The Contemporary Arts Center has announced an upcoming new festival: This Time Tomorrow. Expect a diverse array of performance art over four days — April 11-14 — at venues across the city.
“This is the spirit of collaboration, experimentation and exploration that we are taking on wholeheartedly over the course of four days — and asking audiences to take this risk with us,” Drew Klein — the performing arts director at the CAC — said in a special announcement Jan. 11.
Here’s a sampling of what’s to come:
INTERMEDIO: On Touching
You may recall Intermedio — a creative studio local to Cincinnati — from their part in 2018’s FotoFocus biennial, The Place of Forgetting. The group returns with a world premiere of On Touching, which also encounters the intersection of sound and space.
“Musical sound emanates from a series of continually unfolding transmissions, both physical and digital, distributed between performers and a wearable cybernetic system,” explains a release.
Daina Ashbee: Serpentine
Ashbee created the choreography in this performance — which is repeated for up to two hours — but it’s interpreted as a solo by Areli Moran of Mexico. (This will be its regional premiere.) A composition by Jean-Francois Blouin — a haunting electric organ — accompanies the “dark and feminine” piece.
“Sometimes things need to be insisted upon, and I believe repetition is powerful because it insists because we remember and we absorb,” Daina Ashbee’s website reads. “The body is powerful and Serpentine allows one body to speak — to occupy space — and our attention, over and over, insistently revealing the enormous strength of the interpreter.”
Mammalian Diving Reflex: All The Sex I’ve Ever Had
Old people? They have sex. Though that fact isn’t revolutionary in itself, the premise of six ordinary folks divulging intimate stories to a room full of strangers may very well be.
All The Sex I’ve Ever Had first started nearly a decade ago in 2010. Since then, it’s been all over the world: Toronto, Glasgow, Singapore, Portland, Sydney and New York. But the stop in Cincinnati marks its regional premiere. According to a release, a group of five to eight Cincinnati-area adults over the age of 65 will discuss “the evolution of love and sexuality from the perspective of life’s later years.”
Amanda Curreri: RopeWalk
An assistant professor at University of Cincinnati’s DAAP, Curreri’s performance will take it outside. Fifty participants will come together and create multi-colored ropes that will span the Purple People Bridge, a site that’s connected to the history of slavery and acts as a dividing line between the North and South. The walk is meant to represent public healing.
NIC Kay: Pushit! [An Exercise in Getting Well Soon]
NIC Kay’s 90-minute performance unfolds in public in a historically black neighborhood. The press release describes it as “a meditation on emotional labor and the impossibility of the stage as a place of freedom for the black performer.” If performances in other cities are any indication, onlookers can expect to literally exercise themselves: Kay will walk, move and dance through the neighborhood of choice.
Lorena Molina: Tu nombre entre nuestras lenguas
On Dec. 11, 1981, nearly 1,000 people (mostly children) were murdered in the Salvadoran village of El Mozote — the largest massacre in modern Latin American history — at the hands of the Salvadoran army, who were trained and funded by the United States. The Salvadoran government denied this injustice for nearly 40 years. Salvadoran-born and Cincy-based, Molina’s work will act as a ceremony to the lost and address the United States’ role in the affairs of other nations, which contributes to the refugee crisis.
Rashaad Newsome: Running
Running had its premiere in New York City’s Park Avenue Armory in late 2017. The press release describes it as an “immersive performance evoking an abstract portrait of soul created through light and voice.” The title itself stems from the singer’s “vocal run,” a term that describes a series of melodic notes that go up and down in quick succession. The show features three vocalists singing a score written by Newsome, who incorporated samples of vocal runs by Aretha Franklin, Patti LaBelle, Whitney Houston, Marvin Gaye and more. Its stop in Cincy marks Running’s regional premiere.
Tania El Khoury: As Far As My Fingertips Take Me
This regional premiere will be in partnership with Camp Washington’s Wave Pool. Through a wall, an audience member will be put in conversation with a Syrian refugee. Their arms will touch, but they won’t actually see one another. The refugee will draw on the participant’s arm while they listen to the stories of those who have faced border discrimination.
Joseph Keckler: Live
Held in conjunction with the 21c Museum Hotel, the international performer’s vocal range spans three-octaves, which melds with rich storytelling cut with wit. The Huffington Post recently called his performance “riveting and beautifully absurd.”
For more info, visit thistimetmrw.com
This article appears in Jan 9-16, 2019.
