LIVE CULTURES 022
A non exhaustive list of top tier performances in NYC + February's Field Trip
Keeping this month’s preamble short and sweet because life. But if you binged everything worth watching during the snow storm, and now you’re wondering what to do with yourself, the ice mounds are thawing, so put on your coat and get yourself to the nearest theater.
Instagram saw it first, but here are February’s recommendations:
LIVE CULTURES FEBRUARY RECOMMENDATIONS
*Age of Content by (LA)HORDE x Ballet National de Marseille @ Brooklyn Academy of Music*
February 20th-22nd
**JOIN US IRL for FIELD TRIP 010 - Sunday Feb 22nd, 3PM**
If you’ve been reading Live Cultures for a while, you’ll know that I’m often preoccupied by the idea of generational artistic legacy. (LA)HORDE —the artistic collective comprised of artists, Marine Brutti, Jonathan Debrouwer, and Arthur Harel— stands out as a necessary inflection point in theater and dance. The collective have served as director of Marseille National Ballet for the past 7 years, and bring work that feels of this era, in no small part due to the company’s willingness to confront the politics embedded in dance at both the individual and collective scale. In Age of Content, the company explores the blurred borders of the digital and physical body. Negotiating between violence, desire, control, autonomy, Age of Content is a tumble through entangled contradictions that make up the post-Internet age.
Hate Radio by Milo Rau @ St Anne’s Warehouse
February 12th -28th
I had the pleasure of catching opening night of Hate Radio this past weekend — and still don’t think I’ve fully digested it. The piece deals with the role of the Rwandan radio station RTLM, in propagandising and inciting the genocide of almost one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994. I hesitate to call Hate Radio a play as everything that we see and hear is based on archival material and testimonies. There is very little theatricality —it reads more like a documentary. From an enclosed radio booth, the dialogue and music are transmitted through headphones making the experience all the more immediate and personal. Vitriol courses between interludes of Nirvana and lilty zouk, pop-quizes, news readings and audience phone-ins. This staging feels especially timely —and I’m sure that has felt true multiple times across its 15 year run — reminding me that popular culture has and is being used an apparatus for violence.
Maldonne by Leïla Ka @ New York Live Arts
February 27th & 28th
I have long poured over Leïla Ka’s work via looping 4:5 squares on my IG timeline and am so excited to experience it in the flesh. Maldonne is a raw exploration of the female condition — grappling with fragility, rebellion, rage, and solidarity. I love how Ka’s choreography marries the pedestrian and the theatrical. You can hear the dancers breathe, you can see them sweat, their hair is out of place — these are all crucial elements of the performance, resulting in art that feels real and visceral; are that feels human.
If you can’t make the show (though I highly recommend carving out the time in your calendar), you can also watch Ka’s short film of the same name. Happy watching (in either form)!
Meat Suit by Aya Ogawa
February 12th - March 15th
Admittedly, I’m not super familiar with Aya Ogawa’s work but after a fellow theater goer—who also happened to be The Flea Theater’s Artistic Director—gave me the tip, I couldn’t not share. Meat Suit —or by its full title, Meat Suit, or the shitshow of motherhood— is a hilarious carnival of chaos, encapsulating the experience of motherhood while confronting a deeper theme: how every birth triggers quiet deaths — the mother’s autonomy, sense of self, and personal desire — and whether anything of the person she was survives.
Stay cultured x