Los Angeles plays host to a captivating array of performances this December, showcasing the diverse and thought-provoking works of innovative artists. From the eclectic 'CalArts Winter Dance' to the immersive 'Live Night: Cruising Bodies, Spirits, and Machines,' and the evocative solo by Holland Andrews, these events promise to deepen our understanding of identity, spirit, and the avant-garde. Set against the backdrop of iconic venues, these performances by both emerging and established artists represent a celebration of creativity and vision that pushes the boundaries of traditional art forms.

Exploring Transcendence and Identity: Performative Artistry in LA

With Where The Apple Fell, vocalist, clarinetist, and composer Holland Andrews crafts a new sonic world to consider the transmission of spirit. In this solo performance, inspired by the intersection of mental health and transcendent experience, Andrews draws on the connection between their late mother hearing voices and their own communications with the voices of passed loved ones and entities of light. The improvised score layers Andrews’ voice in a variety of styles and textures using processed clarinet, distortion pedal, and electronics. Amidst this sea of voices a clear call sings out “I love you so much”—a clear conclusion to this cathartic, sublime evening.

EPSG:4326

Holland Andrews

Walt Disney Concert Hall

REDCAT and CAP UCLA co-present “Live Night: Cruising Bodies, Spirits, and Machines,” a celebratory evening at the 1920 iconic three-story and 1,600-seat United Theater on Broadway, downtown LA. The evening will feature experimental performances by LA-based artist rafa esparza, Mexico City/Oaxaca-based collective MUXX, and others that engage with machines, AI, and avatars coded in transmigrant and ancestral futures. Performances and DJ sets will take place throughout the theater–the three-story grand lobby and stage.

rafa esparza, MUXX, among others

STILE Downtown Los Angeles by Kasa

CalArts Dance presents new work by choreographers Kyreeana Breelin Alexander, Brigette Dunn-Korpela, Jobel Medina, and Chorong Yang performed by the Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance’s students. Bringing forward an eclectic array of visions, vernaculars, and kinetic identities, Winter Dance features dances by a cross section of Los Angeles-based CalArts Dance alumnx choreographers.

CalArts Winter Dance

The 21st Annual New Original Works concludes with a program of works by Bret Easterling, Mallory Fabian, and Kensaku Shinohara. Committed to an investigation of history and contemporary norms, these works use humor, improvisation, and multidisciplinary collaboration to disrupt power dynamics, craft collective rituals of care, and build new modes of community abundance.

Bret Easterling, Mallory Fabian, Kensaku Shinohara

As a national mythos slides into decay, CONGRESS builds a crypt for its ghosts. In this performance, five (alleged) men move, speak, and sing as representatives of both themselves and their historical inheritances. They conjure and confront patriarchy’s ghosts—descending into the space where social violence takes physical, psychic, and energetic shape. This theatrical convening extends Ajani Brannum’s investigation into what performers do on behalf of those who witness them. Part ceremony and part town hall, this interdisciplinary performance draws the audience in to confront bodily forms of oppression and remake the roles that hold together a suffering society.

Ajani Brannum, Sophia Cleary, Tijuana Dance Company

The 21st Annual New Original Works kicks off with a program of works by Eliza Bagg, Rohan Chandler, George R. Miller, Bernard Brown, and Meena Murugesan. Committed to an investigation of history and contemporary norms, these works use humor, improvisation, and multidisciplinary collaboration to disrupt power dynamics, craft collective rituals of care, and build new modes of community abundance.

Eliza Bagg, Rohan Chandler, George R. Miller, Bernard Brown, Meena Murugesan

A double bill of performances by Oglala Lakȟóta artist Kite (Music, BFA ‘14) and Mexico City-based collective Interspecifics brings together machine learning technologies, sound, the body, and Indigenous cosmologies.

Kite, Interspecifics

The Angel City Jazz Festival consistently features the most innovative and original musicians working today, balancing established artists with emerging talent, and focusing on West Coast creative jazz—past, present, and future.

Wayne Horvitz: Zony Mash and Electric Circus

A president of the United States is receiving messages by mysterious means, and he doesn’t know whether to trust them. In this new Wooster Group production, directed by Elizabeth LeCompte and Kate Valk, Richard Foreman’s 1988 play is reimagined with a multilayered sound and video score that draws from wide-ranging literary and cinematic sources, including William Blake, D.H. Lawrence, and Charlie Chaplin. Set in a spaceship-museum gallery, this surreal production follows the president as he plunges into a series of encounters with otherworldly beings, among them a giant rat with a special message. Moving between the apocalyptic and the mundane, The Wooster Group considers how technology questions what it means to be human.

The Wooster Group

The Angel City Jazz Festival consistently features the most innovative and original musicians working today, balancing established artists with emerging talent and focusing on West Coast creative jazz—past, present, and future.

Steve Lehman & Garden of Klōns, Kris Davis Trio

Set in a public meeting, this bold theater work, crafted and performed by an ensemble of neurodivergent actors, weighs the balance of individual and collective responsibility in a democracy. As the actors engage in political debate and community conversation, their narrative considers human rights, sexual politics, and relationships with technology. Inspired by mistakes, misreadings, and misunderstanding, The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes is a funny and poignant theatrical revelation that asks how people come together to make decisions that are in the best interest of a civic society.

Back to Back Theatre

Join us for an unforgettable evening as the Primera Generación Dance Collective presents the world premiere of "NOStalgia POP" at REDCAT. This vibrant performance is scheduled for June 28-29, with an in-person showing on Friday and Saturday at 8:30 PM, and a special stream available on Saturday at 8:30 PM PT. Tickets are priced at $27, offering a unique opportunity to experience a dance genre that captivates and moves.

"NOStalgia POP" is an evening-length multimedia dance work that delves into the first-generation Mexican American experience through eclectic, multilingual, Latinx aesthetics. The performance pays homage and offers a cheeky critique to the romantic recollections that connect Latine bodies, weaving together a collage of 80s pop en Español, the Latin Explosion of the 90s, and millennial Mexican core with media depictions of gente Latina. Four captivating dancers bring to life the story of how the development of Latin Pop culture memory has been both messy and joyful, highlighting the influence of mainstream media on Latine nostalgia.

The program, presented in English and Spanish without surtitles, includes a post-performance talk on June 29, moderated by Dr. Jose L. Reynoso. Please note, the performance contains strobe lights. This event not only celebrates joy and identity but also marks "NOStalgia POP" as a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant.

The Primera Generación Dance Collective, based in Los Angeles and Riverside, is known for its focus on the visibilization of Mexican American corporeality, joy, and loss through movement-based exploration. The collective's work is grounded in rasquache play and resourcefulness, aiming to speak to their Latine, working-class experiences with a fusion of text, satire, song, and movement.

Don't miss this manifestation of joy and celebration of identity and culture. Buy your tickets now for "NOStalgia POP" and join the conversation in the REDCAT LOUNGE. Discounts are available for REDCAT members, students, and the CalArts faculty and staff.

NOStalgia POP

Join us at REDCAT for the world premiere of "BBC Big Black Cockroach," a groundbreaking piece of experimental theater written and performed by the acclaimed Paul Outlaw. This riveting production is set to captivate audiences from June 20-22, with performances scheduled for Thursday to Saturday at 8:30 PM, and a special streaming event on Saturday at 8:30 PM PT.

"BBC Big Black Cockroach" is a nightmarish satire inspired by classical European mythology, American comic books, current events, and Franz Kafka’s "The Metamorphosis." The story unfolds as a right-wing American white woman awakens in the body of a Black man, exploring themes of historical violence, identity, and the near-future visions through a disorienting mix of innovative design elements. Projections and spatialized sound design, crafted entirely from recordings of Outlaw’s voice and movements, amplify the expanding identities within the protagonist. The production’s central image—a queer Black male body in stark isolation—serves as a vessel for America’s violent past, present, and future.

Please be advised, "BBC Big Black Cockroach" contains loud sounds, bright flashing lights, graphic descriptions of violence, and nudity, making it a powerful, thought-provoking experience not suitable for all audiences.

Tickets are priced at $27, with discounts available for REDCAT members, students, and the CalArts faculty and staff. Don't miss this opportunity to witness a bold and innovative exploration of xenophobia, black virility, and gender confusion that promises to leave you speechless and stunned.

For more information and to purchase tickets, visit the REDCAT website. Join the conversation in the REDCAT Lounge and be part of this unforgettable experience.

BBC Big Black Cockroach

**PARTCH 2024 at REDCAT: LSD Ride by PARTCH Ensemble**

This Winter/Spring 2024 season, REDCAT is thrilled to present an extraordinary musical experience with the PARTCH Ensemble's latest production, "LSD Ride." Scheduled for June 14-15, this event promises an evening of mesmerizing music and groundbreaking performances. The PARTCH Ensemble, renowned for their Grammy Award-winning interpretations of American Maverick composer Harry Partch's work, returns to REDCAT to showcase their unique talents.

**Event Details:**

- **Dates:** June 14-15
- **In-Person Performances:** Friday and Saturday at 8:30 PM
- **Stream:** Saturday at 8:30 PM PT
- **Runtime:** Approximately 90 minutes, including an intermission
- **Location:** REDCAT, USA
- **Price:** $25
- **Genre:** Music
- **Season:** Winter/Spring 2024

This year's program is set to include Partch's "Three Dances," "Progressions/Abstractions & Delusions," and "Five Intrusions," alongside the world premiere of Jeffrey Holmes’ "Reið Raidō Ride, Journey" and a staged concert version of new scenes from Anne LeBaron’s latest opera, "LSD - Huxley’s Last Trip." The evening will not only feature the ensemble's signature performances on the unique orchestra of instruments designed and built by Harry Partch himself but will also introduce audiences to new auditory and visual experiences.

In a special addition to the event, attendees will have the opportunity to engage with the instruments up close in an "instrument petting zoo," encouraging a tactile connection with the music.

**About PARTCH Ensemble:**

The PARTCH Ensemble is celebrated for its dedication to the music and instruments of Harry Partch, one of the most innovative American composers of the 20th century. Their performances span a wide range of venues and festivals, showcasing their versatility and commitment to new music. Their work includes collaborations with notable groups and festivals, and their recordings have received critical acclaim, further cementing their status in the contemporary music scene.

**Tickets and Discounts:**

Tickets are available for purchase at $25 each. Discounts are offered for REDCAT members, students, and CalArts faculty and staff. Don't miss this chance to experience the groundbreaking work of the PARTCH Ensemble in an evening that promises to be both alluring and powerful.

Join us at REDCAT for "LSD Ride" and immerse yourself in the innovative world of Harry Partch, brought to life by the extraordinary PARTCH Ensemble.

PARTCH Ensemble

**Event Description:**

**Title:** Magdalene - A Chamber Opera in Thirteen Movements

**Presented by:** Beth Morrison Projects, Danielle Birrittella, Zoe Aja Moore, and Marie Howe at REDCAT

**Dates:** June 4-5, 7-8

**Time:** 8 PM (TUE-WED, FRI-SAT)

**Duration:** Approx. 75 minutes, no intermission

**Location:** REDCAT, USA

**Ticket Price:** $50

**Genres:** Music, Theater

**Season:** Winter/Spring 2024

**About the Event:**

"Magdalene" is a transformative chamber opera that invites audiences into the profound interior world of Mary Magdalene, exploring themes of desire, transformation, and the sacred versus the sexual. This unique opera, set to Marie Howe’s evocative "Magdalene" poems, is a collaborative masterpiece scored by fourteen women composers: Leila Adu, Ruby Kato Attwood, Danielle Birrittella, Sheena Birrittella, Christina Courtin, Gabrielle Herbst, Molly Joyce, Emma O’Halloran, Tanner Porter, Ellen Reid, Kamala Sankaram, Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir, Annika Socolofsky, and Gyða Valtýsdóttir. Through a series of vivid scenes—from wandering through a hotel to lighting birthday candles and making love in the ocean—Magdalene seeks transcendence in the mundane, striving to become the subject of her own story.

This West Coast Premiere is a wild meditation on transformation and desire, enlarging the figure of Mary Magdalene to cross time and space, appearing as a woman alive now, who navigates the unyielding split between the sacred and the sexual.

**Special Features:**

- **Post-Show Talks:** Engage with the cast and creative team on June 5, 7, and 8, offering deeper insights into the production.
- **Content Advisory:** Please note that "Magdalene" contains nudity and mature content, catering to an adult audience.

**About the Artists:**

"Magdalene" is produced and co-presented by Beth Morrison Projects, a leading force in the creation and production of new opera-theatre and music theatre. The opera is commissioned and produced by PROTOTYPE Festival, a partnership between Beth Morrison Projects and HERE, and premiered at the PROTOTYPE Festival 2020. The production has received funding from OPERA America’s Opera Fund and support from the New York State Council on the Arts.

**Join Us:**

Don't miss this breathtaking opera that merges the contemporary with the timeless, offering a powerful narrative through the collective voice of an all-female composer team. Buy your tickets now for an unforgettable experience of "Magdalene" at REDCAT this Winter/Spring 2024 season.

Beth Morrison Projects, Danielle Birrittella, Zoe Aja Moore, and Marie Howe

**Event Description:**

**Title:** FORCE: An Opera in Three Acts

**Artist:** Anna Martine Whitehead

**Genres:** Dance, Music, Theater

**Season:** Winter/Spring 2024

**Dates and Times:**
- In-Person: May 23-25, Thu-Sat, 8:30 PM
- Stream: Sat, 8:30 PM PT

**Runtime:** Approx. 90 minutes, no intermission

**Location:** REDCAT, West Coast Premiere

**Country:** USA

**Price:** $30

**About the Event:**
FORCE: An Opera in Three Acts is a groundbreaking performance by Anna Martine Whitehead that delves into the complex intimacy of women and femmes in waiting areas—those tied by love yet resistant to the institutions of carceral power. This Black femme story unfolds through interior lives and shared fantasies, where characters symbolize the abundant relationships flourishing in the shadows of state and carceral systems. Inspired by Black girls, abolition feminists, and waiting rooms everywhere, the opera is a queer, dreamy, ambitious, and angsty narrative that imagines a strange sisterhood capable of disintegrating walls.

The performance is a collaboration with composer Ayanna Woods and Angel Bat Dawid, among others, creating a constellation of freedom dreamers. It uses sound, movement, and the prism of prison to witness how carceral systems replicate themselves, aiming to abolish the Prison Industrial Complex in our minds, hearts, and homes.

**Special Notes:**
- The opera contains loud sounds and bright lights. Earplugs are available upon request.
- The performance will begin in the theater lobby, with audiences guided to their seats by ushers.

**Funding and Support:**
FORCE is supported by Pivot Arts, University of Chicago Arts Public Life, St. Benedict the African Parish, The Graham Foundation for the Advanced Study of Fine Arts, The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School, 3Arts / 3AP, New England Foundation for the Arts / National Theater Project, National Performance Network / Creation Fund, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Northwestern University / Virginia Wadsworth Wirtz Centers, and MAP Fund.

**About the Artists:**
Anna Martine Whitehead and a diverse cast of artists, including Kai Black, Brittany Brown, Rahila Naomi Stadem Coats, Sky Cubacub, Teiana Davis, Angel Bat Dawid, Jenn Freeman (Po’Chop), and many more, bring this powerful narrative to life through their unique talents and perspectives.

**What’s Next at REDCAT:**
Stay tuned for upcoming events including art exhibitions by Kameelah Janan Rasheed, the "Magdalene" performance by Beth Morrison Projects, and the "LSD Ride" music event by PARTCH Ensemble.

For more information and to purchase tickets, visit the REDCAT website. Join the conversation and immerse yourself in a performance that challenges boundaries and invites reflection on the power of art to transform society.

FORCE! an opera in three acts

KarmetiK Orchestra presents an evening-length show featuring the world premiere of collaborative contemporary music by Los Angeles-based artists from global backgrounds.  Sitar, Hindustani vocalists, tabla, and bansuri flute performers are mixed with Western classical, African, and electronic musicians. Directed by Dr. Ajay Kapur, head of Music Technology at CalArts, the group features compositions and performances by world-renowned artists Rajib Karmakar, Dr. Neelamjit Dhillon, Gaayatri, Ashwin Vaswani, Chris Votek, Gorinka, Yeko Ladzekpo-Cole, Madeline Falcone, and Dr. Sanjay Sinha. Bombay Rebels is a homage to a group of luminary figures who have challenged the norm of Indian culture and forged new pathways. Each song commemorates a “Bombay rebel” with an original work, inspired by their journey, and explores blending different genres within Indian classical aesthetics.

Bombay Rebels

Charles Gaines’ Manifestos 4: The Dred and Harriet Scott Decision is a performance-based installation in which Gaines transforms the original text of the landmark 1857 U.S. Supreme Court case of Dred Scott vs. Sanford, which denied U.S. citizenship to people of African ancestry. Many see the ruling as one of the most controversial decisions of the Supreme Court, authorizing racism and irrevocably altering the course of the country’s social, cultural, and political evolution.

Manifestos 4: The Dred and Harriet Scott Decision

Navajo (Diné) jazz trumpeter Delbert Anderson is both a leader and innovator in today’s contemporary jazz scene. A Diné culture bearer, Anderson reimagines traditional melodies once sung in Diné social circles called “spinning songs,” through the language of jazz and funk. Joined at REDCAT by Robert Muller (keyboard), Evan Suiter (bass), and Khalill Brown (drums), the Delbert Anderson Quartet collaborates to provide safe havens for Diné melodies to connect with new pathways for expression.

Delbert Anderson and Mali Obomsawin

Sans Soleil is a multi-genre ritual duo focused on deepening Black and Asian American solidarity, created and led by Chris Williams and Patrick Shiroishi. The duo’s REDCAT premiere, Bandung, is an evening-length composition weaving field recordings, pan-Indigenous instrumentation, and free jazz expression, in collaboration with expanded ensemble members William Parker and Lesley Mok. Williams and Shiroishi have taken inspiration from social histories and their personal ancestral history and experiences, diving into cultural themes, as well as political underweavings. Connecting the past with the present while looking into the future, Sans Soleil blends musical genres while continuing to grow their collective voice.

Bandung

The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts in collaboration with REDCAT presents the CalArts Music Showcase, an evening of performances by  graduate student creators. Exhibiting the school’s diverse approach to creativity, 48 performers will share innovative work exploring themes of longing, nostalgia, destruction, rebirth, queerness, politics of meaning, meditation, and experimentation through a variety of musical forms. Stylistically, the featured music will range from jazz to megaphone feedback noise, choral performance, experimental pop, Dominican Merengue styles, improvisation, electronic music with live visuals, and more.

CalArts Music Showcase 2024

Pull up a cushion, have a cookie, get comfortable. Speak if you like, or just listen: This Emancipation Thing is an invitation to connect, to resurrect the second-wave feminist consciousness-raising circle in a new theatre event led by an interracial, gender-expansive ensemble. How do our relationships, our desires, our relationships with our bodies vibrate between 1968 and 2023, across generations? Whether for an hour or for six, settle into a womb of listening and care as contemporary LA-based feminists of all ages and genders intervene in the past, collapsing time in a new kind of theater experience from director Sara Lyons. With reproductive rights slipping through our fingers, what wisdom must we awaken from the activists who ushered in Roe v. Wade (1973)? What of that past must we crumble — and how will we emerge from the rubble?

Sara Lyons: This Emancipation Thing

Take a journey with Cuatro Minimal, an intrepid quartet that blends roots music and oral traditions from Mexico and Asia with contemporary music, free improvisation, and deep collaborative experimentation. Founded in 2011 in the rice fields of Nanto, Japan, Cuatro Minimal includes singer and composer Juan Pablo Villa and guitarist Fernando Vigueras, both hailing from the contemporary music scene of Mexico City; the traditional Korean percussion master Chang Jaehyo; and one of Japan’s most respected world musicians, Sakaki Mango, who plays African thumb piano and the gottan, a string instrument from Kagoshima region. Cuatro Minimal is recognized as a highly innovative project, a kaleidoscope of musical possibilities built by cables and effects, an irresistible and deeply expressive landscape of sounds where the roots appear free and wide, intimately, and universally human.

Cuatro Minimal: Kumiroda - everything is dream

Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance at CalArts presents an eclectic mix of new dance projects created by Los Angeles-based artists Tuixén Benet, Gheremi Clay, Oren ‘Flea Rock’ Michaeli, Sara Silkin, and Mike Tyus & Luca Renzi, performed by CalArts Dance’s excellent students.

CalArts Winter Dance: Closer

A work for nine dancers, five electric guitars, and five amplifiers, takemehome is the latest creation of Dimitri Chamblas and Kim Gordon that takes shape under a luminous zeppelin where silhouettes emerge and disappear. These shadows are the forgotten ones of the great metropolises: prisoners, elders, unproductive ghosts, the neglected, the indecisive. Rendered visible in this device, itself ready to disappear, and embodied by dancers with precise movements, they wander, hesitate, or suddenly assert a vital impulse, display an attempt, repeat it, share it. In these emergences, in this collective isolation, telepathy and intuition maintain communication. Between the lines, under your skin, the driving force of the future and of the living continues to circulate and resist.

Takemehome

Grammy Award-winning PARTCH Ensemble presents Harry Partch’s complete masterwork The Wayward, [Barstow, San Francisco, The Letter, U.S. Highball, Ulysses]: “A collection of musical compositions based on the spoken and written words of hobos and other characters—the result of my wanderings in the Western part of the United States from 1935 to 1941.”
Opening with the rousing Cloud Chamber Music, the program also includes the premiere of a new work by microtonal maven Kyle Gann.

The Wayward

inti figgis-vizueta writes magically real music through the lens of personal identities, braiding a childhood of overlapping immigrant communities and Black-founded Freedom schools—in Chocolate City (DC)—with direct Andean and Irish heritage and a deep connection to the land. In Music for Transitions, she is joined by collaborators to present new arrangements of previously remote works and a new co-composed piece for mixed ensemble. Her music has been described as “the sounds of nature with what I imagined as the soundtrack of a dream.”

Music for Transitions

Okwui Okpokwasili’s new theater piece centers around a young African American girl who loses all of her hair after using a chemical straightener, only to have it restored by the power of a mysterious, unhoused woman. The young girl’s hair comes back with properties that restore genetic and cultural memory and allow her to discover her family’s precolonial past. A work that centers around the complexity of repair, physical and psychic, that will require traveling to the past and into the future.

Okwui Okpokwasili

CalArts Dance presents repertory from guest artists, including internationally acclaimed choreographers and emerging local artists with close affiliations to the Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance at CalArts.

CalArts Spring Dance Concert

If you can’t find talent at CalArts, you can’t find it anywhere! Talent Show emerges from faculty members Sharon Lockhart and Ariel Osterweis’ CalArts course of the same name. Graduates, undergraduates, alumni, and professional guest artists come together to put on a talent show, featuring acts that may lie outside their formal training. Yes to amateurism! Yes to virtuosity! Yes to awkwardness and adolescence, aspiration, and ambition! From concert performance to clunky experimentalism, Talent Show unites high and low. When is a talent show a freak show, a magic show, a circus, a pageant, a musical, or a TV competition? We’ve held auditions, we’ve made cuts; now it’s your turn to decide who’s got talent!

Talent Show

Amor a la muerte (Love to Death) is a traditional yet radical work conceived and directed by internationally renowned Samoan artist Lemi Ponifasio, a champion of both the avant-garde and Indigenous people. This new work brings together Mapuche artist, singer, and composer Elisa Avendaño Curaqueo and Chilean contemporary flamenco dancer Natalia Garcia-Huidobro. The work was sparked by events detonated after the Chilean police murdered Camilo Catrillanca, a Mapuche former student, activist, and farmer. Catrillanca worked on the movement of reclamation of Mapuche lands. Voices and bodies weave together in a ceremony revealing their own stories: two lives that reflect both Chile’s history and the search for its future. Touching on questions of identity, destiny, and nature, the work transcends conventional ideas of theater, dance, and activism.

Amor a la muerte (Love to Death)

Radical Self-Love is an evening-length work written and designed by Joy Guidry, drawing inspiration from the work of Sonya Renee Taylor, who has defined radical self-love as “its own entity, a lush and verdant island offering safe harbor for self-esteem and self-confidence.” As Guidry states, “much of my music-making right now is keenly focused on a radical reimagining of spaces, sonic, and communal. At the center of imagination is radical self-care: creating a world for yourself that allows the expansion of other worlds.”
While these music offerings represent a range of musical idioms and methodologies–from improvisation and graphic scores to multimedia and gospel–the uniting principle for Guidry is a focus on the importance of affirmation, validation, and self-care.
Radical Self-Love at REDCAT will feature an opening performance of new works by Yatta Zoker (YATTA), an artist, musician, performer, and educator who has shared the stage with musicians such as Cardi B and The Sun Ra Arkestra.

Radical Self-Love

One of the American theater’s seminal writers, Adrienne Kennedy captures the Black experience in America in the 20th century with a trademark embrace of symbolism, lyricism, and mythic figures. In this world premiere production, Etta and Ella Harrison are talented academics on the Upper West Side—as well as sisters and rivals. After a lifetime of competition, they are on the verge of destroying each other. Next-generation director Monty Cole employs a cinematic approach to this intricate blend of monologue, dialogue, voiceover, and prose in a work that is part experimental play, part narrative thriller.

Etta and Ella on the Upper West Side

FAC XTRA RETREAT (FXR) is a studio art pedagogy-themed performance by a temporal grouping of seven Asian American artist-educators based in L.A.: Ei Arakawa, Patty Chang, Pearl C Hsiung, Amanda Ross-Ho, Anna Sew Hoy, Shirley Tse, and Amy Yao. Academia uses acronyms more than Gen Zers! Inspired by the many mandatory online training modules and follow-up quizzes required of instructors by their teaching institutions, FAC XTRA RETREAT (FXR) promises “learning outcomes” with a series of weird, hard, soft, informative, and sometimes physically challenging multiple-choice problems with answers deeply associated with each artist’s teaching philosophy. With the help of suspicious polling devices, costumed performers and all members of the public take on-stage votes. The results of the polls will be acted out, branched out, and change the destination of the performance. Participants will be awarded an FXR certificate of completion at the end.

FAC XTRA RETREAT (FXR)

The Wooster Group returns to REDCAT with a new production of Bertolt Brecht’s 1932 play The Mother. This play was written by Brecht in the style of a “learning play,” intended both to entertain and to incite social change. He used plain language and songs to tell the story of an illiterate Russian woman’s journey to revolutionary action. The Wooster Group’s American translation of The Mother uses the vernacular of early Hollywood gangster movies (one of Brecht’s favorite genres). The production features new music by composer Amir ElSaffar, who works across classical, jazz, and Arabic musical forms. The Mother is The Wooster Group’s first staging of Brecht, and the result is a dialogue between two influential experimental theater methodologies.

The Mother

Dorian Wood’s Canto de Todes (Song of Everyone) is a 12-hour composition and installation, making its worldwide debut at REDCAT. Inspired by a lyric of the late Chilean singer and songwriter Violeta Parra, the Creative Capital-awarded project emphasizes the urgency of folk music as a vessel for social change. A genre-defying canon of songs arriving as a long-durational spatial experience, the work is divided into three movements. The first and third movements are hourlong chamber pieces influenced by folk, popular, and experimental music. The second movement is a 10-hour prerecorded piece unfolding throughout multiple spaces within REDCAT. Canto de Todes upends the expectation of the rigidness often associated with witnessing chamber music performances by offering a welcoming space that allows for individuals to project their personal, communal joys, and traumas. It is a collaborative work with local artists who have historically been marginalized due to their nationality, race, or othered identity.

Canto de Todes

KLII exorcises the ghost of Belgium’s King Leopold II through a mytho-biographical performance by theater-maker Kaneza Schaal. Designed and codirected by Christopher Myers, KLII draws on Mark Twain’s King Leopold’s Soliloquy (1905), a fictional monologue written after Twain’s visit to the Congo Free State, and Patrice Lumumba’s 1960 independence speech in the Congo. Increasingly our demons are invisible—long-hidden racism and misogyny, misinformation, even the virus. How do we handle these threats, which are as central to our everyday life as they are hidden? Schaal and Myers propose an exorcism in theater, starring one of the villains of the 19th century whose actions resonate through the present day.

Kaneza Schaal: KLII

The Grammy Award winning PARTCH Ensemble returns to REDCAT with two world premieres. Having given the virtual premiere choreography of Harry Partch’s “Castor & Pollux” at REDCAT in June 2021, the “wonderful rollicking” (New York Times) Sarah Swenson Dance returns for a live performance of the entire triptych of Plectra & Percussion Dances, the composer’s 45-minute “Evening of Dance Theatre” that has never been choreographed in its entirety since being written 70 years ago. Then the ensemble partners with the “luminous yet corporeal” (Los Angeles Times) Del Sol Quartetin Taylor Brook’s One Footed for string quartet and Partch instruments, paying homage to Harry Partch’s “One-Footed Bride” chart that explores the expressive qualities of “emotion,” “power,” and “suspense” inherent in his exquisitely tuned musical universe.

Written and performed by Alpert Award-winning poet and artist Carl Hancock Rux, The Baptism is a three-part poem and tribute to the legacies of civil rights leaders John Lewis and C.T. Vivian. This live event will also include two iterations of a short film — The Baptism and The Baptism (rhetoric) — directed by seminal artist Carrie Mae Weems, with the latter featuring an original score by Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello.

Carl Hancock Rux and Carrie Mae Weems: The Baptism

Celebrating 60 years of revolutionary music, REDCAT is pleased to present a performance by the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra playing new and memorable tunes. The Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra is a Black music ensemble from Los Angeles founded in 1961 by Horace Tapscott. The Arkestra started as a collective of jazz musicians as a response to the racial inequality in the U.S. Artists subjected to prejudice who saw opportunities denied to them found an outlet to express themselves via the Ark. The Ark is currently mixed with veteran members as well as young musicians, all led by Mekala Session with the help of Jamael Dean and veteran members.

Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra

There is a mounting need for solutions to our national housing crises. Can art help us meet these challenges? The Most Beautiful Home… Maybe offers a nerdy and raucous vision for guaranteed housing. Hosted by chanteuse Zébra (a zebra), this multimedia, immersive performance juxtaposes housing data, Lyndon B. Johnson, and torch songs while time traveling through stories of Americans facing home insecurity, past and present. This interactive experience takes audiences on a fantastic sensurround journey to envision a future where everyone has a home. Created by Mark-n-Sparks (ashley sparks and Mark Valdez) and produced by the Mixed Blood Theatre of Minneapolis, The Most Beautiful Home...Maybe grew from conversations with housing advocates, activists, developers, government workers, renters, and people facing home insecurity. This performance is part of a multi-year, multi-platform experiment by Mark-n-Sparks to influence housing policy through art and dialogue.

Mark-n-Sparks: The Most Beautiful Home...Maybe

CalArts Dance presents adventurous repertory celebrating the new season and the return to in-person performing. Featuring works by Trisha Brown, Donald Byrd, Kyle Abraham, and Sidra Bell performed by CalArts Dance’s spectacular students.

CalArts Spring Dance

LA Opera Off Grand presents a new one-person opera by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Du Yun, presented in collaboration with Beth Morrison Projects. Told through the perspective of a new father (baritone Nathan Gunn), In Our Daughter’s Eyes shows the journey of the protagonist as he wrestles with truly becoming a man that his daughter would be proud of. He imparts passages from the journal he keeps—a gift for his unborn daughter—as the moments of this journey unfold before him. The story traces his wife's joyful and fraught pregnancy, the legacy of the family's past, and the personal demons that he vows to vanquish before assuming the role of a father. Along the way, mounting complications take the story through unexpected and sobering turns that test our flawed hero as he discovers a strength of self and purpose that he never imagined possible.

Du Yun: In Our Daughter’s Eyes

Derrick Skye is a composer and musician based in the Los Angeles area who often integrates music practices from different cultural traditions around the world into his work with classical music communities. The Los Angeles Times has described his music as “something to savor” and “enormous fun to listen to.” During his studies at the University of California, Los Angeles and the California Institute of the Arts, music across many cultures became an integral part of his musical vocabulary. Skye passionately believes in music as a doorway into understanding other cultures and different ways of living. Through learning the music of other cultures, the opportunity for dialogue rather than conflict between strangers is opened, and our society can become one with less conflict due to cultural misunderstanding. He is deeply invested in fostering creative and effective collaboration between artists of different disciplines and traditions.

Derrick Skye: Where can we go, from here?

California-born, Berlin-based artist Christine Sun Kim explores concepts of sound, its visual representations, and how it is valued by society, from her perspective as part of the Deaf community. She uses performance, video, drawing, writing, and sound installation to uncover the depth and complexity of communication, including the politics of voice, listening, and language. Musical notation, written language, American Sign Language, and the use of the body are all recurring elements in her work. In this multimedia artist talk, Kim shares the thinking behind her practice and invites the audience to consider the concept of sound as it is felt, seen, and experienced.

Christine Sun Kim

Try/Step/Trip is a spoken word, multi-character musical performed in the body through the language of step dance. The story follows the journey of an anonymous narrator as he re-imagines his experience in a court-ordered drug rehabilitation program. Inspired by Brathwaite’s own history, Try/Step/Trip layers characters, poetic verse, and dialogue over music to create a theatrical piece that blurs the lines between hip-hop and dramatic performance. Try/Step/Trip emerges from the belief that the subjugation of Black people is an American ritual; that the criminal justice system now functions as a normalized rite of passage for too many young Black males. Dahlak Brathwaite is the writer/composer, Roberta Uno is the director, choreography is by Toran X. Moore, with assistant choreography by FreddyRamsey, Jr., and orchestration and additional composition by Teak Underdue.

Dahlak Brathwaite: Try/Step/Trip

FAVN is an automated performance tracing the blurry boundaries between reality and imagination, sensory perception and hallucination. Evoking notions surrounding late-19th-century psychophysics and the quantification of the senses, in FAVN, we follow Debussy in sonically reincarnating the protagonist of Mallarmé’s 1876 poem “L’après-midi d’un faun.” FAVN uses the question ‘What did I hear?’ as a way to interrogate the constructive cognitive processes that intervene in apparently purely sensory, or indeed sensual, experiences. Using synthetic sound and a computer-generated voice, this work is presented for the first time in the United States on the occasion of the exhibition “Florian Hecker — Resynthesizers.”

Florian Hecker: FAVN

Elisa Harkins and Anna Luisa Petrisko share the REDCAT stage in this double-bill evening exploring future and ancient indigenous ideas. In Wampum / ᎠᏕᎳ ᏗᎦᎫᏗ, Elisa Harkins sings in a combination of Cherokee, English, and Muscogee (Creek) to electronic dance music, some of which is inspired by sheet music of Indigenous music notated by Daniel Chazanoff during the 20th century. As an act of Indigenous Futurism, it combines disco and Indigenous language in an effort to alter the fate of these endangered languages through active use. The intention of the Wampum / ᎠᏕᎳ ᏗᎦᎫᏗ performance is to create a metaphorical peacekeeping agreement that is between the people watching the piece, regardless of tribe or race.  Using vintage analog gear and video synthesis to create hypersaturated worlds, Anna Luisa Petrisko and special guests will transform the REDCAT stage into a sonic and visually immersive set, performing songs from her 2018 “tropical new age pop” album, Green, as well as new material and collaborations. Informed by grief, healing, and spirituality, Anna Luisa bends the past's visualization of the future into an ancient-feeling present moment. Expect interstellar synths, hymnal vocals, and tropical beats, woven together with vibrant chromatic visions.

Elisa Harkins: Wampum / ᎠᏕᎳ ᏗᎦᎫᏗ
Anna Luisa Petrisko: Green and all the Colors

Faye Driscoll’s Thank You For Coming: Space is a shared rite of passage—a conjuring of the transformative powers of presence, and of absence. Space unfolds within an intimate installation, wired for sound and upheld by pulleys, ropes, and the weight of others, where Driscoll appears alone with the audience. Through an alchemy of body, object, voice, and live sound, she builds a moving requiem for the human body and conjures a world that is, like ourselves, alive and forever changeable. At the center of the work is the human body—built for action, self contained, and driven by its longing for the felt world. Space speaks in bewilderment. It conjures the inevitable forces of loss and grief and asks: How do I reproduce you, talk about you, now that you are gone?

Redcat - Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater

Dec 14, 2024

Holland Andrews

Dec 7, 2024

rafa esparza, MUXX, among others

Articles & News

Redcat - Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater