My work is releasing sound and emotion from my body… and playing a lot with my own breath. As far as traditions, I think I come from enslaved, queer people—that’s a big one. I feel like the slave is always present in my work, in my life, and I need it to be. I don’t want to live in a world where slavery is not at the forefront of what I’m doing, what I’m feeling, what I’m thinking… Ancestrally, I think a lot of my work plays with dreams and things that come to me in ways that are not always discernible via language, but come to me via breath or via sound or via a scream. So, really, projecting and not even decoding—just letting that exist in the space. — X’ene Sky*
The NEW ORIGINAL WORKS FESTIVAL 2022 opens this week with a triple bill of dance and music performances at REDCAT.
Restless autumn, restless spring—presented by Achinta S. McDaniel and her Blue13 Dance Company—works from a Fluxus-inspired score in its “response to the isolation and separation of the COVID-19 pandemic,” an improvisatory “rediscovery of what it means for artists to unite in a space to reflect on shared experiences and create work together.”
The search for a sustainable water source informs Lindsey Red-tail’s ensemble dance work You can vision with Them, foregrounding ancestral visions and our obligations to the natural world.
Vengeance—a new work by musician and performance artist X’ene Sky—addresses ongoing themes of of (mis)recognition, “inheritance, and state violence,” inspired by the writings of Angela Davis and Toni Morrison.
See link below for details.
NEW ORIGINAL WORKS FESTIVAL 2022 — WEEK ONE
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, August 18–20
All shows at 8:30 pm
REDCAT
631 West 2nd Street, downtown Los Angeles
The Saturday performance is also available to stream
*X’ene Sky, The Performance of Labor/The Labor of Performance: A Convening panel, February 11, 2022, Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley. Other participants included esperanza spalding, kai barrow, jazz franklin, brontë velez, and panel curator Ra Malika Imhotep. Opening quote © X’ene Sky.
Images, from top: X’ene Sky, Vengeance, photograph by Rahim Fortune; Lindsey Red-tail, You can vision with Them, still by Tom Tsai; Achinta S. McDaniel, Restless autumn. restless spring, photograph by Daniel Valentine. Images courtesy and © the artists and REDCAT.
