Out-FRONT! Fest. curated by Pioneers Go East Collective
January 10-20, 2024
Radical Queer dance, film, and performance at The LGBT Community Center and Abrons Arts Center
A Radical Queer Art + Dance festival championing the voices of LGBTQ and Feminist artists for a lively exchange of art and culture. Curated by Gian Marco Riccardo Lo Forte, Daniel Diaz, Hilary Brown-Istrefi, and Philip Treviño.
Presented at The LGBT Community Center from January 10- 15, 2024; and Abrons Arts Center from January 17-20, 2024. The festival features performances by Arthur Aviles and Collaborators, Joey Kipp with Pioneers Go East Collective, Christopher Unpezverde Núñez, Jason Anthony Rodriguez, Paz Tanjuaquio, Ogemdi Ude, and Annie MingHao Wang, as well as films by Fana Fraser, Omega X, and Tourmaline
Where:
The LGBT Community Center
208 West 13th Street - New York, NY 10011
&
Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand St, New York, NY 10002
2024 Out-FRONT! Festival Schedule
Jason Anthony Rodriguez
Take a Good Look / Meet Me in the Moon
Wednesday, January 10, at 8pm, and Thursday, January 11, at 7pm
The LGBT Community Center, Theatre 301
Vogue artist and Pose star Jason Anthony Rodriguez’s work Take a Good Luck takes a direct look into one’s queerness through the perspective of a Dominican, dancer, actor, Gaymer. The work looks closely at the layers that make us, build us, and rip us apart, exploring tools that allow us to regroup in a healthy manner. Meet Me in the Moon is a piece set by choreographer/teacher Kevin Wynn on the Joffrey Ballet School Summer Intensive in 2013. It will be reset as a solo for these performances.
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Joey Kipp with Pioneers Go East Collective
Tracing Lorraine (World Premiere)
Thursday and Friday, January 11-12, at 8pm
The LGBT Community Center, Theatre 301
Joey Kipp’s Tracing Lorraine is a theatrical performance and sharing of Kipp’s connection with the Black queer playwright Lorraine Hansberry and her ghost, pulling forth the common thread of personal memory and erasure. Through a trilogy of works by Hansberry, Kipp imagines her humanistic vision for a contemporary audience. Rooted in an early pandemic video work by Kipp based on Hansberry’s play What Use Are Flowers?, Tracing Lorraine deepens his research into the author’s life and work with the addition of two more plays, The Drinking Gourd and Les Blancs. The theme of erasure to rebuilding prevails not only in the plays’ narratives, but also in Hansberry’s and Kipp’s personal histories, separated by over 60 years, in confronting the loss of their identities within normative society and their respective creative/cultural communities.
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Ogemdi Ude
Hear
Saturday, January 13, at 7 pm & and Sunday, January 14, at 6 pm
The LGBT Community Center, Theatre 301
In Hear, choreographer Ogemdi Ude pulls from a bereft archive of video and sound bites in an attempt to materialize and present the profile of someone lost. The solo, originally a part of a trilogy, is of Ude’s ongoing practice in deriving coping rituals in the aftermath of loss. Her work is built by grieving the loss of loved ones, and preserving the language, movements, and creative actions that emerge from that grief. She opens portals to the dead to communicate with them, retell their stories, and preserve their memory. Can we connect to people who aren’t here anymore by making something out of all the bits that are? Featuring sound by slowdanger. Hear was originally commissioned and presented by Abrons Arts Center in 2022 through the Performance AIRspace Residency, which is supported by the Jerome Foundation.
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Christopher Unpezverde Núñez
YO OBSOLETE
Sunday, January 14, at 7pm, and Monday, January 15, at 8pm
The LGBT Community Center, Theatre 301
Created by Christopher Unpezverde Núñez, In YO OBSOLETE childhood memories intertwined with intergenerational trauma. Escapism from reality to worlds of fantasy and symbolism. Parallels between the mystical and embodied experiences. YO OBSOLETE meditates on imagination as a survival mechanism. The performance navigates through altered states of consciousness, reaching deep levels of ancestral memory embodied in the form of poetry, songs, movement, installation and story telling. Music by: Alfonso Castro. Design by: Original idea by Christopher Unpezverde Núñez. Curatorial revisit,, care & repair, installation, new set & props by Branden Charles Wallace
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Arthur Aviles and Collaborators
Naked Vanguard
Wednesday, January 17, and Friday, January 19, at 8pm
Abrons Arts Center Playhouse
Arthur Aviles continues his Naked Vanguard series, which reimagines several of his classic nude solo dance works. In addition to revealing the body, the works peel back the conventions of Latinx and Black cultures. The works use Aviles’s Swift/Flow dance technique and will be performed by Nikolai McKenzie Ben Rema, Hunter Sturgis, and Aviles. The program includes Morning Dance (2021), In the End, Let’s Begin (2021), Untitled #5A After Ted Shawn AKA Dansé Mexicaine & Jamaïquaine Américaine (World Premiere), and the Bessie Award-winning A Jamaican BattyBwoy in America (2021).
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Annie MingHao Wang
had my mouth (World Premiere)
Thursday, January 18, at 8pm and Saturday, January 20, at 5pm
Abrons Arts Center Playhouse
Constantly shifting between renewing dualities of being and place, had my mouth is a performance that asks: How do we use dance to speak and to build protected spaces? Derived from choreographer Annie MingHao Wang’s personal and physical inquiries into the human invocations of animal energies within Chinese culture, the work pulls specific inspiration from the lion dance and martial arts. Beyond their role as entertainment, these movement forms were historically practiced as covert training in self-defense as protection against oppressive governmental systems. had my mouth furthers this stance by referencing the diverse influences of martial arts in the US to convey the timeless search for protection through self-expression. Performed by Catherine Chen, Ching-I Chang, and Annie MingHao Wang. Music by Eldar Baruch.
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Paz Tanjuaquio / TOPAZ ARTS Dance Productions
Silweta (World Premiere)
Friday, January 19, at 7pm, and Saturday, January 20, at 6pm
Abrons Arts Center Playhouse
TOPAZ ARTS Dance Productions will premiere an evening-length dance, Silweta, choreographed and performed by Paz Tanjuaquio with a trio of guest performers, and created in collaboration with sound and visual artist Todd B. Richmond. With Silweta, based on silhouette images of traditional dance forms of the Philippines, Tanjuaquio traces a distant dance in her ongoing process of creating new movement. Behind the silhouettes, Tanjuaquio explores cultural connections, migration, and displacement. Inspired by various texts, including Dead Stars, a short story by her namesake Paz Márquez-Benítez, in which the idea that light from dead stars still shine can be a metaphor for lives lost and a presence of culture that resonates within our bodies. Silweta brings to light edges of a distant dance, tracing the outer limits of our connected lives. The work includes Petroglyph by Indigenous composer Brent Michael Davids, a digital dance of silhouettes made with Onome Ekeh will also be incorporated within the performance.
Film Screenings
Saturday, January 13, 5pm-6:30pm
The LGBT Community Center, Gallery 101
Interdisciplinary artist Fana Fraser will present a new short film, originally commissioned by TBA21-Academy (Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary) for TBA21 on st_age.
And I was recognized is a portrait film on trans parenthood. The work uses sound and visual abstractions to offer a poetic lens to the intricate and tender space of family.
The film is created by Omega X, Danni Venne, Matt Harvey and Laura Marie Marciano, and produced by gemstone readings.
The Personal Things (2016) is an animated film by writer, filmmaker, and activist Tourmaline, whose practice highlights the experiences of Black, queer, and trans communities and their capacity to impact the world. Tourmaline writes, “You have to find your own way to strike back. Black trans elder and legendary activist Miss Major Griffin-Gracy describes how everyday personal acts fuel her political activism.”
Workshops at The LGBT Community Center
Teen Voguing Workshop with Jason Anthony Rodriguez
Friday, January 12, 3-4pm
Storytelling Through Dance for Older Adults with Magda Kaczmarska
Sunday, January 14, 5-6:30pm
Accessibility: The LGBT Community Center and Abrons Arts Center are wheelchair accessible venues.
The introductions for each event will be scripted with captioning shown through projection.