Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble's 'THE ART OF LUV (PART 5)' to Play The Bushwick Starr

The Bushwick Starr will present the world premiere of The Art of Luv (Part 5): Swipe Right / ROKÉ Cupid, created and performed by Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble ("ROKE"), directed by Dustin Wills and running May 24 - June 10, 2017.

The Art of Luv (Part 5): Swipe Right / ROKÉ Cupid is a cycle of sacred love songs for the era of Internet Romance, a meditation on selfhood and intimacy in a mediated society. Three officiants perform an elaborate courtship ritual inside a kaleidoscopic video tent. The ritual is accompanied by live music and text taken from online dating profiles, internet scams, how-to dating guides, and the works of ecstatic poets. In Swipe Right / ROKÉ Cupid, ROKE attempts to imbue our modern search for love with a forgotten spiritual resonance.

The Art of Luv is a multi-part, multi-year, multi-disciplinary series which addresses the mythologies behind normative 21st Century codes of romantic conduct. The products of their practice have taken a range of forms: public ritual-performances, video, sculpture, installation, lecture, and party. The Art of LUV (Part 5): Swipe Right / ROKÉ Cupid is commissioned by The Bushwick Starr.

The Art of Luv is a project of Creative Capital.

The Bushwick Starr theater is located at 207 Starr Street, Brooklyn, NY [between Irving and Wyckoff]. Directions: Via Subway take the L Train to Jefferson Street, exit at Starr Street, walk against traffic on Starr, and the theater is 3/4 of a block on the right. For detailed driving directions, visit www.thebushwickstarr.org/DIRECTIONS. Tickets are $20 starting 4/25 at www.thebushwickstarr.org.

Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble [ROKE] is a musical priesthood that explores the metaphysics and mythologies of love, desire, and connectivity in the the VHS and Internet Ages. Formed by artists Tei Blow and Sean McElroy, ROKE generates contemporary ritual out of found media, synthesizing strategies of video, meme, party, opera, theater, social practice, and installation.

ROKE has performed rituals in New York at The Public Theater's Under the Radar Festival, Guggenheim Museum, Under the Radar's Incoming! Series, Gibney Dance Center, Kate Werble Gallery, Special Effects Festival at Participant Inc., Prelude Festival, AUNTS Arts@Renaissance, and JACK, and in Philadelphia at FringeArts. ROKE received a 2016 Creative Capital award for The Art of Luv series, and has been awarded a Franklin Furnace Fund grant (2013) and a BAX Space Grant (2014). They were part of The Public Theater's Devised Theater Working Group and PS122's RAMP residency program. They spent the summer of 2014 at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and were 2015 CUNY Hunter Artists-in-Residence in ceramics.

The Bushwick Starr is an Obie Award winning non profit theater that presents an annual Season of new performance work. We are an organization defined by both our artists and our community, and since 2007, we have grown into a thriving theatrical venue, a vital neighborhood arts center, and a destination for exciting and engaging performance. We provide a springboard for emerging professional artists to make career-defining leaps, and we are a sanctuary where established performance companies come to experiment and innovate. Our past Seasons have included new work from groundbreaking artists such as The Mad Ones, Clare Barron, Dave Malloy, The Debate Society, the TEAM, and Half Straddle.

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