Archives: Shows

With Nathan Young and Joe Baker
 
The New York City neighborhood we call the East Village is part of Lenapehoking, the homeland of the first inhabitants the Lenape. Manhahtaan (the Lenape word for Manhattan) has always buzzed with economic and cultural exchange, breeding rich and diverse traditions of art, performance, and trade. To celebrate this ongoing legacy, pay respect to the original caretakers of this land, and recognize the considerable influence Native American artists have had on American performance and art, Performance Space New York is partnering with the Lenape Center—the local organization dedicated to the promotion of Lenape language and culture—for the inauguration of its newly renovated spaces. The opening celebration, led by Indigenous artists and leaders, is the beginning of an ongoing relationship between the local arts community and Lenape people on Lenapehoking.
 

A meditation on the mythologies and contradictions of identity, race, gender, and the black body in post-modern American culture.

he his own mythical beast interrogates the complexities of American culture and draws from Hitchcock’s Rear Window, James Baldwin, the confession booth, Claudia Rankine, high school fights, Judith Butler, baptism, Roland Barthes, and Trisha Brown. Venus, a character that flirts with black face, gender ambiguity and sexuality, becomes a guide on this journey. Part beast and part myth, Venus is named after the Hottentot Venus, aka Sarah Baartman – an enslaved black woman who was exhibited as an exotic in the early 19th Century London and Paris. This code-shifting chimaera is Thomson’s response to the post-modern performance aesthetic that historically privileged neutrality as a means of subverting the personal narrative.

This project has consisted of several iterative installations and performances that began in 2012 and will culminate in January. It is created and co-directed by David Thomson, who also performs, and features sound and visual design by Peter Born, who also serves as co-director. Clarinda Mac Low is the dramaturg. Other performers include: Jodi Bender, Katrina Reid, and Paul Hamilton.

These performances include an installation, so please consider arriving earlier than showtime to view.

A masochistic autobiographical meditation on desire, Petra examines race, sex, and power through the lens of service and unrequited love. Moss’ new dance work is inspired by Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s film, “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant”, and features a female immigrant cast that transforms this subversive maternal melodrama, into a wry critique of America’s diversity discourse.

Directed by Dean Moss, with music performed live by composer Samita Sinha, the imagined and real lives of the performers merge, and parallels are drawn between theirs, his, and the film’s queer, anxiety-laced explorations of ambition, subjection and dispossession.

Drawing upon “She whose head is severed” – a Hindu goddess associated with self-sacrifice, spiritual awakening, and the erotic power – Petra features women whose roles are cast in deference to their real life relationships in New York’s contemporary performance scene: Rwandan actor/director, Kaneza Schaal as Petra; Indian vocalist/composer, Samita Sinha as Petra’s lover; Japanese butoh artist/choreographer, Mina Nishimura as Petra’s sister; Finnish contemporary dancer/choreographer, Sari Nordman as Petra’s daughter; and Filipino dancer/choreographer/co-founder of Topaz Arts, Paz Tanjuaquio as Petra’s mother. The family roles are further double-cast to form the singular role of Marlene, Petra’s mute office/personal assistant.

Video performers: Julia Cumming, Sunny Jain, Grey Mcmurray, Marya Warshaw, and Asher Woodworth.

More like a zombie than a pheonix, Desert Body Creep makes a case for transformation through a fantasy of decay. A pop song becomes an ear-worm and burrows through the pores of a body, opening black holes, plot holes and worm holes. Sinking slowly through a chthonic mush, it doesn’t care to be reborn, but it’s very happy to become undead. Things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl, and the next step is obviously to dance. Desert Body Creep is a life and death cycle with the epicness of Dune, but on the scale of a gummi worm, in the style of a surfie western, a cute horror, or maybe post-internet Lovecraft, set somewhere that’s halfway to nowhere on its way from everywhere. Recasting fear and monstrosity, Desert Body Creep assembles a new form of philosophy based on sweet and tender nihilism.

Choreographed and performed by Angela Goh. Sound operation by Matt Cornell.

Eke explores the tension between the performance and the documentation of the performance, by making them one in the same. As the live performance unfolds it is incrementally video recorded. As the documentation accumulates it is projected back into the live performance producing a recursive effect.

Body Of Work is a synthesis of the human body and technology, aiming to play with our perception of time, generating multiple and shifting points of focus for the audience, so they can create their own experience throughout the evening. The performance begs the following questions, What is the contemporary? What is new? What is now? What is present? The performance operates as an allegory of how to be ‘present’, to be in the ‘here and now.’

Choreographed by Atlanta Eke, performed by Atlanta Eke / Ivey Wawn. Music composed and performed by Daniel Jenatsch, video designed by RDYSTDY and operated by Martyn Coutts.