Shows | Page 37 of 53 | Performance Space New York

farsa

With her work farsa (engl. farce), the Brazilian artist Renata Lucas creates “a theatre that performs itself” generating a montage of space and perception that disarms dynamics of totality. A large hanging curtain that spans across Performance Space’s main theatre—within which two smaller curtains are embedded—rotates and opens up passageways when activated by the viewer. As bodies move through the work, their limbs appear as disembodied pieces cutting through perceived truths and assumptions, leaving us in a state of farcical reality where nothing is static or stable. With farsa, Lucas alludes to the current political situation in Brazil, where totalitarian currents attempt to reshape rights and liberties and disembody established values and moral systems.

Credits

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Marathon Reading of Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldúa

Related Event: First Mondays: Readings of New Works in Progress Organized by Sarah Schulman

With Shellyne Rodriguez, Charles Rice-González and Norma Cantú

With her groundbreaking work, first published in 1987, Gloria Anzaldúa (1942-2004) established the Mexican-American border as a metaphor for different types of transgressions—racial, sexual, social, and cultural. The work was radical not only because it was one of the first popular writings by a Chicana feminist who also publicly claimed her lesbianism, but it was also new in form and language, switching between essay and poetry, English, Mexican, Spanish, and Indigenous dialects. “Chicano Spanish is not approved by any society. But we no longer feel that we need to beg for entrance. today we ask to be met halfway.” Borderlands/La Frontera has become an iconic foundational text for Ethnic Studies, Women’s Studies, and Queer Latino Studies. On May 15, 2004, Gloria Anzaldúa passed away at the age of only 61 from complications due to diabetes. In 2012, 25 years after its publication, the work was banned from being read, taught, or disseminated in public schools by the Tucson Unified School system, in an effort to stifle Mexican-American studies. The reality is that in 2019, Anzaldúa’s writings are still painfully relevant as the current administration escalates violence against and incarceration of Central Americans at the U.S. border.

Performance Space New York’s Marathon Readings, organized by Sarah Schulman, shares important, influential, and experimental work by women who have passed away, to collectively remember their words. Previous readings were: Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker and DICTEE by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha.

Credits

Photo courtesy of Aunt Lute Books. Cover art by Pamela Wilson.

Circle

Gutierrez invites you to enter into a secret holding laboratory for what can only be assumed is a dangerous creature. Held captive in a secret cryogenic facility, Eve—named by her creator, Dr. Red—is the first humanoid to be bioengineered with reanimated alien DNA discovered in the Mayan cave Xibalba, or “place of fear,” believed to be the mouth of the underworld. Will Eve be the key to humanity’s evolution, or its undoing?

Gutierrez says, “The most real and profound boundaries are those we impose upon ourselves.” Eve, this creature in captivity may be commenting on Gutierrez’s self-perceived otherness, but it also exposes the audience to their own insecurities and prejudices.

Protective cover-wear will be provided upon entry.

Credits

Commissioned by Performance Space New York. This project is supported in part by a grant from the Jerome Foundation.

Untitled, The Black Act

Kia LaBeija’s first large scale performance work engages with Oskar Schlemmer’s early Bauhaus ballet piece Das triadische Ballett, a dance in three acts. LaBeija reinterprets the final, so called Black Act which relates to fantasy, mysticism, and the infinite void of the black stage. LaBeija proposes a contemporary interpretation, inserting herself as an artist working with numerous disciplines—including dance, portraiture, and performance—to investigate space, memory and personal history. Schlemmer’s extravagant costumes deliberately limited the dancers’ freedom of movement. Bodies became walking architectural structures unable to move with autonomous ease. Now, LaBeija responds and repositions Schlemmer’s critique by expanding his stage, searching for being, belonging, freedom, and wholeness.

Contemporary costumes designed in collaboration with Kyle Luu, with live music score by Kenn Michael featuring Warren Benbow.

Disclaimer:
The Estate of Oskar Schlemmer has not approved or licensed Untitled, The Black Act.

Credits

(Untitled) The Black Act is co-commissioned with Performa and Performance Space New York and co-produced with The Josie Club – Mickalene Thomas, Racquel Chevremont, Jet Toomer and Nina Chanel Abney. Additional support provided by Abigail Pucker, Victoria Rogers, Jane Wesman and the Performa Commissioning Fund. This project is supported in part by a grant from the Jerome Foundation. Special thanks to Swarovski.

Assistant Movement Director and Creative Producer, Taína Larot. Featuring Daniella Agosto, Selena Ettienne, Khristina Cayetano, Terry Lovette, and Taína Larot.

Photo courtesy of the artist.

Slipping Into Darkness

As a week-long performance-installation, Tolentino’s new durational work, Slipping Into Darkness, plays out in both the Day and the Night. In the daylight of the winter sun, movers breathe, labor, and shift while sheathed under the cover of a thick “horizon” made from leather, scented oils, reflective surfaces, and dense sound. In the evening, participants join in an intimate one-to-one exchange immersed in a dark pool of mineral water. Working with and below these evocative opaque surfaces, Tolentino reaches for the sensual, the subjective excess of each encounter. Loss tenders refuge. Space and time open to the accounts of Others—the imprecisely labeled, unseen, or overlooked—and the inspiring visionaries who thrive as not-of-this-world future-makers. Tolentino tunes us into spaces that generously blur yet ignite our shadowy interiors and fugitive poetics with time’s future-past to float with that which falls in and out of grasp.

This project will be accompanied by .bury.me.fiercely.—a 35-minute special late night performance on Dec 12th at 10pm by Julie Tolentino and Stosh Fila.

Credits

Commissioned by Performance Space New York.