REDCAT Kicks Off the 19th Annual NOW Festival This Week

Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT), CalArts' downtown center for contemporary arts, presents the 19th annual New Original Works (NOW) Festival, a celebration of Los Angeles' vibrant community of artists creating new performance work, over three weekends this summer: Aug. 18-20, Aug. 25-27, and Sept. 1-3, 2022.

This year's festival showcases nine new works by Los Angeles artists who are redefining the boundaries of contemporary performance, inventing hybrid artistic disciplines, reimagining traditions, and confronting urgent issues - all which can be enjoyed either in-person or online through REDCAT's website.

NOW Festival 2022 was organized by Edgar Miramontes, REDCAT's Deputy Executive Director & Curator, with artists Meena Murugesan, jumatatu m. poe, and Kendra Ware.

"REDCAT has worked to prioritize diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion in its program offerings, staff, and artists. This year's NOW Festival continues this practice by presenting a diverse range of artists, specifically focusing on BIPOC and queer artists," said Miramontes "NOW 2022 aims to highlight issues of identity and intersectionality, which supports REDCAT's mission to push the evolution of contemporary art and culture, develop new ideas, and create vital dialogue in our complex and changing world."

In the spirit of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), REDCAT's parent institution, the NOW Festival serves as a catalyst for creativity and new ideas. Each year, NOW transforms REDCAT into a laboratory for premiering new contemporary dance, theater, music, and multimedia performances. All artistic teams are provided rehearsal space, technical support, and artist fees. Since the first edition in 2004, NOW Festival has presented the work of over 200 L.A.-based artists who continue to be seen on stages throughout the U.S. and abroad.

Each of the three festival weekends features a triple bill of world premieres in a shared evening. Each program will premiere on Thursday evening and repeat Friday and Saturday at 8:30 pm. Performances will also be livestreamed each Saturday evening during the festival's run.

Week One, held Aug. 18-20, 2022, comprises a program of works by artists Achinta S. McDaniel, Lindsey Red-tail, and X'ene Sky. Details:

Achinta S. McDaniel: Restless autumn. restless spring.
Utilizing improvisation and collaboration to foreground process, artistic director Achinta S. McDaniel and the ensemble of artists of Blue13 Dance Company strip away production to explore the impact of movement alone in Restless autumn. restless spring. Relying on a Fluxus-inspired score, the performers revisit contemporary dance, revealing the multiplicity of intersectional global majority identities, seemingly incongruous to a basic dance score. Largely a response to the isolation and separation of the COVID-19 pandemic, Restless autumn. restless spring. is a return to collaboration and a rediscovery of what it means for artists to unite in a space to reflect on shared experiences and create work together.

Lindsey Red-tail: You can vision with Them
Conjuring both seen and unseen forces of nature, Lindsey Red-tail's You can vision with Them ensemble dance work explores the journey to finding well water. Inspired by the story of an ancestor who received visions through the wind, this work is a call to be present with nature and those who have lived here before us. Red-tail explains: "The spine of a feather in the sky holds itself together against the wind. The giant plume spreads for miles long crossing the moon on its way to the mountains. The spine. My spine. The air can move through it and lift it up. Carry it across terrain and the sky."

X'ene Sky: Vengeance
Music and performance artist X'ene Sky's new musical work Vengeance explores the connectivity between inheritance, state violence, and the way vengeance manifests itself in all parts of our being. Conceptualized in the summer of 2020, while under lockdown in Los Angeles amidst the noise of parrots in her backyard-an invasive species that begun to push out the native birds-and the constant helicopters and police surveillance above and on the ground of her neighborhood, this work is inspired by texts from Angela Davis and Toni Morrison, where themes of flying, surveillance, and surrender permeate.

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