The Fruits of Our Labor Thunders at Arena Stage
Washington’s own Step Afrika!, the globally celebrated company that has made stepping an art form for audiences around the world, has returned home to Arena Stage with a bold new world premiere. The Fruits of Our Labor was created to mark the 250th anniversary of the United States, and it takes on that milestone with both celebration and candor. The title carries a deliberate double meaning. “Our” can mean Americans in general, and it can also mean the Black Americans whose labor helped build the nation. The show explores both, and by the final moments it has pulled everyone in the room into that word. The production plays through Nov 1, 2026, on Arena’s Fichandler Stage.
For anyone who has never seen Step Afrika!, this is an ideal introduction. Stepping is a percussive dance tradition in which the performers’ bodies become the instruments, with stomps, claps, slaps, and calls building into rhythm and storytelling. Critics were stunned by the precision and sheer speed of the company’s work, describing a physical, electric performance so relentless that it is hard to imagine how the dancers keep going for the full evening. The ensemble moves as a single, powerful unit, yet individual performers regularly step out of the group, creating a compelling tension between collective identity and personal history. Because the Fichandler surrounds the stage on all four sides, the audience sits right in the middle of the action, closer to witnesses than spectators.
Directed and choreographed by Jakari Sherman with Conrad R. Kelly II and South African choreographer Vusi Mdoyi, the show opens in a dim, nearly colorless world. Colleen Doty’s set drapes the theatre with charcoal banners and scorched strips of fabric, and one section of seating has been transformed into a tiered stage. From there the evening erupts, as dancers in black, military-style costumes and bright white gloves (designed by Cierra Coan) step furiously to pounding drums under Yannick Godts’ blazing white light. It is a striking contrast to the company’s joyful holiday shows, and reviewers found it a gripping way to begin.
What follows weaves stepping together with song, poetry, sacred imagery, and the words of historic Americans. A sermon by the Reverend C. L. Franklin, father of Aretha Franklin, plays as the image of a bald eagle is projected beneath the dancers’ feet. Echoes of “The Star-Spangled Banner” drift through the space, the Pledge of Allegiance becomes a call and response, a trio dances barefoot atop drumheads, and an electric guitar wails over thunderous percussion. The writings of Phillis Wheatley appear, and in one of the evening’s most admired moments, a passage from Frederick Douglass’s 1852 Fourth of July speech slowly materializes on the set as the performers illuminate it with blacklight flashlights.
Critics singled out several scenes as highlights. Midway through, a performer turns to the audience and speaks directly and warmly to the crowd, then introduces each member of the company by name and hometown, a simple shift that changes the entire relationship between the stage and the seats. A sequence touching on the 15th Amendment and the Voting Rights Act features four scribes wielding oversized quill pens to scratch rhythms across drumheads, creating a haunting soundscape. Another moment, in which fallen performers are laid within rectangles of light as a bugler plays Taps, drew audible gasps from the audience.
Through it all, the production refuses to make its celebration of America entirely comfortable, yet it never rejects that celebration either. Instead it presents a nation still in progress, still being shaped and argued over. The finale bursts into the infectious, clap-along exuberance Step Afrika! fans know and love, sending audiences out with the rhythms still pulsing through them. The outstanding company features 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.
The Fruits of Our Labor runs approximately 80 minutes with no intermission and plays through Nov 1, 2026, on the Fichandler Stage at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater, 1101 Sixth Street SW, Washington, DC.