the Lakers. (In 1980, Michael Jordan was still in high school and LeBron James was not yet born.)<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say it\u2019s about Ross\u2019 like point of view in life, like with basketball and without, like his experiences in just being Black in America,\u201d Walker said.<\/p>\n
‘A grounded setting’<\/p>\n
\u201cBe Holding\u201d performer Gigi Dutrieuille, a City High student and aspiring actor, said in February she hadn\u2019t yet read Gay\u2019s entire poem. \u201cI got through like half of it, low-key, and left it in my bedroom for the time being,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Because all the show\u2019s adult performers are based in other cities (O\u2019Harra in Philadelphia), rehearsals were confined to one weekend in February and the week before the show. This past Monday, students met O\u2019Harra in the Thelma Lovette gym to finalize the choreography.<\/p>\n
![\"Young](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1777632071_700_.jpeg\"\/)
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Courtesy of Brooke O’Harra<\/p>\n
Students in Philadelphia rehearse for the 2023 premiere of “Be Holding.”<\/p>\n
Despite challenges like getting transportation to the venue for the late-afternoon-into-evening rehearsals, and finding time to complete homework, the young performers remained enthused about the project, doing movement exercises and passing basketballs as a way of establishing communication.<\/p>\n
The Y\u2019s gym was closed for several days for the load-in, on-site rehearsals and this weekend\u2019s performance. The court sat outlined with audio, video and power cables, with a monitors facing out to the low bleachers where the audience will sit, and a screen for projected video suspended above the floor at half-court.<\/p>\n
David Gaines, who\u2019d performed \u201cBe Holding\u201d in the gym of Girard College, said the venue remains apt.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love being in a gym space because this poem is clearly about practicality, it is about togetherness, it is about community and it\u2019s about basketball!\u201d he said. \u201cAnd so to be able to do a piece like this in a grounded setting, reflects really all the values that the poem is about.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cNothing happens only when it happens,\u201d writes Ross Gay in \u201cBe Holding,\u201d his acclaimed book-length 2021 poem that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":642540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,136],"class_list":["post-642539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=642539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/642540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}