Who Am I To Hold Your Past Against You?: Jeremy O. Harris’s “Slave Play”
Performance

Who Am I To Hold Your Past Against You?: Jeremy O. Harris’s “Slave Play”

“You should not work to make the audience comfortable with what they are witnessing at all,” writes playwright Jeremy O. Harris in his “Notes on Style” preface of the script of Slave Play. Harris’s is a weighted statement, hidden within seemingly typical stage notes for a theatrical production. Whether onstage or off, so much related … Continue reading

Why I Hated Sasha Waltz’s “Kreatur” at BAM and the Arts Funding Econo-system
Art / Performance

Why I Hated Sasha Waltz’s “Kreatur” at BAM and the Arts Funding Econo-system

I did not hate Sasha Waltz’s U.S premiere of Kreatur at the Brooklyn Academy of Music because it enlisted every cliché in ‘avant-garde’ dance-theatre—dancers speaking gibberish aloud, awkward jerky movement, bodies colliding, self-conscious actorly dancers, same-sex kissing, topless women, dancers pulling down the briefs of other dancers, expensive couture costumes, hi-tech lighting, an electronic score, gratuitous use of special-effects props. Continue reading

What Bodies And Whose Stories Do We Primarily Witness Onstage?: Intersectional World-Making With Kinetic Light’s “DESCENT”
Performance

What Bodies And Whose Stories Do We Primarily Witness Onstage?: Intersectional World-Making With Kinetic Light’s “DESCENT”

In Feminist, Queer, Crip, Alison Kafer speaks to the presumed lack of disability in imagined, idealized futures. “If disability is conceptualized as a terrible unending tragedy,” she writes, “Then any future that includes disability can only be a future to avoid. A better future, in other words, is one that excludes disability and disabled bodies; … Continue reading

In Conversation With Félicia Atkinson
Music / Performance

In Conversation With Félicia Atkinson

How many imaginary dialogues with dead poets have you had lately? Multidisciplinary artist Félicia Atkinson recently orchestrated an experimental performance in dialogue with Francis Ponge’s “The Candle (La Bougie)” from his collection Le Parti Pris des Choses (Siding with Things) at ISSUE Project Room in Brooklyn. An incantation of sorts, Atkinson’s sonic dreamscapes are haunting … Continue reading

I Know The Rainbow’s Been Rough: Werqing Black Queer Childhood With NIC Kay’s “lil BLK”
Performance

I Know The Rainbow’s Been Rough: Werqing Black Queer Childhood With NIC Kay’s “lil BLK”

“Once upon a time, there was a little Black girl…” announces LaWanda Page, spinning the tale of that little girl in the Brewster projects whose “modeling career took off” heard at the beginning of RuPaul’s iconic “Supermodel (You Better Work).” With those words–nostalgic to anyone who loves over-the-top queer dance music, Bronx-born performer NIC Kay … Continue reading