CK Alum Returns with Powerful, Original Work for Winter Festival Concert

Hannah Morris, CK Class of 2014, returned to the dance studio this fall to create a powerful new work for the Advanced Dance class. Her piece, “Like It Is,” draws inspiration from Detroit’s historic Black Bottom—Detroit’s oldest African American neighborhood, named for the dark, fertile river-bottom soil that early settlers found there.

Once a thriving community where Black families, many with roots dating back to the Civil War and the Great Migration, built homes, businesses, churches, and world-renowned music clubs, Black Bottom and its adjacent Paradise Valley formed a cultural hub that attracted legendary performers such as Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Count Basie. Aretha Franklin’s father famously preached at New Bethel Baptist Church on Hastings Street.

This vibrant neighborhood was dismantled in the 1950s and 1960s during a wave of urban renewal that displaced many African American communities across the country.

Set to the music of Detroit jazz great Yusef Lateef, Morris’s choreography reflects both the joy and resilience of this community, and the profound struggles its residents faced amid poverty and displacement. To deepen the dancers’ understanding, she had students research this era of Detroit’s history and arranged for New York Times best-selling author Alice Randall to speak with the class. Randall’s novel Black Bottom Saints celebrates the real-life figures who lived and worked in this remarkable neighborhood. One of the central insights she shared was how Black Bottom residents used music, dance, and the arts as sources of strength and survival.

Hannah Morris’s “Like It Is” will be performed at the Winter Festival Concert on December 10, 2025, and again at the Evening of Dance Concert on May 1, 2026, at the PAC. This impactful choreographic residency was made possible through Bravo.