antonym: scenes of childhood installation + performance at JACK. Sugar Vendil & ayo ohs. photo by Eric Hudgman
Antonym: the opposite of nostalgia is a memoir of a Filipinx American childhood that interweaves chamber music, dance, and nonlinear theater.
World Premiere: January 6-7, 2026 - World Premiere at Out Front! Fest by Pioneers Go East Collective. RSVP here
It also exists in installation-performance form, antonym: scenes of childhood that includes hands-on activities for guests. Info on each project below.
AWARDS: 2021 MAP Fund, 2022 New Music USA Project Grant, 2022 NPN Creation and Development Grant with co-commissioners Living Arts Tulsa, High Concept Labs, and National Sawdust, two-time NEFA NTP Finalist, 2019 Mabou Mines Resident Arts Program, 2019 High Concept Labs Artist in Residence & 2023 Partner Artist in Residence.
Antonym: the opposite of nostalgia evening-length performance
Composer & Choreographer: SUGAR VENDIL
Director: MEI ANN TEO
Lighting Designer: HAO BAI
Costume Designer: HARRIET JUNG
sugar vendil/isogram
ANNIE NIKUNEN
CINDY LAN
MARIE LLOYD PASPE
SUGAR VENDIL
ANNIE WANG
collaborators & performers
DATES
January 6-7, 2026 - World Premiere at Out Front! Fest presented by Pioneers Go East Collective. RSVP here
January 10, 2026 - AAPI Dance Festival at APAP presented by A4 & Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company. RSVP here
Antonym: the opposite of nostalgia is a memoir of a Filipinx American childhood that interweaves chamber music, dance, and nonlinear theater in an interdisciplinary performance. Excavating seemingly insignificant but deeply ingrained memories, Antonym envisions the future as an escape from pain and ponders how we can possess painful memories without being beholden to them. Using field recordings of New York City to create a rich sonic landscape, the four seasons serve as a cyclical frame and context for memory. Antonym invites audiences to reflect on their own relationships with memory, identity, and imagining their own futures.
Complete performance video here
antonym: scenes of childhood
participatory installation + performance
Music, Dance, Installation: SUGAR VENDIL
Artistic Consultant: MEI ANN TEO
Lighting Designer: HAO BAI
Costumes & Dress Installation: HARRIET JUNG
Performers: Katherine Paola De La Cruz, ayo ohs, Benedict Nguyen, Sugar Vendil, Annie Wang
Commissioned by and premiered at JACK with support from NYSCA
antonym: scenes of childhood is an all-ages installation and performance that juxtaposes the past, present, and future.
Surrounded by Vendil’s performance scores, floating dresses by costume designer Harriet Jung, and piles of origami stars, audiences are invited to take part in grown-up versions of childhood hobbies prior to the performance. Guests can dismantle an envelope sculpture repeatedly stamped with miniature Kerropi stamps from the 90s to write their own letters to their past or future selves; fill out a friendship file; make their own stars; lovingly vandalize a wall with stickers; or pick up one of the watercolored giant fortune tellers to see what lies ahead.
Sugar Vendil/isogram activates the installation with a 25-minute performance that shares memories of a lonely yet hopeful childhood under a cloud of hand-painted postage stamps; embarrassing teen poetry; and layered electro-acoustic music (toy piano, analog cassette tape loops, live-processed effects), voice, and dance rooted in somatic memory.
Sugar Vendil and ayo ohs. Photo by Eric Hudgman
Sugar Vendil, Annie Wang, ayo ohs, Katherine Paola De La Cruz. Photo by Eric Hudgman
Sugar Vendil and Annie Wang. Photo by Eric Hudgmanphoto by Eric Hudgman
Sugar Vendil, Annie Wang, ayo ohs, Katherine Paola De La Cruz. Photo by Eric Hudgman
Photo by Eric Hudgman
ayo ohs, Annie Wang, and Sugar Vendil. Photo by Eric Hudgman
giant fortune tellers. you need a friend's arms to operate the biggest one! photo by Adrienne Westwood
Hand-stamped envelope sculpture. Tucked in each one was a piece of paper. Audience members dismantled it to write their own letters.
One of the vintage Keroppi stamps used to make the envelope sculpture
origami stars. Photo by Adrienne Westwood
Project Background
Nostalgia is often associated with childhood. For me, the weather can evoke childhood memories of joy, sadness, or fear. The weather would often be a factor in my state of happiness or unhappiness, and we often remember what the weather was like the day a traumatic event happened. . Warm weather reminds me of sitting out at recess so that my skin would not tan (dark skin is undesirable in Filipino culture), being bored in my parents’ office in the summer; fall reminds me of back to school, the end of my loneliness; winter, the annual visit by my Kuya, who was banished to the Philippines and to whom I often wrote to twice a day, squeezed in all the big brother activities over a couple of weeks each year.
CREDITS
Thanks to violinists Natalie Calma and Hajnal Pivnick, flutist Laura Cocks, and vocalist/performer Thea Little for their contributions in the development of this project.
About the above excerpts: MR @ Judson Showing featuring Antonym: ii. Lullaby and iv. DESKS. (Were you, too, a bored child in a real estate office?) Contributing choreography by Cindy Lan, Marie Lloyd Paspe, Sugar Vendil, and Annie Wang. Performed by Cindy Lan, Marie Lloyd Paspe, Annie Nikunen, and Sugar Vendil. Videographer: Mackenna Finch
Past Showings
January 11, 2025 at 1:45pm-2:05pm: Pentacle Tour Ready Lab at New York City Center, Studio 5. RSV
October 11, 2024: Living Arts Tulsa, Tulsa, OK (showing)
March 23, 2024: National Sawdust, Brooklyn, NY (showing)
March 24, 2023: POP Showing at Gibney Agnes Varis Center
August 25, 2023: Showing at High Concept Labs, Chicago, IL
September 25, 2023: Movement Research @ Judson, New York, NY