I’ll share an evening of world premieres with Alexa Grae!
Out-FRONT! Fest. A Festival curated by Pioneers Go East Collective and presented in partnership with Judson Memorial Church.
The Out-FRONT! Festival is curated by Gian Marco Riccardo Lo Forte, Remi Harris Philip Treviño, and Joyce Isabelle. The Festival features award-winning artists who enlighten, entertain and promote conversations around aesthetic diversity and personal journeys on the intersection of mutual ideas, cultures, and meanings.
This performance will take place at Judson Memorial Church. General Admission and Free tickets available. All are welcome!
Sugar Vendil presents: Antonym: the opposite of nostalgia (World Premiere)
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.
Choreography and Music Composition: Sugar Vendil
Performance: Cindy Lan, Annie Nikunen, Marie Lloyd Paspe, Sugar Vendil, and Annie Wang
Costume and Set Design: Harriet Jung
Direction: Mei Ann Teo, Pink Fang
Lighting Design: Hao Bai
Alexa Grae presents: Tone Pillar (World Premiere)
Tone Pillar is assembled from research and snapshots of a quarantine and uprisings, rooted in blackness, in trans-queer identity, in neurodiversity, and with magic. The veil has only continued to weaken, truths submerged rise to the surface. Tone Pillar accumulates through bent genres, arias of longing serve as musical anchors, movement that conjures meditative states open portals, protagonists building worlds and revolutions, this live work builds an absurd Atlantis and invites the audience in. Grae engages in the thrills of virtuosity through systems of alignment that focus on stories and vehicles of transformation that happen in the steps of a protest and the thump of the dancefloor.
Composer + Libretto: Alexa Grae
Direction + Video Projection Design: Stephanie Acosta
Costume Design + Construction: Isaac Pool
Performance: Alexa Grae, Hilary Brown-Istrefi, and Nina Guevara