Performance | Performance Space New York

DARKMATTER

In ~~DARK~~MATTER, Cherish Menzo and her onstage partner Camilo Mejía Cortés look for ways to detach their bodies from the way they are perceived and the daily reality in which they move. Among other things, they look up to the sky, at dark matter and at black holes that meet and collide to give birth to a new, (afro)futuristic and enigmatic body. ~~DARK~~MATTER wants to get rid of the biased way of looking at one’s own body, at that of the other, and at the stories we attribute to them. Together, they throw their bodies into a complex conversation that they want to both enter into and transcend—a duality that feeds the performance.

Just as in her previous project, JEZEBEL, Menzo stretches her movement language further by applying the Chopped and Screwed method to her movement language. A remix technique from hip-hop music in which the tempo is sharply reduced. By stretching the notions of time, the register changes and the performing body manages to generate new readings. ~~DARK~~MATTER wants to create a thorough reshuffle of our atoms, looking for a new form for—and way of looking at—our body and the complex outside world to which it relates.

Cherish Menzo‘s ~~DARK~~MATTER is co-presented by Under the Radar.

Mister Cobra

Mister Cobra, a semi-autobiographical solo theater-music performance by Lucy Liyou, combines free-jazz, korean folk opera, musique-concrète, 2000s era pop, text-to-speech recordings, film, comedy, and drag-inspired performance techniques to confront and dematerialize the boundaries of their transition, and reconsider her transition and personhood as inevitably intertwined with public spectatorship.

Liyou looks at Mister Cobra as a humiliation ritual that confronts and dematerializes the embarrassment one has regarding the traumas that inform the boundaries of one’s transition. It raises questions about the role that desire plays in one’s transition, how abuse can distort motivations to transition, and where transitioning “begins” and “ends” (assuming that these points even exist).

Aguas Frescas

On the heels of the 10th year anniversary of his cross-disciplinary fashion label, Sánchez-Kane, artist Bárbara Sánchez-Kane’s Aguas Frescas creates a collective and sensorial experience, inviting the audience into a performance drawing on Mexican street culture and the communal ritual of drinking horchatas.

Across two evenings of performances, Sánchez-Kane’s collaborators share their work through varied mediums inside the installation which consists of traditional Mexican Malinche chairs called with glass containers of fresh horchata. A metallic spoon stirs the liquid, providing a steady rhythm as audience members are invited to indulge in the aguas frescas before and after the performance, highlighting its metaphor of shared experience and collective engagement.

Aguas Frescas is co-commissioned by Mudam and TONO Festival and presented by Performance Space New York.

Moor Mother: Closing Performance

Black Quantum Futurism presents the closing show of their Open Room residency, a live performance from Moor Mother.