Pioneers Go East Collective Presents The World Premiere Of LUCKY STAR (0.3)

Pioneers Go East Collective will present the world premiere of LUCKY STAR (0.3), a dance-theater performance and video installation, July 13-30, at Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South (between Thompson and Sullivan Streets) in Manhattan.

LUCKY STAR (0.3) is a queer dance performance, part underground club inspired by the famed Club 57, part video art installation. Looking back at the landscape of downtown DIY art-making starting from Stonewall until the 1990s, locating it at such venues as Judson Church, La MaMa, and the Pyramid Club, the collective explores the intersectionality of queer artists and their creative legacy. Borrowing "superstardom fabulousness" from the past to celebrate queer bodies, creative endurance, and the pursuit of artistic fame, LUCKY Star (0.3) is both self-reflective and irreverent, with performers cast as alternate-universe superstar versions of themselves. "LUCKY STAR was born by a desire to make art in a new time," said the collective. "We juxtapose DIY with the commercialization in art-making. We pay homage to creators and legends whose trailblazing work has solidified ways for us to survive as artists reimagining our approach to sharing our work in the age of social media and instant gratification. We term the project a meta-creative journey inviting viewers to engage in an emergent process of collective liberation." In five episodes, performers Shaina and Bryan Baira, Bree Breeden, Daniel Diaz, Beth Graczyk, Joey Kipp, and downtown icon and Stonewall witness Agosto Machado bring their unique combination of cosmic-queer storytelling to the live space.

Pioneers Go East Collective's performances and video-art projects have been praised as shape-shifting and radical queer experiences. Of the film Lucky Star: superstar, the second work in the series, Dot Armstrong of Culturebot wrote, "Lucky Star is like a time capsule. The film holds past, future, and present in an intimate, luscious spacetime loop. Fact and fiction, inseparable, blur and tease. Cut to disco ball, still swinging. Slow down and watch the air sparkle."

The creative team includes Gian Marco Riccardo Lo Forte (writer and creative director), Philip Treviño (co-writer and production designer), Ori Flomin (ensemble choreographer), Jon Burklund (filmmaker), Kathleen Kelley (filmmaker and video designer), Mark Tambella (set designer and fabricator), and Marielle Iljazoski and Ryan William Downey (sound designers).

LUCKY STAR is a devised series developed in 2020/21 with residencies at La MaMa, The Exponential Festival, and Judson Memorial Church.

Performances are Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday at 8pm. The performance installation is free to attend, donations welcome (one hundred percent of the proceeds will directly support the artists). Capacity regulations and other safety protocols will be in place. For more information and to make a reservation, visit: http://pioneersgoeast.eventbrite.com.

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