Juliana F. May
Optimistic Voices
January 8, 7pm
January 9, 7pm
January 10, 2pm & 6pm
Acclaimed choreographer Juliana F. May is renowned for creating thrillingly elaborate cycles of song, text, and movement from the wreckage of difficult experience. In Optimistic Voices, May delves into the tangled contradictions of family, eroticism, and motherhood. Influenced by postmodern dance and musical theater, she uses repetition and off-kilter rhythms in pursuit of a new performative language. In this captivating ensemble work, May creates a dreamlike landscape from the quagmire of everyday life.
Choreographed, written & directed by Juliana F. May
Performers:
Justin Faircloth
Wendel Gray II
Lucy Kaminsky
Gwendolyn Knapp
Kayvon Pourazar
Anh Vo
Original Music/Lyrics: Juliana F. May
Music Composition: Clara Hunter Latham
Special Music Contributions: Lucy Kaminsky
Synthesizers: Jonah Sollins-Devlin
Set Design: Juliana F. May
Lighting Design: Chloe Z. Brown
Costume Design: Mariana Valencia
Dramaturgy: Hilary Clark
Dramaturgical Consultation: Matt Shalzi & Iris McCloughan
Development Manager/Special Projects: Amanda Hamline
Production Manager: Shana Crawford
Company Manager: Miranda Brown
Juliana May thanks everyone who contributed, at all levels, to make this show possible. She would like to give special recognition to her Leadership donors for their lasting support, and the Optimistic Voices founding donors. Optimistic Voices was also made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council. The development of Optimistic Voices was made possible with residency support from the Mercury Store, Invisible Dog, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Chocolate Factory Theater, Princeton University’s Caroline Hearst Artist Residency, and the Harkness Artist Residency at BAM Fisher.
“in this rigorous juxtaposition, Ms. May created a distinct place for feeling and form to meet, as if distilled into a single sensation.”
Gia Kourlas, The New York Times
“…Ms. May, 38, has set out to grapple with what she calls “seemingly unrepresentable” material; that is, to find ways to speak about the unspeakable. While trauma has been a recurring theme in her work, she said she has never before confronted it so concretely. “I’m looking at my own sexual trauma, and at intergenerational trauma as a Jew,” she said at a restaurant in the Lower East Side. Her mother’s parents, she said, fled from the Holocaust; their parents died in Europe. In particular, she has been contemplating what it means to romanticize or find arousal in traumatic events, whether personal, historical or both….Some of it’s about the fantasy of the trauma, which is also a way of dealing with or mastering the trauma,” she said.”
Siobhan Burke, The New York Times
