Part dance-theater and part pop-culture collage, Raja Feather Kelly is UGLY and this is the latest from the Warhol-obsessed; Black; Queer; Drama Queen of the feath3r theory and his response to the dearth of nuanced black queer subjectivity in the mainstream. Raja Feather Kelly says "I am an Ugly man. I am a queer of substance, color and depth, thoughts and expression- and I might even be said to possess magick. I am Ugly, understand, simply because you refuse to see me... " (thebushwickstarr.org)
Created and Performed by Raja Feather Kelly
Collaborators: Tuçe Yasak (light designer), You-Shin Chen (set designer) Emily Auciello (sound designer) Kate Enman (photographer), Rachel Pritzlaff (production manager), Kimberly Golding (stage manager), Amy Gernux and Aaron Moses Robin (choreography associates)
Performed at The Bushwick Starr September 5 - 9 2018
https://www.thebushwickstarr.org/ugly
https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/dance/raja-feather-kelly-ugly
This is the third and concluding part of the pop queer empathy trilogy UGLY, which will be first performed at ImPulsTanz. Raja Feather Kelly, choreographer, dancer and director of the company the feath3r theory is a huge fan of Andy Warhol and says about his own work: “I use performance and exhibition as means to promote empathy. My practice identifies opportunities where popular culture and human desire overlap, and amplifies them.” In BLUE, Kelly wants to take the exclusion (Black Queer Zoo) and the alienation (Hysteria) of African American subjectivity to a zone of empathy, i.e. ‘home’ (http://thefeath3rtheory.com)
Concept, Direction, and Performance by Raja Feather Kelly
Collaborators: Tuce Yasak (Lighting Design), Laura Snow (Video and Projection), You-Shin Chen (Set Design), Brandi Holt (Costume Design, Raja Feather Kelly (Music), David Baldwin and Emily Wells (Original Compositions), Christoph Mateka (Sound Mix)
BLUE was commissioned by the Vienna International Dance Festival, Impulstanz as a part of their 2021 Season.
HYSTERIA, a performance, Film, and installation that continues Raja Feather Kelly’s study of pop culture and its displacement of queer Black subjectivity. Picking up where his 2018 performance, UGLY, left off, Kelly resituates himself as a glamourous, extraterrestrial entity—both alien to the world and wholly consuming its pop cultural byproducts. HYSTERIA marks the collapse of fiction into fact, tracking the subsequent inner turmoil, confusion, and mania that Kelly sets out to exorcise. (http://thefeath3rtheory.com)
Choreographed, directed, and performed by Raja Feather Kelly
Collaborators: Tuce Yasak (Lighting Design), Raja Feather Kelly & Kate Enman (Set and Prop Design) , Remy Kurs & Raja Feather Kelly (Sound), Laura Snow (Video), Laura Snow with CJ Ferroni (Cinematography)
Photos by Kate Enman
Composed and Performed by Grace Galu
Collaborators: Baba Israel (Libretto, Co-Director, and Performer), Talvin Wilks (Co-Director and Dramaturg), Nic Benacerraf (Associate Director and Environment Design), Asa Wember (Sound Designer), David Bengali (Video Designer), Kate Fry (Costume Designer), Tuce Yasek (Lighting Designer), Alex B. West (Stage Manager), Roya Abab (Lighting Programmer), Rachel Blackwell (Associate Lighting Designer)
Performers and Co-Choreographers: Tatiana Barber, Courtney Cook, Chanon Judson, Mame Diarra (Samantha) Speis
Musician: Robert Knowles, Sean Nowell, Jonathon "Duv" Zaragoza, Osei Kweku, Juan Carlos Polo
Photos by Maria Baranova
Performed at the Ellen Stewart Theatre at La Mama, July 14–31, 2022.
Choreography by Netta Yerushalmy
Photos by Marina Levitskaya
Performed at the Alexander Kasser Theatre in Montclair, New Jersey, March 17-20, 2022
Dog Day Afternoon is a 1975 American biographical crime drama film directed by Sidney Lumet, starring Al Pacino, John Cazale, featuring Chris Sarandon. It chronicles the events following a bank robbery by John Wojtowicz and was inspired by a 1972 Life magazine article “The Boys in the Bank” by P. F. Kluge. The film sticks fairly close to the true narrative. Two guys held up a small bank and through a series of comic and tragic misfires this leads to a 14 hour standoff with the police. The hook of the story for many was that Wojtowicz was robbing the bank in the hopes of getting the funds for his partner Elizabeth Eden’s gender-affirming surgery. To this day Al Pacino character, Sonny Wortzik, and his partner remain two of the highest profile LGBTQ characters in film history.
40 years later, Dance, Theatre, and Media company the feath3r theory began a search for the true motivations and outcome behind the bank robbery in a production they are calling WEDNESDAY. Their theatre veritè live documentary dismantles the film in an attempt to re-center the story on the company’s Artistic Director, Raja Feather Kelly’s relationship to Liz Eden, for whom the character Leon in the film is loosely based.
Kelly started this project when he wrote an essay for himself titled, Who Gets To Tell Whose Story. In this essay, Kelly contemplates and criticizes identity politics in performance culture and a fear that his particular and specific identity has no place in popular culture. Working with Kate Bornstein through Queer|Art|Mentorship, Kelly will release the long form essay with the theatrical world premiere. (http://thefeath3rtheory.com)
Written, Conceived, and Directed by Raja Feather Kelly
Performed by: Chris Bell, Collin Kelly, Alexandria Giroux, Claire Geringer, Ashley Chavonne, Amy Hoang, Jordan King
Collaborators: Tuce Yasak (Lighting Design), You-Shin Chen (Scenic Design), Brandi Holt and Jordan King (Costume Design), Laura Snow (Cinematography and Video Editing), Colm Summers (Assistant Direction)
Photography by Kate Enman
Alex Tatarsky, Dirt Trip, MoMA PS1, June 4, 2022. Photo: Angela Cholmondeley. Courtesy MoMA PS1.
Part game-show and part stage-play, The KILL ONE Race, created by Raja Feather Kelly. This work is inspired by the social experiments of William Greaves (Symbiopsychotaxiplasm), Lars von Trier (Dogville), the dystopian novels of Leslie Louis (Kill One) and Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games), and the evolution of early televised game shows. Kelly questions: Do we make culture or does Culture Make us, and in The KILL ONE Race brings this inquiry of pop culture’s omnipotence into the very onscreen forms it deconstructs. (http://thefeath3rtheory.com)
Created by Raja Feather Kelly
Commissioned and Presented by Playwrights Horizon
Collaborators: Production Design (Raja Feather Kelly), Laura Snow (Media Producer, Lead Editor), Tuce Yasak (Lighting Design), You-Shin Chen (Set Design), Sophie Maguire (Set Design), CJ Ferroni (Director of Photography), Remy Kurs (Music), Kate Enman (Photography), Brandi Holt (Company Management), Colm Summers (Assistant to Director), Raja Feather Kelly (Assistant to Editor), Ilya Vidrin and Jessi Stegall (Ethics Consultants), Kevin Novinsky (Sound Engineer), Jacob Schmid (Assistant Sound Engineer)
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/20/theater/kill-one-reality-tv-theater.html
https://www.vulture.com/2021/06/two-shows-pretend-to-put-20-somethings-lives-on-the-line.html
Directed and Choreographed by Raja Feather Kelly
Written by Young Jean Lee
Collaborators: David Zinn (Scenic Design), Naoko Nagata (Costume Design), Tuce Yasak (Lighting Design), Jason Crystal (Sound Design), Remy Kurs (Music Supervision and Arrangement), Cian McCarthy (Orchestrations), John C. Moore (Production Stage Manager), Bryan Bauer (Stage Manager)
Featuring: Freddy Hall, Janelle McDermoth, Kevin Ramessar, Debbie Christine Tjong, Marques Wall
Photos by Joan Marcus
Performed at the Second Stage Theatre, February 4th - March 12, 2020 (Closed early due to Covid-19)
In This Bridge Called My Ass, six Latinx performers map an elusive choreography of obsessive and perverse action within an unstable terrain of bodies, materials and sound. A formal logic binds the group and propels them to create a constantly transforming world where their togetherness retains autonomy to complicate the idea of identity. Clichéd Latin-American songs and the form of the telenovela are exploited to show how familiar structures contain absurdity that reveal and celebrate difference. (chocolatefactorytheater.org)
Created and Composed by Miguel Gutierrez
Performed by Alvaro Gonzalez, John Gutierrez, Miguel Gutierrez, Xandra Ibarra, Nibia Pastrana Santiago, and Evelyn Sanchez Narvaez
Collaborators: Tuçe Yasak (lighting designer), Stephanie Acosta (dramaturg, assistant director), Matthe Shalzi (prop design), Rosana Caban (recording engineer)
Premiered at Chocolate Factory Theater, January 9 - 19 2019
Tour includes Centre Chorégraphique National de Montpellier (June 2019), Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (September 2019), The Walker Arts Center among others
photos from Chocolate Factory Theater and Centre Chorégraphique
This Bridge Called My Ass @ Chocolate Factory Theater
https://brooklynrail.org/2019/02/dance/Miguel-Gutierrez-This-Bridge-Called-My-Ass
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/10/arts/dance/review-miguel-gutierrez-this-bridge.html
This Bridge Called My Ass @ TBA Festival - Portland Institute of Contemporary Arts
https://www.pica.org/tba/this-bridge/
This Bridge Called My Ass @ Centre Chorégraphique National de Montpellier, France
https://www.paris-art.com/miguel-gutierrez-montpellier-danse-agora-this-bridge-called-my-ass/
A Bessie Award-winner for Outstanding Production and Visual Design, Memoirs of a…Unicorn is a solo performed, non-linear installation that weaves sound and media to offer historic and personal narratives as embodied tales of fragmented histories, unabated love, and Warriorship. Spurred by stories of Marjani Forté-Saunders’ Arkansas born Father’s life, Forté-Saunders explores the tenets of his identity while riffing in the wound of its creation story. (newyorklivearts.org)
Created and Performed by Marjani Forté-Saunders
Collaborators: Tuçe Yasak (lighting designer), Meena Murugesan (media designer), Everett Saunders (sound designer), Mimi Lien (set designer), Rick Forté (set builder)
Presented by New York Live Arts at The Collapsable Hole, November 15 - 19 2017
Touring includes Ford Theater in Los Angeles (August 2018), New York Live Arts (January 2019)
“joyUS justUS” is an evening length participatory Urban Latin Dance Theater experience that takes on joy as the ultimate expression of resistance. Whenever humans have survived immense hardship and injustice, prevailing with their humanity intact, the presence of joy or, the knowingness and celebration of our true beauty and power has always been at the root. “joyUS justUS” reclaims the dominant deficit based narrative of people of color in this country as being underprivileged, voiceless, powerless, and victimized, and flips it on its head by embodying stories of joy collected from communities of color in South Los Angeles. The stories shared in this work are personal truths about the power of hope, faith, and family, the strength of the villages that have raised our children and the wealth that lives in our collective histories of struggle and resistance.
These truths are embodied through the technically rigorous social dance forms that were born out of these experiences, that are at the root of our company’s Urban Latin Dance technique, and that are the physical embodiment of that most powerful, healing joy. Through the conversations with South LA communities, retelling their stories through movement on the concert stage, inviting audiences locally and nationally to actively participate in what they’re experiencing on the stage, and continuing to engage broader audiences in the telling of their own truths, we are creating spaces of joy and healing, allowing the collective “us” to feel more connected, loved, powerful, and alive. (contra-tiempo.org)
Conceived and directed by Ana Maria Alvarez
Choreographed in collaboration between Alvaraez and company members.
Music by Las Cafeteras
Collaborators: Tuçe Yusak (lighting design and lighting director), d. Sabela Grimes (sound design) Charlese Antoinette (costume design), Emily Orling (set design),
Premiered September 13 2018 at Bovard Auditorium in Los Angeles, CA
2-year tour includes the Carpenter Center in Long Beach, CA among many others
https://daily49er.com/artslife/2018/11/04/joyus-justus-radicalizes-joy-with-movement-and-live-music/
https://www.artburstmiami.com/dance-articles/5475
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/museums/la-et-cm-contra-tiempo-joy-us-20181108-story.html
Depending on which letters you place in the blank spaces, M_ _ _ ER could spell mother, matter, or murder. All of those things are possible in this new work from Autumn Knight, an interdisciplinary artist who likes to play around with improv, visual art, and fucking with the audience. If the show is anything like Sanity TV, and it sounds a little like Sanity TV, Knight will play a variously cheeky and antagonistic talk-show host who makes certain audience members feel uncomfortable a lot, which can be fun, especially if you're not the one in the hot seat. (ontheboards.org)
Installation and Performance by Autumn Knight
Collaborators: Tuce Yasak (lighting design), Rene Anakwe (sound design), Ryan Dunn (associate lighting designer)
Commissioned and performed October 10-13 2019 at On the Boards in Seattle Washington.
https://www.ontheboards.org/performances/m-er
(re)Source is an evening-length live danced and spoken artwork performed inside an installation of taut strings and framed images which immersively surrounds and implicates the audience. Creator Maria Bauman-Morales dances through, with, in, and in spite of the visual, sonic and human landscapes which house (re)Source. The performance-ritual is unique and steeped in immediacy every time Bauman-Morales inhabits it; (re)Source is a scored improvisation wherein Bauman-Morales dances, sings, and speaks through the assets in her family (both the Blackfolks and whites), what it takes to make it in Trump’s U.S., and what her research into maroonage and her own ancestors have to do with all of that. She employs some of her families’ histories as a complex microcosm of race relations in the United States, digging in to the process of other-ing, being other-ed, and reclaiming radical connection. (chocolatefactorytheatre.org)
Conceived, Constructed, Designed, and Performed by Maria Bauman-Morales
Collaborators: Tuçe Yasak (lighting design), Nontsikelelo Mutiti (installation designer), Jefferion (costume construction), Shea Rose (sound design), James Lo (sound engineering), Alicia Bauman-Morales (installation director), Roxy Gordon (stage manager), Shana Crawford (production associate)
Performed at the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance September 25 - 28 2019
Co-Presented with The Chocolate Factory Theater and Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance
http://www.urbanbushwomencenter.org/voicesfromthebush
https://infinitebody.blogspot.com/2019/09/melanie-george-reflects-on-resource-new.html
Another Fucking Warhol Production or Who's Afraid of Andy Warhol? is a 2017 American docufiction performance, which premiered as part of Lumberyard in The City June 22-24, 2017. Directed by Raja Feather Kelly, recipient of the 2016 Solange MacArthur Award for New Choreography, the performance stars Kelly and his company as themselves performing a post-ballet theatre musical that reimagines and attempts to re-create the unrecorded, deleted and lost footage from Saturday Night Live's 2015 Episode on Love and War (The Love Episode). Featuring musical guest Kanye West. (thefeath3rtheory.com)
Choreographed by Raja Feather Kelly
Performed by Amy Gernux, Sara Gurevich, Rachel Pritzlaff, Collin Ranf, Aaron Moses Robin, Benjamin Wolk
Collaborators: Tuçe Yusak (lighting design), Laura Snow (video design), Kate Enman (photography), Altor Mendilibar (Videography), Emily Auciello (sound design), Alex Zylka (associate lighting designer)
Presented as part of LUMBERYARD in the City at the Kitchen June 22-24 2017
Revived at Dance Place in Washington DC April 21-22 2018
https://www.dancemagazine.com/the-feather-theory-2553188218.html
https://howlround.com/were-all#disqus_thread
unsettled is the story of people whom have been forced to relocate. Putting the ideal of reconciliation into the center, unsettled looks closely at the idea of conflict as an individual, social and national experience and invites the audience to share the grief of the land, with the hope for bringing the light to the dark side and creating one human race and one world through the power of art. From Brokklyn to Yerevan and then to Istanbul, we walked shoulder to shoulder, our hands on our hearts and our faces turned to sun, hoping to light the darkness of past, present and future...
Choreographed by Korhan Basaran and David Dorfman, commissioned by DancemotionUSA and BAM in 2014, conceived at BATES Dance Festival
“Lumensentient Projections” is a live performance in which light is the performer, as much as the musician and the dancer, and the stage is any surface such as a facade, dome or bridge. Light is embodied in drops of transparent dyes which travel through a clear and viscous liquid body. As these drops of light _ow and dissolve into each other, audience members are led to an almost transcendental experience through the light’s organic movement. Lumensentient Projections lends a sense of peace to most citizens who witness it, allowing them an opportunity to stay in the moment and explore the depth of that moment. They cannot be completely domesticated or harnessed as no light painting can ever be duplicated or completely directed or controlled as they are performed in the moment. The fact that the dance of the drops can be conducted but not choreographed overlaps with improvised nature of dance and music, unguessable nature of human being. As the liquid lights are conducted by the breath of the artists Edmond Deraedt and Tuce Yasak, the walls of the interiors start to breath and move and dance. Dancer Nikki Holck becomes one with the liquid lights and so with the architecture. As liquid lights move, musician John Maiorino responds with his improvisations that he creates via a large spectrum of instruments. The dancer responds the lights and music via her movement. The light artists responds to the movement of the dancer and the sound via their breath; and the light drops respond to the breath, the core of being, via laws of nature.
Lumensentient Projections was performed as a part of LAMP urban light festival in New Haven, CT in October 2013, and MassBliss Festival in Great Barrington, MA in July 2015.
Also featuring Belinda He besides John Maiorino and myself, photographed by Edmond Deraedt, Lumensentient Projections, in the form of transparent postcards, attended Gutai Card Box project as a part Gutai: Playground exhibition at Guggenheim Museum, NYC in February 2013.
COLOR ME, WARHOL, premiered at Dixon Place in April 2015, is the latest installment of an ongoing series jump-started by Raja Feather Kelly’s interest in Andy Warhol, pop culture, and identity.Seeing the world through a Warholian lens and “regurgitating” it into what he calls “Artsploitations", his new work is surreal and radical dance-theater, plundering the illusions of today’s popular culture, the impending social media war, and that imaginary line separating performers and audience. COLOR ME, WARHOL completes Andy Warhol’s vision of Richard Attenborough & Michael Bennet’s 1985 movie-musical classic A CHORUS LINE.
Choreographed and directed by Raja Feather Kelly
co-directed by Laura Snow
Performed by Raja Feather Kelly, Amy Gernux, Beth Graczyk, Lindsay Head, Yvonne Hernandez, Rebecca Hite, Nik Owens, Rachel Pritzlaff, John Gutierrez, Ben Wolk, Aaron Moses Robin, Yeman Brown.
Collaborators: Tuce Yasak (Lighting and Technical Director); Andrew Jordan (Photographer); Laura Snow (Co- Director and Videographer); Aitor Mendilibar (Photographer and Videographer); Jesse Ricke, Lisa Lee (Projection ensemble); Jenna Petok, Erik Abbot-Main (Marketing); Sam Crawford (music)
http://newyorktheatrereview.blogspot.com/2015/04/one-very-singular-sensation-rachel.html
http://www.dance-enthusiast.com/features/view/Feath3r-theory-color-me-warhol
In Miranda Huba's HOSPITAL CITY a pair of drug-addicted sisters travel to a strange city known as "The Hospital" in search of the cure for their woes and loneliness. Unfortunately for them, "the cure" is not so readily available; Hospital City is far from the all-inclusive resort they had imagined. Their world becomes a massive game and the sisters learn to play the rules: they are forced to get jobs to earn their keep, share a bed due to overcrowding and find themselves subject to medical experiments. No matter how much medicine they take, they just don't seem to get any better. HOSPITAL CITY focuses on the position of women in the fight for healthcare and brings reproductive, mental, and addiction services into focus through two sisters' struggle for survival.
Featuring Lindsay Mack, Kate Armstrong Ross and Joanne Wilson
Costume Design by Mia Bienovich
Lighting Design by Tuce Yasak
Sound Design by Nathan Schwartz
Video Design by James Daher and Lucia Jeesun Lee
from nytheater.com:
"...Individually all the elements are impressive, the costumes (Mia Bienovich) are simple but very successful in supporting transitions, the lighting (Tuce Yasak) and sound (Nathan Schwartz) define space and time well. With running, the production will strengthen and hopefully find its impact amongst its many targets."
http://www.nytheatre.com/Review/ivanna-cullinan-2011-10-6-hospital-city
Trust in the You of Now is a three part multi-media chamber opera. It is the story of two future astronauts stuck in a spaceship hovering above an unlivable earth that has been taken over by sentient robots, killing drones and a new post-nuclear species of frogs. It explores the meaning of creation and the effects of technological advancement on human society.
Trust in the You of Now is performed by a live eight-member orchestra and two female opera singers. A narration is delivered by of-stage voices, which are incorporated within the score and modern dancers perform movement and pantomime to communicate the stage action. The story follows an epic battle between two robots to control the lives of a frog civilization over several millennia. The songs are presented in the undecipherable languages of the robots and frogs respectively and translated by astronaut onlookers.
Each part of the three-part opera utilizes different mediums, shifting focus to reveal specific facets of the story. The first part, was presented by Theater for the New City and Ouroboros Co. in May 2014, the love affair of Willie Willie, a gifted frog, and Fictor, a popular sentient robot, whom encounter the rage of the killing drone robots that control their society.
Trust in the You of Now: Part One
an original chamber opera composed by Robert Boston
libretto by Kimberly Pau
choreography by Giada Ferrone
directed by Eric Mercado & Kimberly Pau
photography by KiKi Larson
Rebecca Gilman's The Glory of Living, produced by Hannah Sloat and Revolve Productions, directed by Ashley Kelly Tata and performed at the The Access Theatre in August, 2013. The Glory of Living follows the story of Lisa, a girl who leaves her trailer home and prostitute mother to join Clint, a man who loves her very much. The two take off and travel through the rural south of America, living in motel rooms, paid for with cash from minor theft. As their crimes turn from petty to depraved, audience is confronted with a portrait of America that slipped-through-the-cracks of nameless victims and their equally nameless perpetrators. Lighting design in close collaboration with scenery, explores this shift between the first and second act, from shadowy motel rooms to stark interrogation rooms
http://offoffonline.com/?p=10104
“…set designer Alexandra Regazzoni provides stunning visual counterpoint…Tuce Yasak’s lighting complements the concept … The inspiration carries over to Regazzoni’s apropos costumes
*Courtesy of Hunter Canning Photography
Unfold was a site specific work that was choreographed for the main stage in Zorlu Performing Arts Center. The audience of 50 started their journey into the piece from the 2nd balcony and watched the first part of the show from the top of the house. For the second part, the audience was leaded to the first balcony; and for the third part to the orchestra. As the audience moved and changed perspective and the stage kept extending via opened curtains and lifted blackdrops, the piece kept unfolding. Eventually, for the finale audience sat on stage, the distance between audience and the performers dissolved and the proscenium disappeared. For a post-show reception, audience was invited to backstage. Lighting for the show designed from these different view points to enhance the idea of "unfold".
Choreographed by Korhan Basaran, performed by Korhan Basaran Dance company, commissioned by Zorlu Performing Arts Center, Istanbul, Turkey, February 3rd, 2014
Arthur Rimbaud blazed a path of scandal through nineteenth-century Paris and single handedly changed the future of poetry. "Burn the End",written and directed by Jimmy Maize, looks closely to the creative mind of this "poet-genius"who changed art through a "systematic derangement of the senses" and his affair with Arthur Rimbaud with the 1970's punk rock New York references and along Pattu Smith songs. Burn the End is commissioned by Eugene Laniberal Arts College,The New School and premiered in November 2013 - Flamboyan Theater, NYC.
In August 2011, choreographer Korhan Basaran invited artists from various disciplines of performing arts and visual arts to the City Center studios to have improvisational sessions together. During these sessions, the intersections and overlaps between various disciplines were explored. As for lighting, I got actively involved with by making decisions within the moment as a performer rather than a lighting designer, using various light sources.
photos by Ali Sarikaya
AnimalParts’ ‘avant-garde autobiography‘, Revenge of the Popinjay is an experimental rap-horror show in which Anthony struggles to cope with the loss of his sister while uncovering a frightening link between himself, his lover, and an illusive gay rap star/serial killer targeting heterosexuals.
Revenge of the Popinjay combines storytelling, stand-up, physical theater, performance art, and original live rap music to create a one-of-a-kind theatrical event. Popinjay satirizes the clichés of homophobic culture and questions the capacity for evil in any human being.
As an acting a partner to Anthony Johnston's incredibly courageous and healing performance and Nathan Schwartz' performance, lighting has an important role as a story teller which guides the audience through winding routes in Anthony's layered conscious.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/18/theater/review-revenge-of-the-popinjay-at-dixon-place.html?_r=0
Director Ashley Kelly Tata's take of Brecht's Good Person of Szechwan, translated by Tony Kushner, performed as a production of Columbia University's directing department, at Riverside Church Theater , in March 2012.
With scenery and lighting we explored an industrial look giving reference to today's factories and industrial campuses which also act as unofficial prisons of contemporary life especially for blue collar employees. We built a light wall which shined through the transitions throughout the play, and compliment the usage of tarp and pallets. Also we used the various modules of the wall throughout the play. Another big gesture was that the rig came down with the strip lights colored yellow, giving reference sodium vapor lamps, with the choreographed movement of the workers at the factory.
untitled is an epic choreography going deep into the roots of the land and from there reaching out to the universe and to the core of humanity
choreographed by Korhan Basaran, commissioned by Nimbus Dance Theater, music with the courtesy of Fazil Say "patara ballet"
premiered June 2012 - Grace Church, Jersey City
Super We -performed at DanceSpace at St Mark’s Chuch, NYC in January 2015 - is a evening-long show created with 4 pieces - 2 solos and 2 duets- by Raja Feather Kelly and Tzveta Kassabova.
25 Cats Name SAM and one Blue Pussy, Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth, or How Can You Dance When Every 7 Minutes Human Conversation Lapses Into Silence
Choreography and Performance by Raja Feather Kelly
Original Score by Tito Ramsey
Letter (to Ed)
Choreography and Performance by Tzveta Kassabova
Music by Arvo Pärt
Be Still, My Heart
Choreography by Sara Pearson
Performance by Raja Feather Kelly and Tzveta Kassabova
Original Music by Mike Wall
Super WE
Choreography and Performance by Raja Feather Kelly and Tzveta Kassabova
Music by Raja Feather Kelly (inspired by Laurie Anderson)
"...Between dances, Mr. Stevens produced waves of electronic sound from the sanctuary’s altar, while Tuce Yasak’s lighting patterns — leafy vines, diamond grids — crawled across the arched ceiling..."
"...In between the four pieces, Aleksei Stevens mixes scratchy, screechy music as lights twist into geometric shapes. While noise and brightness fill St. Mark’s Church in these interludes, what is most present is absence: Kelly and Kassabova’s."
http://www.dance-enthusiast.com/features/view/Kelly-Kassabova-super-WE
2.RAu is a draft work for "the Fearless Project"
Concept and Choreography: Korhan Basaran
Music courtesy of Kinan Azmeh, "November 22nd" by Hewar
Lighting Design: Tuce Yasak
Dancers: Nikki Holck, Elena Valls, Paul Vickers, Alper Marangoz, Evrim Akyay
Produced by CPMistanbul with Support by The American Consulate Culture Affairs; premiered in Crimean Church in Istanbul Turkey, in June 2014
initium/finis: A lush sci-fi noir told with media, live music, cabaret and Indian dance-theatre. Voyeurism, eroticism and terror converge in this sensual tale of violence and revolution in a futuristic world.Theatre Reverb members Kristin Arnesen and Radoslaw Konopka have collaborated with composer and musician Ellery Royston and kutiyattam artist Rajaneesh Chakyar to create initium/finis that is the first chapter of a large-scale project Reliquum. performed at Here Arts center in July 2012.
produced by Theater Reverb
directed & performed by Kristin Arnesen
projection & sound: Radoslaw Konopka
lighting: Tuce Yasak & Edmond Deraedt
Lightmosphere, designed in spring 2004 as a graduation project, focuses on the connection between light and emotion, explores the idea of 'light itself as an experience in the domestic environment'. With this system users can simply create and manipulate the ambiance lighting depending on theirmood via their own choices, in other words via their own“light cues” that is created by the various combinations of colored units.
Each unit is made of a 12x12x1/2 inch aluminum frame that holds LED’s and a micro-switch on it, and a 1/8 inch plexiglass filter.
Once users decide on the number of units that they want to use, and where and how to set them, they can create patterns and various effects using their color filters.
Lightmosphere units act as decorative panels on the walls during the day. In the evening users can turn on/off each unit individually by touching the filter. Users can create variety with the same products, by changing colors patterns and the setup throughout the years.
Lightmosphere matches colors with different moods and provides options to users in filter packs of six: Red and burgundy in “Passion”, pink and purple in “Dreams”, blue and green in “Peace”, colors of rainbow in “Company”, yellow and orange in “Home”.
Rooms with Lightmosphere turn into stages where households are performers. Colorful rooms, colorful houses, colorful windows, colorful streets and neighborhoods at nights...
marigram [mar-i-gram] noun: A marigram is a record of the sea level; since sea level is not constant, the marigram is generally fluctuating. Not only tides but also seiches, forced waves, and long-term fluctuations (stagional or secular) are recorded.
Marigram began from a 2015 conversation between Annie Wang and Mohamed Yousry Shika, when the Black Lives Matter protests were stirring up their respective memories of Tiananmen Square 1989 and Tahrir Square 2011. “Marigram” is an exploration of the tidal structure of mass protests: approaching, flooding, receding. In this current moment of #BlackLivesMatter we couldn't help but be reminded of protests past and those feelings of tentative hope, giddy possibilities, fear, tension, disappointment, and constant questioning.This performance invites observer into a constructed public square where a live solo dancer accompanied by video installations evokes the fluctuations and tide-like patterns of mass protests.(hyperspacedance.org)
Choreographed by Annie Wang and Mohamed Yousry Shika
Film direction by Laura X Moya
Collaborators: Tuçe Yusak (lighting + set design), Yuan Liu, Kay Hu, Francesco Chiot (film artists), Zeyad Gohary, An Debie (photographers)
Premiered at FiveMyles June 28 - July 1 2018
Technical work-in-progress showing at BRIC on May 24th 2018
http://hyperspacedance.org/projects/current
http://fivemyles.org/new-events-1/2018/6/28/performance-marigram-8re7j
TROPICO is loosely-inspired by Lana Del Rey’s short film of a similar name and explores Raja Feather Kelly’s relationship to pop-culture as he attempts to demystify, through dance and theater, pop-culture’s relationship to humanity. TROPICO is about beginnings, endings, truths, illusions and how to live in the world when you feel so far outside of it. Andy Warhol said, “It’s the movies that have really been running things in America ever since they were invented. They show you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, how to feel about it, and how to look how you feel about it.” TROPICO questions if this is true. (thefeath3rtheory.com)
Created, Choreographed, and Directed by Raja Feather Kelly
Music by Bryan Strimpel and Raja Feather Kelly
Performed by Raja Feather Kelly, Shaina Branfman, Amy Gernux, Beth Graczyk, Sara Gurevich, John Gutierrez, Lindsay Head, Rebecca Hite Teicheira, Nik Owens, Rachel Pritzlaff, Collin Ranf, Aaron Moses Robin
Collaborators: Tuçe Yasak (lighting design), Aitor Mendilibar (photography director), Laura Snow (editor), Lousie Dodet and Rebecca Shulman (production)
Performed at Danspace Project June 2 - 4 2016
https://infinitebody.blogspot.com/2016/06/tropico-between-what-is-solid-and-what.html
The Geneva Project began with photographs found in the Library of Congress of the performer’s great-aunt, Geneva Varner Clark, and her family on their farm in Depression-era South Carolina. The photographs, taken by New Deal era photographer Marion Post Wolcott listed captions such as “negro”, “mixed race” and “Indian,” provide more than simply a visual backdrop, inspiring an emotional and visceral conjuring of the ghosts of our shared social past. This dark, poetic piece questions what is revealed and what remains hidden by bringing light to that which was once buried. (Jack.org)
Choreography and Performance by Jennifer Harrison Newman.
Directed by Charlotte Brathwaite
Collaborators: Tuçe Yasak (lighting design), Abigail DeVille (installation artist), Paul Lieber (projection design), Justin Hicks (sound design)
Installation and performance held May 19 - 21 2016 at JACK and April 28-29 2017 at BAAD!
https://www.tdf.org/shows/14807/The-Geneva-Project-Jennifer-Harrison-Newman
http://amsterdamnews.com/news/2017/jun/15/baad-brings-out-good/
A frustrated samurai. An unwieldy herd of pigs. A mysterious murder. A woman’s dying wish. Four surreal stories from Japanese author Natsume Soseki’s (1867-1916) Ten Nights of Dream come to life in Four Nights of Dream (2008), a contemporary chamber opera that traverses the subconscious through colorful melodies and piercing emotions. For this production, New York vocalists and Tokyo instrumentalists come together to perform within a spellbinding and ever-morphing set. (Japansociety.org)
Directed by Alec Duffy
Music and Libretto by Moto Osada
Choreograph by Raja Feather Kelly
Conductor: Ken-David Masur
Singers: Marisa Karchin, Gloria Park, Christopher Sokolowski, Makoto Winkler, Jesse Malgieri, Rocky Sellers
Instrumentalists: Tokyo Bunka Kaikan Chamber Orchestra
Collaborators: Tuçe Yasak (lighting design), Mimi Lien (set design), Oana Botez (costume design)
Co-commissioned by the Japan Society and Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, 4 nights of Dreams premiered Sept 13-16 2017 at the Japan Society in NYC, and later at Tokyo Bunka Kaikan in October 2017.
photos are from Japan Society Show in NYC
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/15/arts/music/four-nights-of-dream-moto-osada-review.html
"Isn't it imperative / to cross the sea / to cross the street / this time around / to go straight to the wound / and do not touch."
The multiethnic, multilingual cast of The Commons Choir sets humanity’s troubles and highest aspirations to complex musical harmonies and choreographic movement that honors the individuality of each performer. The company’s new work, mayday heyday parfait, explores the human capacity for empathy across difference—from the violent colonial history that brought us to where we are now, to a way forward where individuals follow their own paths yet maintain their connection to others. Combining song, dance, and poetry, mayday heyday parfait illuminates how our stories and histories are irrevocably interdependent. (bricartsmedia.org)
Co-director and choreographer: Dara Fain
Co-director and librettist: Robert Kocik
Performers: Martita Abril, Massimiliano Balduzzi, Ilona Bito, Yoon Sun Choi, Lydia Chrisman, Ichi Go, Alvaro Gonzales Dupuy, Antigona Gonzalez, Michael Ingle, Aram Jibilian, Anais Maviel, Jean Carla Rodea, Saul Ulerio, Drew Devero, Cecilia Woolfolk, Laura Colomban, Fay Victor
And The Improbable Choir - a group of community members gathered together through BRIC.
Collaborators: Tuçe Yusak (light design), Anais Maviel (composer + musical director), Ashaka Givens (costume design), Eternal Polk (video design), Dov Tiefenback (sound design), Saul Ulerio (assistant choreographer)
Premiered Nov 12 2017 at BRIC Arts Media
Later performed at Center for Performance Research Jan 7- 8th 2019
This ensemble piece for nine dancers by choreographer/performer Raja Feather Kelly follows a Warholian approach to form, using movement that is highly demanding physically, and at the same time unedited, raw, and true-to-life. Kelly takes inspiration from film noir to create a work that is dark, minimalist, mysterious and cinematic. At the same time, he uses the stark form to give voice to real people telling real stories, looking to reveal real reasons why the American Dream is ending, and why we - as individuals and as a society - should cry. (jackny.org)
Created by Raja Feather Kelly
Performed by Shaina Branfman, Sara Gurevich, Amy Gernux, John Gutierrez, Raja Feather Kelly, Rachel Pritzlaff, Collin Ranf, Aaron Moses Robin, Bryan Strimpel
Music by Tito Ramsey & Greg Haines
Collaborators: Tuçe Yasak (lighting design), Effy Falck and Laura Snow (cinematography)
Performed at JACK October 1 - 3 2015
SHE WHO: Frida, Mami, & Me is a dance work looking at the life, mythology, and properties of Mexican Visual Artist Frida Kahlo and Mami Wata, a powerful water deity found across the African Diaspora. Their stories, timeless and provocative, have spurred a nuanced and multicultural dialogue between African American choreographer Marjani Forte-Saunders and the Urban Latin Dance Theater CONTRA TIEMPO. Together, they traverse the turbulent waters of protest, feminism, resilience, and identity through these earthly and mystic beholders of culture. (contra-tiempo.org)
Choreographed by Marjani Forte-Saunders
Performed by Contra Tiempo company members
Collaborators: Tuçe Yasak (lighting design), David Reynoso (costume design), Meena Murugesan (media design), d. Sabela Grimes (sound design)
Performed as a part of the Signature Series at the Ford Amphitheater in Hollywood, August 27 2016.
https://artsmeme.com/2016/08/23/walk-with-trane-and-urban-bush-women-at-the-ford/
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-contra-tiempo-review-20160826-snap-story.html
Winner of the Creative Capital Award, SXSW Panel Picks, and National Association of Latino Arts and Culutures via The Ford Foundation, La Medea re-imagines Euripides’ myth into a Latin-disco-pop-feminist variety show. At once an immersive musical and a simulcast film, La Medea is directed, performed, shot, and edited in real time creating a high-stakes vulnerability for cast, crew, and audiences alike. Performers and camera women play the characters, while studio audiences act as the Greek chorus and film extras. The pervasive figure of the wild foreign woman who vengefully murders her own children is shattered in this genre-bending multidimensional dismantling of an ongoing toxic myth. Challenging the idea of a “dangerous,” “hysterical,” foreign woman, La Medea reveals an infinite woman that rejects the limited gaze imposed on her for centuries. (yaratravieso.com)
Written, Directed, and Choreographed by Yara Travieso
Original Music and Libretto by Sam Crawford
Performed by Shayla Vie Jenkins, Rena Butler, Catherine Correa, Tiffany Mellard, Erick Montes, Sol Koeraus and Niurca Marquez
Music Performed by Jason And The Argonauts, Liz de Lise, Zeb Gould, Jeff Hudgins, Timothy Quigley, Ian Riggs, Anthony Mascorro, Arthur Solari
Collaborators: Tuçe Yasak (lighting designer), Brookhart Jonquil (set designer), Sue Julien (costume designer), Pamela Giaroli (director of photography), Liz Charky (assistant director and camera operator), and Ryan Hartley Smith (illustration and mask design)
Premiered during Performance Space 122’s Coil Festival at BRIC January 20 - 22 2017
Commissioned by Performance Space 122
Touring includes Amherst College (2017), SXSW Panel Picker (2017), Joe's Pub at the Public Theater, ODC Theater (2018), MDC Live Arts (2018), and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2019)
http://yaratravieso.com/lamedea
https://howlround.com/happenings/performances-la-medea-yara-travieso
The Messiah Complex is a love story. Or many. It centers on Malika, a teenager on the trans-spectrum, who creates an alter-ego named Messiah, a popular basketball-ball star and aspiring rapper. When Messiah’s secret is revealed at 16, all comes crashing down, and s/he makes a fatal mistake. DJ Messiah, 10 years later, must face the literal ghost of a past mistake unearthed through a nightclub turned ritual. But this ghost wants more than reckoning. Set to the sound of hip-hop, the ring shout, and the wailing of ghosts, Messiah must find a way home.
Featuring a predominately Black, queer and trans cast and creative team, The Messiah Complex is a play about the legacy of the Panthers in the age of crack, where a scratch at a DJ booth incites a replay of the past, an action that interrogates generations of violence on black, queer bodies. This BRIClab Commission brings ritual into the theater, shifting from the secular to the sacred through rites already present in black life—the frenzy of a nightclub, the libations poured on street corners, and the sonic landscapes of hip hop. Ultimately, The Messiah Complex tells a story of recognition, revolution and forgiveness. (niawitherspoon.com)
Created by Nia O. Witherspoon
Directed by Charlotte Brathwaite
Choreographed by Ni'Ja Whitson
Original Music by Justin Hicks
Performed by Mikel Banks, Marcus Brandon, Joel Daniels, Kirsten Flores-Davis, Anyanwu Glanville, Tiffany Salmon, Linda La Montanez, Shelley Nicole, Nabowire Stokes, Kirya Traber, Tanisha Thompson, Ni’Ja Whitson
Collaborators: Tuçe Yasak (set and lighting design), Cherrie Moraga (dramaturgy)
Premiered at BRIC in May 2016, performed at La MaMa Gallery May 24 - June 2 2019
Co-commissioned by Astraea Foundation
http://thinkingdance.net/articles/2016/06/09/Queer-Artists-of-Color-Why-Their-Works-Matter
http://www.psycho-girl.com/messiah-complex-bric/
Aroundtown is a kinetic poem that examines the varied, unique and sometimes divided notions of LOVE- it's meaning, purpose, and platform. With original music, text, and visuals, the work explores commitment, community, and intimacy in times of violence and strife. DDD's trademark empathy, sly humor, and virtuosic physicality are harnessed to examine LOVE as both sociopolitical and intimate weather systems. (daviddorfmandance.org)
Artistic Director: David Dorfman
Performers: Jasmine Hearn, Jordan Llyod, Nik Owens, Kendra Portier, Simon Thomas-Train, Aya Wilson, David Dorfman, Lisa Race
Musicians: Sam Crawford, Liz de Lise, Seb Gould, Jeff Hudgins
Collaborators: Tuçe Yusak (lighting design), Sam Crawford (music direction), Anne Davison (dramaturg), Oana Botes (costume designer), Shawn Hove (video design), Sarah Lurie (production manager), David Kyuman Kim (scholar in residence)
Premiered at BAM Harvey Nov 8 2017
https://www.dancemagazine.com/david-dorfman-portraying-hope-2505872393.html
https://www.artsjournal.com/dancebeat/2017/11/working-together-in-love-and-in-hate/
Crazy, irreverent and uplifting Shasta keeps it real with her gospel of laughter, her free flowing emcee style to get the party jumping. A true show woman. A consummate innertainer, SHASTA uses satire, her contagious energy and sexy southern charms to tackle naughty topics like sex while paying sonic homage to the 80s and 90s classic era of Hip-Hop teleporting the listener to elevated highs with her refreshed, remastered and newly expanded sound. If Bubble Yum met Colt 45… when opposites collide…gritty bubbles…if saltwater taffy threw a party. If Millie Jackson, Roxanne Shante, OutKast and Monty Python had a baby in the year 3030...you’d get SHASTA! (charlottebrathwaite.com)
Performed by Shasta Geaux Pop
Written/Co-created by Ayesha Jordan
Directed/Co-created by Charlotte Brathwaite
Core Collaborators: Tuçe Yusak (lighting design), Justin Hicks (music production and direction), Abigail DeVille (costume design), Kent Barrett (video)
https://soundcloud.com/shastageauxpop
Shasta Geaux Pop @ Under the Radar Festival - The Public Theater
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/08/shasta-geaux-pop-a-glamazon-hip-hop-icon
https://www.whatshouldwedo.com/blog/under-the-radar-festival-2018/
Shasta Geaux Pop @ Right About Now Festival - Companie Theater in Amsterdam
http://www.rightaboutnowinc.com/festival-artists-ayesha-jordan
Shasta Geaux Pop @ OUT OF LINE FESTIVAL - The Highline
https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/The-High-Line-Kicks-Off-A-New-Season-Of-Out-Of-Line-With-MELT-By-James-Scruggs-20180510
Shasta Geaux Pop @ Cincinatti Contemporary Arts Center
http://www.cincinnatimagazine.com/artsmindsblog/kegel-beat-shasta-geaux-pop/
https://www.contemporaryartscenter.org/blog/2017/09/12/shastas-geaux-pop-playlist
Shasta Geaux Pop @ Bushwick Starr
https://www.broadwayworld.com/brooklyn/article/Ayesha-Jordans-SHASTA-GEUX-POP-Set-for-The-Bushwick-Starr-This-September-20160801
Moved in Light is a performance/installation that examines objects and their properties in relationship to a queer identity and a utopian queer space. It is an exploration of “queer” objects (in this case, abandoned/unwanted objects that were found in an abandoned factory) and their connection with queer identities that have “failed” to be a part of the reproduction process. 3D sound was achieved by using Ambisonic recordings and their post-processed versions. The decoded Ambisonic channels were reproduced by utilizing a 16-loudspeaker array: quad configuration for height and floor level, and octagon configuration on ear. (senempirler.com)
Video and Sound Design by Senem Pirler
Movement by Hana van der Kolk
Lighting Collaboration by Tuçe Yasak
Premiered at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, May 5 2017
http://senempirler.com/audiovisual/2017/05/05/Moved_In_Light.html
Moved in Noir is an audiovisual and movement performance exploring themes of liminal space, queer identities, and the concept of “noir”. The piece was created by removing the male protagonist from the film-noir movies and constructing a love story between two characters: Gilda (1946) and Phyllis of the Double Indemnity (1944). The soundtrack consisted of layered sounds: processed film-noir soundtracks, dancers’ movements captured by hidden microphones, and reproduced with an Ambisonics loudspeaker array. (senempirler.com)
Video and Sound Design by Senem Pirler
Choreographed and Performed by Malin Andreasson and Delphina Parenti
Collaborators: Tuçe Yasak (light design), Kathy High and Michelle Temple (camera operation)
Premiered at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, March 19 2016
http://senempirler.com/audiovisual/2016/03/19/Moved_In_Noir.html
A group of American artists arrive in Greece during the 2012 debt crisis to participate in a residency program focused on art and community activism - however their trip quickly turns into a breeding ground for their own competing traumas. Athens On the Half Shell reflects on protest culture and how citizens engage with politics, nationalism, anger and fear; threading ties between the reactions of Trump’s election in the United States and Greece’s political state in 2012. (LPAC)
Directed by Handan Ozbligin
Written by Joey Merlo
Featuring: Nelson Patino Jr, Alicia Waikousi, Ino Badanjak, Faanis Gkikas, Sierra, D Leverett, Nancy McArthur
Collaborators: Tuçe Yusak (lighting design), Dan Daly (set design), Mark Bruckner (sound design) Sinan Eczacibasi (assistant director), Cassandra Lynch (stage manager)
Performed at LaGuardia Performing Arts Center October 11-15 2018
My Story: An Unapologetic Body is a evening-length dance-theater work currently being developed by Francesca Harper in response to recent global events regarding diversity, inclusion, and empathy (or the lack thereof). After creating, The Look of Feeling, Harper’s acclaimed show about her mother, she realized that her own story needed to be told, but in its own way and on its own terms. The story of the (still unfolding) life of an African-American woman living in the predominantly white worlds of ballet, modern dance, and Broadway, while facing challenges, heartbreaks, and triumphs as she attempts to shatter the stereotypically classical mold and celebrate her evolution into an unapologetic body. (thefrancescaharperproject.org)
Choreography and performance by Francesca Harper
Original Music by: Daniel Bernard-Roumain
Collaborators: Tuçe Yusak (lighting design)
Premiered in Austria in May 2019 and presented at New York Live Arts in June 2019.
Photos are from NYLA in June 2019
My Story: An Unapologetic Body is a evening-length dance-theater work currently being developed by Francesca Harper in response to recent global events regarding diversity, inclusion, and empathy (or the lack thereof). After creating, The Look of Feeling, Harper’s acclaimed show about her mother, she realized that her own story needed to be told, but in its own way and on its own terms. The story of the (still unfolding) life of an African-American woman living in the predominantly white worlds of ballet, modern dance, and Broadway, while facing challenges, heartbreaks, and triumphs as she attempts to shatter the stereotypically classical mold and celebrate her evolution into an unapologetic body. (thefrancescaharperproject.org)
Choreography and performance by Francesca Harper
Original Music by: Daniel Bernard-Roumain
Collaborators: Tuçe Yusak (lighting design)
Premiered in Austria in May 2019 and presented at New York Live Arts in June 2019.
Photos are from Austria in May
https://criticaldance.org/nyla-women-create-2019-edition/
https://moversandshaperspodcast.libsyn.com/2019/06
Perapsis Performance Series Lighting Designer (2015-2019)
Annual Performance series held at Kumble Theater at Long Island University in Brooklyn
Selected photos from Periapsis 2016-2017, 2017-2018 and 2018-2019
Chronicle Y, a work-in-progress excerpt by Nia Witherspoon is the second chronicle in the trilogy, which focuses on the transcripts of Rachel Jeantel and Trayvon Martin, in the context of Erzulie Dantó, lwa of the Haitian Revolution, and Black Lives Matter. For the workshop, we'll be sharing some very early exploration of text, song, structure, and devising. The Dark Girl Chronicles is a devised performance cycle set in a galaxy and erected in honor of black women that have been victims of state violence, including Rachel Jeantel, Cyntoia Brown, Islan Nettles, and Diamond Reynolds. Part Yoruba ritual, part devised manifesto, and part documentary theatre, each performance in the cycle focuses on cultivating the interiority and dignity “dark girls” are so often robbed of in the public arena by infusing these contemporary tragedies with the grandeur of Yoruba creation mythologies, the know-how of deep South remedies, and the time-honored wisdom of wonder. (bax.org)
Created by Nia Witherspoon
Performed by Nia Witherspoon, Marvel Allen, Nile Harris, Shelley Nicole
Collaborators: Tuçe Yasak (lighting designer)
Performed at the Brooklyn Arts Exchange April 27 - 29 2019
https://events.bax.org/chronicle-y
Performance artist Ayesha Jordan brings her zany sense of humor back to JACK with Come See My Double D’s, an immersive landscape of song, text and movement probing and exposing Jordan’s double d’s – the death of her father and the dissolution of her marriage. Never dwelling in sadness, Jordan's singular sense of humor and playfulness offer audiences a chance at transformation through a journey through the bittersweet stories of a life lived. (charlottebrathwaitelcom)
Choreographed and Written by Ayesha Jordan
Directed by Charlotte Brathwaite
Collaborators: Tuçe Yusak (lighting + set design), Justin Hicks (music direction), Colin Lamond (carpenter), Rose Garcia (costume design), Tammy Nguyen (props)
Premiered at JACK October 29-31 2015
https://soundcloud.com/shastageauxpop/ijustwannaloveyoutake3
Raja and Daaimah’s question: “how do you arrange black bodies on stage?” transformed to: “how do you arrange black bodies on stage without being policed, without being politically correct, and directly from the black experience?” The Writer/Director Lab presented Daaimah and Raja a chance to develop a new play from the Everyday Afroplay collection using Naj and Dandy- two black intellectuals who have vastly differencing opinions and cultural experiences about life inside black skin. It is as literal as it is abstract. (thefeath3rtheory.com)
Written by Daaimah Mubashshir
Directed by Raja Feather Kelly
Performed by Daaimah Mubashshir and Raja Feather Kelly
Collaborators: Tuçe Yasak (lighting design)
Performed January 23 - 26 2019
Part of the SoHo Rep’s Writers/Directors Lab
https://www.daaimahmubashshir.com/news/the-chronicles-of-cardigan-and-khente
http://thefeath3rtheory.com/astro-minstrelsy-or-the-chronicles-of-ck
