So, while trying to strictly manage the pervasive NYC version of Arts Presenters-infected “festival fomo,” I still accumulated enough exposure to the spores of a range of performances in the January flurry to wander into a compost pile of considerations on what is doggedly sprouting among us in the age of extinction.
The flower we touch as children in awe burns. The only chide needed to withdraw. With undeniable power to flaw, fire will still flicker and die. For it lives, as do You and I. …a heap of various regrets, sorrowful realities of unfledged dreams, or
Put Away the Fire, dear pt.2 (in draft form) at La MaMa Moves last month moves in and out of cinematic and live performance structures, often jump-cutting from internal narratives to vigorous dancing
There is an insidious thrum of accelerated timelines smashing together at the messy intersection of computational expansiveness, human fear, militaristic state intervention and governmental ignorance in “La Machine de Turing” currently running at La MaMa through March 5th
maura re/members with george emilio sanchez’s “In the Court of the Conquerer” & zavé martohardjono’s “TERRITORY: the Island Remembers” – audio version link available at top of post
A dominating thread of grief and healing wound its way through La MaMa Moves! 2021 and most of the artists brought song and storytelling into a festival that, as curator Nicky Paraiso acknowledged was full of resilient artists “making work that is essential and true to this pivotal moment in time.”
With XIV, my favorite experimental constitutionalist bruthrr George Emilio Sanchez is crashing a brown, brooding and bold biography into the broader American histories of other fights for equal rights. XIV offers an incisive and often intimate look at the never ending challenge that is our country’s constant separations of equality in a show that continues this weekend and next at Dixon Place.
Dan Safer is the devil you’ve been dying to dance with and Ae Andrea’s enviable lines and swag make them an optimal fiend friend for that card.
Ni’Ja Whitson queers divine kingdoms with cosmological meetings amidst a swirl of lineage, legacies and streaming star scapes. Salve.
After over a decade hiatus in making work, with “now my hand is ready for my heart” downtown icon, Nicky Paraiso gushes forth while looking back on several lived lives in Nickyworld.
John Gutierrez writes from inside “This Bridge Called My Ass” from Miguel Gutierrez
Here, thoughts are freed from linearity or reasonable binds. There, processing systems allow the universe to expand and retract as an infinite sponge. Where bodies transmute from human familiars to alien exotica.