Anh Vo: a sign, a signal, a delivery, a deliverance
Thursday, October 8 | 7:30PM
Friday, October 9 | 7:30PM
Saturday, October 10 | 7:30PM
Open Dress Rehearsal*
Tuesday, October 6 | 7:30PM
To RSVP for Open Dress Rehearsal, Click Here
“The purpose of the Fascist formula, the ritual discipline, the uniform, and the whole apparatus, which is at first sight irrational, is to allow mimetic behavior. The carefully thought out symbols (which are proper to every counterrevolutionary movement), the skulls and disguises, the barbaric drum beats, the monotonous repetition of words and gestures, are simply the organized imitation of magic practices, the mimesis of mimesis”
–Horkheimer & Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment
If fascism, as “the mimesis of mimesis,” appropriates the apparatus of magic, this performance attempts at a mimesis of this mimesis of mimesis: stealing these ritualistic techniques back for magic again. a sign, a signal, a delivery, a deliverance revisits Anh Vo’s upbringing in Vietnam to channel the strange poetics of living under the spell of authoritarianism. There will be fabulous and sexy uniforms. There will be drum beats, though they might or might not sound barbaric. There will be words and gestures repeated monotonously, looping and looping at the edge of the voice’s breaking point. What happens when mechanisms designed to manufacture submission are pushed past their intended function and toward another kind of surrender: to the immanent unknowability of the body and the transcendent omnipotence of God?
Supported by three improvisational exercises in channeling, each performance begins with an opening act by a different interdisciplinary artist: C. Spencer Yeh (Oct. 8), yuchen chang (Oct. 9), and Alex Tatarsky (Oct. 10).
*About Open Dress Rehearsal: Tuesday evening’s dress rehearsal will be free with RSVP and open to the public at limited-capacity. Open dress rehearsals are a mask-required, community-minded program prioritizing our immunocompromised and low-income audiences. Staff and audiences will be required to wear masks (N95 or KN95) and performing artists (if unmasked) will be required to test for COVID-19 (rapid tests provided by Danspace Project). This is a first-come-first-served event. Danspace will not hold late seating or a waitlist during Open Dress Rehearsals. Thank you for your understanding.
This performance is made possible, in part, through a grant from the Jerome Foundation.
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Anh Vo (They/He) is a Vietnamese choreographer and writer working primarily in New York City, with a second base in Hanoi. Their practice fleshes out the body as a vessel for apparitional forces. Their work is situated in the unlikely lineage convergences between Downtown New York experimental dance, queer and feminist performance art, and Vietnamese folk ritual practices. Their formal training is in Performance Studies, studying with theorists and practitioners at Brown University (BA) and New York University (MA).