Nora Alami, Brendan Drake, Lisa Fagan, Alethea Pace, Jessie Young

An evening of works by the 2017-18 Fresh Tracks Resident Artists.
Nora Alami, maktoub
“It is written.” Maktoub is the notion that our future is written on our foreheads. Although it is always there, we cannot see it for ourselves. In this iteration, maktoub questions the prescriptive perceptions we place on ourselves as well as those placed on us by others. By challenging traditional compartmentalizations of dance forms, Alami explores what it is to de-colonize the body.

Brendan Drake, The Big Finish
Brendan Drakes The Big Finish uses camp and the American Musical Theater Songbook to examine the paradox of depression and isolation amidst boisterous self-expression. Sanity requires a certain level of impersonation. What we project out into the world as our most authentic self is often nothing more than a glossy varnish, but what would happen if we truly “let our freak flag fly?” Through text and movement, framed by thoughts on vanity, intimacy and desire, The Big Finish subverts the very thin veneer of public decency and envisions a collective unraveling of sanity.

Lisa Fagan, Pencil
Pencil is a fleeting shred of a moment into which we pack an unsustainable quantity of action that overlaps, cuts itself off, and seems inappropriate close in proximity to the thing that happened a second ago. Pencil is both an experiment in overt delicacy in the face of sharp objects, and then a test of fortitude and courage despite an environment working in opposition. Lovingly drawing from Jane Bowles’ 1943 novel Two Serious Ladies, an early work of Queer literature that uses highly experimental forms to evoke the rhythms of chaos and serenity for its two protagonists, Pencil creates logistical outcomes from formulas that I made up.

Alethea Pace, trying to sweep back the ocean with a broom
“trying to sweep back the ocean with a broom” is an investigation of racial ambiguity and crossing the color line through the lens of the Rhinelander case of 1925. The piece tells the story of Alice Jones Rhinelander, a mixed race woman who was accused of defrauding her white aristocratic husband, Leonard Kip Rhinelander, by passing as a white woman and concealing her black ancestry. When the press exposed the relationship, the Rhinelander family intervened by kidnapping Leonard and forcing him to annul the marriage. The trial that ensued became tabloid fodder and was a dramatic story of betrayal and injustice.

Jessie Young, Descend Sky
descend sky is a choreography of colliding spatial patterns and intricate physicality, designed to reveal the sustained endurance of the performers as they confront limitations and re-define the terrain of relationships to each other.

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Live Arts’ legendary Fresh Tracks performance and residency program continues its 53-year commitment to bringing new voices to the forefront. The program provides five emerging artists with a 50-hour studio residency, a professionally produced shared evening bill in the New York Live Arts Theater, commission fee, one-on-one dialogue sessions with the program’s Artistic Advisor, professional development workshops led by renowned professionals from the field and exclusive access to Live Arts’ Marketing, Production and Programming staff. Through Fresh Tracks, New York Live Arts provides a singular opportunity for new artistic voices to gain professional development, experience and recognition.

For more information on Fresh Tracks click here.