LIVE CULTURES 009

A proposal and an invitation to get weird(!)

2025! We have arrived.

THE PROPOSAL

For me, I feel this year is all about expansion for Live Cultures—expanding community, expanding perspectives, expanding ambitions. We closed out the year with a meditative performance from Kyle Abraham at Park Avenue Armory; the prefect antidote to the “end of Q4” chaos/holiday rush. And there’s more in the works (next stop: Field Trip 006 in Feb — see below for details).

This year, my goal is to explore performances beyond my comfort zone, (which typically tends towards contemporary dance), and check out more plays and experimental works (let’s get weird!!). Alongside Field Trips, I will continue to share monthly theater listings, but this year, I want to make it even easier to access the shows I recommend and will be working with theaters to see if I can finagle a nice discount code from time to time (bc in 2025 art is IN, but inflation is OUT ).

Speaking of access, one of the conundrums of theater is that it is ephemeral, and often not very well archived for public consumption. That said, my Pinterest and Instagram saves are packed full of snippets of performing artists that stopped my thumbs online, and I plan to release little packages of inspiring work in the hopes that it sends you down your own rabbit hole of curiosity and exploration (if you’re gonna spend hours on IG, at least let it be enriching). Additionally, I want this sharing to become a two-way conversation and for other artists, makers, designers, curators, architects, musicians and beyond, to think about theater and performance with me. If that’s you or someone you know, I want to interview you (and maybe even take you to a show!). My goal is for performing arts to be more embedded in creative conversations and interdisciplinary exchanges, because that ultimately makes all art stronger.

Please note: F.K.A Twigs is the blueprint in this respect. She’s been doing the Lord’s work interweaving music, dance, and fashion into her work. If you haven’t seen the Eusexua music video yet, run don’t walk, but also you need to see this collaborative presentation from F.K.A Twigs/Valentino/Rambert Dance Company for Paris Fashion Week 2023 (above).

With all that said, let’s get back to our regular programming and January’s monthly picks.

LIVE CULTURES: JANUARY PICKS

Before I begin, January’s picks are but the tip of the iceberg of all the live art festivals and happening in New York in January, including but not limited to OUTFRONT! Festival (Jan 7th-13th) celebrating radical LGBTQ+ and feminist choreographers, filmmakers and performing artists; Under The Radar Festival (Jan 4th-Jan 19th) which brings boundary pushing work from around the globe to 30+ venues across the city, and Prototype Festival (Jan 9th-19th) showcasing the best of contemporary and multi-disciplinary opera. For more info on all of the festivals this month in New York click here.

Contemporary Dance Festival: Japan + East Asia @ Japan Society NYC

(January 10th & 11th)

Returning for its 20th showcase, the Japan Society’s Contemporary Dance Festival brings together three powerful ensemble pieces from across East Asia including Co. Ruri Mito’s (Japan) kaleidoscopic Where we were born, I-Ling Lu’s (Taiwan) “…and,or…” exploring shifting relationships, and C.SENSE’s Trivial Perfection blending hip-hop, modern dance and martial arts.

Benji Reid: Find Your Eyes @ Iris Cantor Theater

(January 9th-12th, part of Under The Radar Festival)

Award-wining director, Benji Reid promptly said “I’m done with theater” when approached to create a new work. His interest in the stage had waned and he had a newfound desire to pursue full-time photography. After years of persuasion and a proposition to incorporate photography into his stage work, he finally accepted the invitation back to the stage; not surrendering his camera, but exploring its relation to the performance space. Pioneer of hip-hop theater, Benji Reid, was preparing Coming to New York as part of Under The Radar festival, Find Your Eyes combines photography, choreography and performance theater to create a unique dialogue between image and body, studio and stage, lived reality and racing imagination. In the artists own words, “Find Your Eyes is a performance about the creative process and life journeys…a meditation on love, life and art.”

Blind Runner @ St Ann’s Warehouse

(Jan 4th-19th, part of Under The Radar Festival)

Blind Runner, tells the story of a husband visiting his wife, who has been detained as a political prisoner in Tehran. Spied on by cameras and microphones, their conversations become increasingly distant, inhibiting their ability to share their daily lives. Their strained relationship unfolds alongside the husband’s growing bond with a blind woman he trains for a footrace at his wife's insistence. As they come to learn more about each other, the unlikely couple grows close and finds a common rhythm. At the race’s end, they set upon a second challenge: can they run the Channel Tunnel to England, covering 38 kilometers in a few hours and avoiding being hit by the first train of the morning?

A Knock on the Roof @ New York Theater Workshop

(January 10th -February 16th, part of Under The Radar Festival)

Though it premiered in 2017, A Knock on the Roof feels just as true to the world today. A Knock on the Roof is a powerful and deeply moving play about obsession, survival, and the everyday struggles of life in Gaza. Written by and starring Khawla Ibraheem, the play follows Mariam as she prepares for the terrifying moment when a "knock on the roof" bomb forces her to flee her home. Lauded as the crown jewel of 2024’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the one-woman play arrives at New York Theater Workshop for a highly anticipated off-Broadway run.

In a Grove @ LaMaMa Experimental Theater Club

(January 16-19th, part of Prototype Festival)

Inspired by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s classic story, In A Grove is a haunting meditation on the impossibility of truth and the subjectivity of memory and perception. Set in a ghost forest in the aftermath of a wildfire in the Pacific Northwest, this searing adaptation plunges the listener progressively deeper into the ever more fallible regions of the human heart, interrogating how we see, hear, remember and believe.

Compagnie Hervé KOUBI @ The Joyce Theater

(January 28th-February 2nd)

Compagnie Hervé KOUBI performs What The Day Owes To The Night, a gravity-defying work blending capoeira, martial arts, and contemporary dance. The piece traces choreographer, Hervé Koubi’s own personal lineage as he returns to Algeria, the country of his ancestors, to collaborate with street dance performers from across the Mediterranean basin.

FIELD TRIP 006 (Feb 14th OR 15th): FLORENTINA HOLZINGER:TANZ at NYU Skirball Performing Arts Center

In this spirit of trying new things, February’s field trip will take us out of our comfort zones (in fact, discomfort is central to the work of Florentina Holzinger) with a provocative physical theater piece, TANZ. If you want to join for the ride, please fill out this interest form by Wednesday, January 8th.

“If people come to me expecting an evening of abstract postmodern dance, I fully respect their decision to leave,” says Holzinger. “I’d rather be left with 10 people in the audience who find it cool.”

The New York Times (2022)

(maybe) See you there…and if not, stay cultured <3