The unforgettable self-portrait of a life lived in motion, told through a vibrant collage of evocative archival imagery, propulsive sound and embodied storytelling

Celebrated dance-theater artist David Roussève marks the 40th anniversary of his company REALITY with his most intimate work yet. Part autobiography and part retrospective, Becoming Daddy AF is the unforgettable self-portrait of a life lived in motion. With grit and wild humor, Roussève weaves generational tales to trace lineages of ancestry, artistry and cunning in his first-hand telling of the life of a queer, African American man born in the 1950s and the histories his body holds. Through a vibrant collage of evocative archival imagery, propulsive sound, fluid gestural movement and powerfully embodied storytelling, Becoming Daddy AF charts 600 years of family genealogy with four decades of unforgettable dancemaking from the man The Washington Post described as “one of modern dance’s great stage personalities.”

As Roussève journeys across decades and continents—from ancestral roots in Portugal in the 1400s to downtown dance venues in the 1980s, from Houston’s third Ward to the halls of Princeton, from heart-stopping first glances to heart-rending loss—his exuberant and expressive dancing conveys the knowledge of his sixty-plus years while offering an unflinching vulnerability. Becoming Daddy AF invokes the joy, humor, messiness and beauty of lives forged in survival to conjure a heartfelt tribute to the transformational power of love, and to those who bravely, relentlessly seek it.