REDCAT's 2017 New Original Works (NOW) Festival Continues Until 8/12

REDCAT, CalArts' downtown center for contemporary arts, 14th annual New Original Works (NOW) Festival, a three-week celebration of Los Angeles' vibrant community of artists creating new contemporary performance works continues August 3-5 and August 10-12 at 8:30 pm. Each weekend premieres a triple bill, presenting a shared evening of dance, theater and multimedia work. Each program is premiered on Thursday evening and repeated Friday and Saturday evenings.

Week Two: August 3-5

Nickels Sunshine: Take Me With You

With smart, lush movement and a notably contemporary "corps de ballet," Nickels Sunshine beautifully crafts a non gender conforming homage to the distinctive techniques and choreographic styles of such canonical dance pioneers as Vaslav Nijinsky and Martha Graham. Nickels rejoins with the fearless Jmy James Kidd - along with Barry Brannum, Alexx Shilling, Bernard Brown and Maya Gingery - to re-imagine the poetics of movement in shared spaces.

Megan Fowler-Hurst, Mackenzey Franklin and Sarri Sanchez (TBOL):
A Dismal Glimpse at a Script We Create to Keep Us Moving Forward

Three adventurous collaborators blend capricious theatricality with nuanced choreographic non-sequiturs, working under the collective name Tales Between Our Legs (TBOL). Their satirical multimedia exploration draws from the vocabulary of dance theater, sitcoms and even post-performance discussions to cleverly exploit the contrast between what people say and what they really mean.

Vivian Bang: Can You Hear Me / LA 92

Incisive writer/performer Vivian Bang, one of the original members of New York's explosively antic Big Art Group, turns her focus to interrogating L.A., where she now has a thriving TV/film career. Bang poignantly re-visits a forgotten history of the 1992 L.A. riots, as recalled from the perspective of Korean-Americans she researched, to create this revealing live documentary that poetically captures a crucial historic moment.

Week Three: August 10-12

Luis Lara Malvacías and Jeremy Nelson: C

In movement rich with playful rhythmic juxtapositions, Luis Lara Malvacías and Jeremy Nelson navigate a domestic environment, evoked by furniture and décor, in their collaboration C. Video imagery on multiple surfaces enhances this astute exploration of time-the latest in a series of highly structured improvisational duets they are creating-one for each letter of the alphabet: A to Z.

Gina Young: BUTCH BALLET

BUTCH BALLET is writer and director Gina Young's love letter to female masculinity. A series of private moments and pedestrian "dances" for a cast of butch, gender nonconforming and non-binary performers (with no actual ballet involved!), BUTCH BALLET is a movement-theater piece of minimalist vignettes tackling softness and hardness, otherness and belonging, love and desire, butch iconography and of course... swimwear.

Timur and The Dime Museum: Artaud in the Black Lodge

Artaud in the Black Lodge explores the imagined psychic connections between Antonin Artaud, William S. Burroughs and David Lynch. Drawing from the worlds of heavy metal and electronica, composer David T. Little, collaborates with librettist/poet Anne Waldman, director Lydia Steier and operatic rock band Timur and The Dime Museum.

REDCAT's annual NOW Festival launches the first performances of a wide range of new works created by Los Angeles-based artists and creative teams. REDCAT becomes a creative laboratory to research and create new projects with an emphasis on interdisciplinary collaborative works. NOW is the only program of its kind in Los Angeles, offering sustained support for the creation of new works for 14 years. NOW has become renowned as an important catalyst for artists launching new ideas and has launched more than 100 new productions.

REDCAT Executive Director Mark Murphy, who oversees the annual festival together with Associate Director Edgar Miramontes, describes the summer festival as "a vital initiative for experimentation by artistic teams encouraged to take risks and blur the distinctions between traditional artistic disciplines."

Miramontes adds, "The Festival addresses a critical need for an infrastructure to develop new performances, especially for dance artists."

The 2017 three-week festival features nine new works by the Los Angeles dance, theater, music and multimedia performing artists listed below.

Week One: July 27-29

Jessica Emmanuel: Witnessing Her

Stacy Dawson Stearns: LOVE GASOLINE!

Nancy Keystone: Untitled Communion

TICKETS & INFORMATION
REDCAT's 14th Annual New Original Works (NOW) Festival 2017
https://www.redcat.org/festival/new-original-works-festival-2017

Dates & Times:

Program 2:
Thursday, Aug 3 at 8:30 pm
Friday, Aug 4 at 8:30 pm
Saturday, Aug 5 at 8:30 pm

Program 3:
Thursday, August 10 at 8:30 pm
Friday, August 11 at 8:30 pm
Saturday, August 12 at 8:30 pm

Ticketing:
$20 general [$16 for members/students]
$40 festival pass [See all three programs for $40]

Seating is general admission and tickets are available for purchase in person at REDCAT Box Office, by phone at 213-237-2800, or online at redcat.org.

REDCAT's Box Office is open Tuesdays through Saturdays from noon until 6 pm, or two hours prior to curtain. Group, member, student and CalArts faculty/staff discounts available.

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