Jeffrey Ziegler and Reggie 'Regg Roc' Gray - We Were Fridays

Jeffrey Ziegler and Reggie “Regg Roc” Gray bring We Were Fridays to the Wexner Center for the Arts on Thursday, February 4 and Friday, February 5, 2027, both nights starting at 7 PM. It's a Wex Commissioned Project, an interdisciplinary archive and story that puts cello, dance, and electronics on the same stage to trace personal and familial histories within the Gullah community.

The narrative starts with the griot or storyteller tradition of West Africa, travels to South Carolina via the transatlantic slave trade, moves north during the Great Migration, and continues through Vietnam and Japan. It's told through cello, electronics, film, and live dance, working through forbidden love, fractured lines, and complex legacies. Much of that draws on the music of the Gullah people of the South Carolina Lowcountry, who have preserved more of their West African linguistic and cultural heritage than any other African American community in the US—music that went on to shape spirituals, gospel, ragtime, rhythm and blues, soul, hip-hop, and jazz.

On the cello is Jeffrey Ziegler, who was a member of the Kronos Quartet from 2005 to 2013 and has received the Avery Fisher Prize, the Polar Music Prize, and the Asia Society's Cultural Achievement Award. Pairing with him is Brooklyn dancer and choreographer Reggie “Regg Roc” Gray, a pioneer of flexn who founded The D.R.E.A.M.

Both shows are at 7 PM at the Wexner Center, 1871 N. High Street. Tickets are $35 for members, $45 for the general public, $42 for adults 55 and over, and $15 for students.