Gina Young brings "BUTCH BALLET" to REDCAT's final weekend of New Original Works. / Photo courtesy of Gina Young
The third and final weekend of the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater’s New Original Works Festival brings some highly respected and internationally renowned artists to its stage this Thursday through Saturday, August 10-12, at 8:30 p.m. Exploring new ideas in dance, performance, music, theater and multimedia, REDCAT’s three-week adventure plans to keep surprising us with unknown and (potentially) unexpected situations and results.
Acclaimed and award-winning choreographers/performers Jeremy Nelson and Luis Lara Malvacias will present “C,” the third of their 26 structured improvisational duets (A to Z). Investigating movement and rhythmic juxtaposition, the dance is enhanced with video images on multiple surfaces within a set described in promotional materials as evoking a “domestic environment.” The collaborators dive into time: past, present, future, slow, fast, all possibilities within that and more.
“BUTCH BALLET,” created by writer/director Gina Young, is a “love letter to female masculinity.” A movement-theater work performed by a cast of “butch, gender non-conforming and non-binary performers (with no actual ballet involved!),” the piece consists of “minimalist vignettes . . . tackling softness and hardness, otherness and belonging, love and desire, butch iconography and, of course, … swimwear.”
Finally, returning to the NOW Fest for a second time is Timur and The Dime Museum. Described in the LA Times as “punk-operatic spectacle,” the band/orchestra will present “Artaud in the Black Lodge.”
This original creation finds “imagined psychic connections between Antonin Artaud, William S. Burroughs and David Lynch … [via] heavy metal and electronica.” With a score composed by David T. Little, a libretto by poet Anne Waldman and director Lydia Steier at the helm, there’s no telling where things will end.
—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