LGBTQ Event The 2009 HOT! Festival To Be Held 7/1-8/1 At New Dixon Place In NYC

The world's longest running LGBTQ arts festival will take place from July 1 - August 1, 2009 at the new Dixon Place Theater on New York's historic Lower East Side at 161 Chrystie Street (between Rivington/Delancey). The 2009 HOT! Festival will draw from an international roster of artists who have become headliners in the underground performance world and will be presented on New York's newest theater by an organization that encourages and develops all new artists to challenge themselves and their audience.

A state-of-the-art facility replete with a separate bar and performance lounge, Dixon Place's main stage capacity has since tripled since its move from the Bowery and is equipped with the latest offerings in theatrical wonderment.
The HOT! Festival is a laboratory for inter-disciplinary queer performance from emerging and established artists at all stages of development. HOT! marks the point of convergence where queer people from all five boroughs come together to be entertained, educated, challenged and inspired. The festival's performance-driven calendar will also feature panel discussions, workshops and other forums that foster dialogue, a deeper appreciation of the work, and a sense of history within the community. The festival will open with an exhibition of artwork by Liz Liguori.
Routinely referred to as a "downtown impresario" for his producing and curatorial expertise in developing, promoting, and presenting experimental talent, Earl Dax has been retained as this summer's HOT Festival Director. Since moving to New York City in January of 2005, Dax has produced, co-produced and/or curated over 150 shows at a variety of venues across the city including P.S. 122, Joe's Pub, the Knitting Factory, Mo Pitkin's, as well as the festival direction of the 2006 HOT festival at Dixon Place. Dax and his monthly ART JAM were named to Galapagos Art Space's first-ever resident artist program as one of the "...the people and projects that represent the most talented, visionary, and independently proactive emerging artists in New York City." He currently presents the bi-coastal "Tingle-Tangle Club." He is the creator and producer of the highly acclaimed "Weimar New York" shows and has presented numerous shows at Le Poisson Rouge, BAM Café, Glasslands, Rose Live Music, and SFMOMA. He also owns and operates Scene Downtown, an online portal for New York City's vibrant downtown arts, entertainment and nightlife. - www.scenedowntown.com.

Dixon Place, founded in Ellie Covan's living room in 1986, is dedicated to supporting the creative process by presenting original works of theatre, dance, and literature at all stages of development. An artistic laboratory with an audience, we serve as a safety net, enabling artists to make challenging and questioning work that pushes the limits of artistic expression. With a warm, nurturing atmosphere, DP encourages and inspires artists of all stripes and persuasions, placing special emphasis on the needs of women, people of color, seniors, youth, and GLBT artists. The artists' experience is given top priority through our professional atmosphere and remuneration, and their process is facilitated through the reaction and feedback from adventurous, supportive audiences. Dixon Place is a local haven for creativity, as well as an international model for the open exploration of the process of creation. In 2009, Dixon Place moved to a new, self owned theater complex at 161 Chrystie Street with the latest in theater technology and artist's services.

Tickets for the HOT! Festival are $10 - $25 depending on show and can be purchased at www.ovationtix.com

For more info, visit www.hotfestival.org or www.dixonplace.org

2009 HOT! FESTIVAL SHOW INFO/DATES

Penny Arcade's Old Queen

July 9 - July 10 @ 8:00 PM, July 11 @ 10:00 PM

July 16 - July 17 @ 8:00 PM, July 18 @ 10:00 PM

July 23 - July 24 @ 8:00 PM, July 25 @ 10:00 PM

A centerpiece of the 2009 HOT! Festival, internationally acclaimed performance artist and bona fide New York City icon Penny Arcade debuts her latest autobiographical theater piece, Old Queen as this year's HOT! Festival Commission. True to the vision of Dixon Place as an incubator for new work, Old Queen is a world premiere, work-in-progress. A scripted show designed with her longtime collaborator Steve Zehtner Old Queen takes advantage of the new Dixon Place theater's state-of-the art technology while providing room for Arcade - a performer who has been creating work improvisationally for over 30 years - to develop the piece over its 9 performances.

As the host and producer of the long-running "Lower East Side Biography Project" and the feature-length "Stemming the Tide of Cultural Amnesia," Penny Arcade has a demonstrated commitment to preserving the rich cultural and intellectual history of the East Village and Lower East Side. For the first time in her theater work she revisits these neighborhoods from the perspective of the teenage, runaway Susanna Ventura. Arcade's theatrical memoir evokes the magic and memory of the gay men who raised here: from little known figures like Jamie Andrews, the gay man who took her in off the streets and gave her a place to live, to seminal figures like John Vacarro, Candy Darling, and Andy Warhol. Old Queen is the latest offering from a veteran playwright and performance artist at the peak of her powers. Expect Arcade's signature blend of spot-on impersonations, trenchant wit, and theatrical humanism.

Jeffery and Cole's Make it Bigger!

July 16 @ 10:00 PM, July 23 @ 10:00 PM, July 30 @ 10:00 PM

YouTube videos and $5 dollar handjobs are all very well, but sometimes Manhattan just ain't big enough for two overnight Internet sensations.

Join Jeffery Self and Cole Escola as they climb out of the computer, put on pants, and head for Hollywood. Who will they meet? Where will they end up? And can they find success without losing each other?

Jeffery Self and Cole Escola are known to YouTube audiences as the VGL Boys, along with live shows at Joe's Pub, the D-Lounge, and the HERE Arts Center. Starting June 19th, their brand new JEFFERY AND COLE CASSEROLE can be seen on The Logo Network Fridays at 11PM as well as at HYPERLINK "http://logoonline.com/"
Janessa Clark's (inner)views I-VII

July 20 @ 8:00 PM, July 21 @ 10:00 PM, July 22 @ 8:00 PM

This provocative production is a lens into the LGBTQ community of New York City. Experience the challenges and pleasures of being out and gay in contemporary America through the filmed stories of 7 queer women, the bodies of 3 dancers, and the soulful live music of 1 singer/songwriter.
Janessa Clark holds a BFA in Choreography from Arizona State University where she received the ASU Undergraduate Choreography Award for her sextet Molt. She is the Artistic Director of Janessa Clark/KILTERBOX, founded in 2001. Her work has been seen in many venues throughout New York including the 2002 DancenOw Festival, Danspace Project at BRIC Studio, University Settlement, WAXWorks, NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, City Center Studios, Dixon Place, and Dance New Amsterdam among others. Her choreography also appeared in the film "Squeeze Play" (2004) directed by Cheidu Egbuniwe. Her choreography has been performed throughout Arizona, California, and New England and has successfully toured to Sweden and Spain. She was the September 2008 cover girl for GO! NYC Magazine. Janessa is currently a 2009 Harlem Stage, Inc./Fund for New Work Grant recipient and received the 2009 Women at Work Award from Gina Gibney Dance, Inc.

CABAL

Fridays at 11:00 PM / July 3 - July 31

Over the course of his tenure in New York City, HOT! Festival Director Earl Dax has undertaken a wide range of activities, but again and again he has worked in - and played with - the genre of cabaret, most notably with the acclaimed "Weimar New York" and its wicked step-sister, the bi-coastal Tingel Tangel Club. As part of the 18th Annual Dixon Place HOT! Festival, Dax returns to his preferred métier with CABAL: a weekly, later-night cabaret developed with a "sleeper cell" of queer artists, provocateurs and insurgents including Seth Kirby and Brock Monroe (Light+Sound Design), Nick Hallett, Glenn Marla, Natti Vogel and Modern Gypsies spectacle entertainment. Each week you'll be treated to a rotating roster of special guests. Artists scheduled to appear include: Murray Hill, M. Lamar, Smokin' McQueen, and Basil Twist.
From Al-qaida, to Dubya's inner circle, to the bankers at the heart of our global financial collapse, recent history shows that Margaret Mead's observation that we should "[n]ever underestimate the ability of a small group of committed individuals to change the world..." doesn't merely apply to the progressives and social change activists who typically invoke her words. At this unprecedented moment in history, queer culture makers must continue to band together and spread our 'insidious influence' into the mainstream LGBT movement and the culture more broadly. Part installation, part consciousness raising, CABAL is an outrageous and thought-provoking evening of entertainment featuring a rotating cast of queer performers, artists and ne'er do wells.

Sean Dorsey's Uncovered: The Diary Project

July 30 - July 31 @ 8:00 PM

August 1 @ 8:00 PM

August 2 @ 3:00 PM
Sean Dorsey, winner of two Isadora Duncan Dance Awards and the Goldie Award for Performance, and a stellar cast of dancers chase the naked truth in Uncovered: The Diary Project. Using text from actual, real-life diaries, Uncovered's powerful dances reveal lives and stories that history has tried to erase. Out spill diary secrets, bathhouse antics, outrageous love, pop idols, misadventures, impossible courage and the importance of documenting and sharing our history.

This powerful, highly praised concert is the culmination of a year-and-a-half long research process in which Dorsey uncovered and researched diaries of transgender and queer people - from the famous to the unknown. Uncovered features Lou, a suite of dances based on the lifelong journals of Lou Sullivan (1951-1991), a Bay Area transsexual gay man and pioneering activist**; and Lost/Found, the story of an imaginary boyhood based on a very real diary. Uncovered offers an evening of full-bodied, powerful dances honoring remarkable life stories.
Sean Dorsey is an award-winning choreographer and dancer and the founder and Artistic Director of Fresh Meat Productions. Recognized as the nation's first out transgender choreographer, Dorsey's acclaimed work is a powerful fusion of dance, storytelling and theater and is creating new space for transgender and queer bodies and stories in modern dance. Dorsey has been named one of the international dance scene's most promising choreographers by Europe's leading dance magazine, BalletTanz, and was named one of the Top Ten in Bay Area dance by both the San Francisco Bay Guardian and the Bay Area Reporter. Dorsey is the recipient of a prestigious Wallace Alexader Gerbode Choreographer's Commission and has received commissions from the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Queer Cultural Center and Highways Performance Space. www.freshmeatproductions.org/director.html