LIVE & ONSTAGE
Kelly Strayhorn Theatre
5941 Penn Ave
Pittsburgh, PA 15206
Friday, December 14 | 8 p.m.
Saturday, December 15 | 4 p.m.
Anqwenique Wingfield
“A Love Supreme”
A Love Supreme is a concert performance of audio and visual compositions inspired by John Coltrane's infamous work and influenced by a legacy of Black Women composers. Vocalist and director ANQWENIQUE takes the audience on an emotional and captivating journey through works by Dorothy Rudd Moore and Yona Harvey. Multimedia artist, Julie Mallis creates haunting, yet uplifting vignettes using live projection mapping and set design.
STAYCEE PEARL Dance Project & Soy Sos
“…on being…”
A dance-centered multimedia performance work, “…on being…” is a vehicle in the examination of conversations around Blackness and Post-Blackness in relation to art and performance. “…on being…” was originally developed by STAYCEE PEARL dance project & Soy Sos during the mid-2000s when these conversations first surfaced. At the beginning of the piece, distinctly Black/Soul music sets the stage. Both the movement choices and sound become disjointed and gradually more dramatic as we layer erratic gestures with beautifully graceful phrases to demonstrate juxtaposition of culture and perspectives on race.
“Mary’s Daughter: Memoirs of an Artivist”
This is hip hop theater with a twist–a one woman play by Blak Rapp Madusa, exploring how her experience growing up in the midst of poverty, racism and sexism led to her evolution as an activist artist.
“The Migrant Liberation Movement Suite”
Music that heals, that inspires, that transforms. "The Migrant Liberation Movement Suite” is a multicultural jazz work that is a collaboration between composers of West African, Mexican-American, Syrian, and Euro-American descent. The work will use both visual curricular materials, innovative musical performance, and dance to the bring focus to the migrant laborers from South and Central America, and the refugees currently living in Pittsburgh from West Africa and the Middle East.
“hybrid memory | reflector”
Generously supported by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts
A new duet performed and created by slowdanger's Anna Thompson and Taylor Knight, examining hypothetical concepts of engrams, or memory traces, and the claim that the brain simultaneously stores two versions of each event–one for long term memory and one for short. ‘hybrid memory | reflector’ fuses several theatrical elements to examine how our surroundings affect shifting states and personas, generating an evocative performance landscape of fragmented memory. This work is built with ProjectileObject's (Cornelius Henke) LED responsive light sculpture which renders shadow and light as another 'performer' within the work; revealing, concealing and transforming the body and space.
“Touch Update”
Touch Update investigates social constructions and specific physical movement patterns that emanate from disabled bodies. Video wearables and installation art populate a fractured landscape of perilous corporeality and fleeting digital intimacy. Touch Update features Bill Shannon's crutch choreography as performed by Cirque Du Soleil artist Raphael Botelho Nepomuceno, along with collaborators and performers Ron Chunn Jr., Teena Marie Custer, Anna Thompson, Taylor Knight, Jacquea Mae, Cornelius Henke, and David Whitewolf. Touch Update is supported in part, by the New England Foundation for The Arts’ National Dance Production Fund, The Heinz Endowments’ Small Arts Initiative, and the National Performance Network.
