Tales Between Our Legs / Photo by Margaret Vance
Cutting-edge dance, music, theater and multimedia performances are what the New Original Works Festival is all about. In its 14th year of selecting nine local artists and presenting their works-in-progress for three evenings of shared programming, REDCAT opens the doors of the creative process to a thirsty public. This Thursday, Friday and Saturday, August 3-5, at 8:30 p.m., week two of the festival comes to the downtown location below Disney Hall.
One of the three creators on the bill is choreographer/performer Nickels Sunshine, a movement explorer returning to NOW for the second time. His project, “Take Me With You,” includes what promotional materials label as a “contemporary corps de ballet” of five not-usually-labeled “ballet” dancers. “Take Me…” “re-imagines the poetics of movement” as it pays “homage to the distinctive techniques and choreographic styles of … dance pioneers [like] Vaslav Nijinsky and Martha Graham.”
Tales Between Our Legs — Megan Fowler-Hurst, Mackenzey Franklin and Sarri Sanchez — will unveil “A Dismal Glimpse at a Script We Create to Keep Us Moving Forward.” This satirical multimedia adventure “cleverly exploits the contrast between what people say and what they really mean” as the women blend “capricious theatricality [with] nuanced choreographic non-sequiturs.”
With “Can You Hear Me / L.A. 92,” writer/performer Vivian Bang reveals a live documentary about the L.A. riots of 1992 drawn from the perspective of Korean-Americans who were there. An original member of New York’s “explosively antic” Big Art Group, now with a thriving TV/film career, Bang ”poetically captures a crucial historic moment.”
This weekend’s offerings seem to have it all, from the serious and contemplative to the embarrassingly exposed and comedic. Roll on, NOW!
—Benn Widdey, Culture Spot LA
LOCATION: REDCAT, 631 W. Second St., LA 90012
TICKETS: $16-$20 at the box office, by calling (213) 237-2800 or at: https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/976230
MORE INFORMATION: redcat.org