2020 Pivot Arts Festival Goes Virtual, June 5–30

Pivot Arts, which celebrates adventurous, multidisciplinary performance, is "pivoting" in the presentation of its eighth annual Pivot Arts Festival, in response to restrictions due to COVID-19. For this year's Festival-subtitled "This is How We Pivot"-performances originally scheduled at venues in Chicago's Uptown and Edgewater neighborhoods are shifting to online presentations premiering June 5-11, with content remaining available through June 30 at pivotarts.org/festival. Live events are postponed to future dates that will be announced.

This year's festival includes performance art, immersive theatre, contemporary and street dance, hip-hop opera, dance created for film and video, animation and more. Among the participating artists are Obie Award-winning solo performer-playwright David Cale, writer-director-performer Alex Alpharaoh, playwright-director Seth Bockley and Chicago's Red Clay Dance Company and The Era Footwork Crew.

"It's essential for arts organizations to adapt and model resiliency and creativity during these challenging times," said Founder and Director Julieanne Ehre. "While we cannot present the Pivot Arts Festival as we intended, we are creating a virtual space for artists and audiences to experience performance during this time of crisis."

June 10

Alpharaoh, Lidieth Arevalo's documentary film about Alex Alpharaoh's national tour of WET: A DACAmented Journey

WET is a stirring autobiographical work by Alpharaoh about his experience as an undocumented American performing artist. Through his story, the film shines light on what it means to be an American in every sense of the word except on paper. Following the film, Alpharaoh will participate in a meet-and-greet via Zoom. The meet and greet requires a minimum $25 donation and reservation.
Pivot will present a live Chicago performance of WET, written and performed by Alpharaoh, directed by Brisa A. Muñoz, on a future date.

June 11

Live dance party led by artists from The Rosina Project, a collaboration between Chicago Fringe Opera and BraveSoul Movement

Developed and produced by the 2019 Pivot Arts Festival, The Rosina Project is a contemporary adaptation of Rossini's opera The Barber of Seville that mixes hip-hop MCs, opera singers and street-dance artists with a live DJ and beatboxer to perform an original story of female empowerment and interracial friendship as an immersive house party. The livestreamed performance will include a selection of songs and dance inviting the audience to join in.

June 14

Prison and Neighborhood Arts Project presents The Long Term created by Chester Brost, Devon Daniels, Joseph Dole, Francisco "Paco" Estrada, Darrell W. Fair, R Dot Nandez, Damon Locks, C. McLaurin, Flynard "Fly 1" Miller, Andrés Reyes, Sarah Ross, B. R. Shaw, Bring and Johnny Taylor

The Long Term, a hand-drawn animation video, uses personal narrative and research to describe the scale and impact of long-term sentencing policies. The work tells the stories about the fear of dying inside, the feeling of being programmed by prison and the impact on family life from the perspective of 11 artists serving life or long-term sentences.

There will be a link to the film and a livestreamed discussion moderated by Jane Beachy, Artistic Director of Illinois Humanities, with creator Damon Locks, producer Sarah Ross, civil rights attorney Sarah Grady and artists and activists who have been impacted by long-term sentencing.

ALSO-online not live:

Superfluxus, co-conceived by director Seth Bockley and writer Drew Paryzer; performed by Brianna Buckley, Alana Grossman, Alex Quiñones and Mary Williamson; created in collaboration with Tony Churchill, Hannah Foerschler, John Holmes, Nick Keenan and Melissa Schlesinger

Superfluxus is an original sci-fi puzzling experience full of humor, suspense and mind-bending twists. Originally intended as an immersive theater and installation project, the artists have reimagined SUPERFLUXUS, during this time of social distancing, as a choose-your-own-adventure text and video Web experience, set in a surreal and sinister lunar landscape in the year 2120. This virtual journey will give audiences a flavor of what will ultimately become a live immersive experience in the not-too-distant, but still very surreal, future.

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