La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival: Pele Bauch & Marina Celander in a Shared Evening
Company:
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club
Shared Evening
Pele Bauch | A.K.A. Ka Inoa (World Premiere)
Marina Celander | Stone She: Space Edition (World Premiere)
Friday and Saturday, April 22–23 at 8:30pm; Sunday, April 24, at 4pm
The Downstairs Theatre
Pele Bauch’s A.K.A. Ka Inoa (also known as the name) weaves supple movement, vivid characters, and personal story together with rope and name tags. It explores the messy gray areas in ethnic identity through visual metaphor. Taking place on a floor carpeted by a sea of discarded name tags, Bauch sifts through these papers. What does it mean to wear a label, to wear a name? This interdisciplinary solo mines Bauch’s experience as a multiracial New Yorker and Native Hawaiian who carries the weight of being named after one of Hawaii’s most significant and beloved deities, Pele, the goddess of volcanoes. Naming someone after her is generally not done. And on top of that, Bauch doesn’t pronounce her name correctly. A.K.A. Ka Inoa uses this name conundrum to unpack our expectations around racial identity and push them against the realities of personal identity. It asks: What does it mean to “represent” one’s race?
Marina Celander’s Stone She: Space Edition explores our inside/outside worlds and humanity’s disconnect to nature. Stone She finds an ancient millstone in a forest while meeting with some fellow nature creatures, causing current undesirable human events to be catapulted, together with the millstone, into outer space. The millstone returns back to earth with a precious gift for Stone She and her friends. Created in collaboration with composer and video editor/projection designer Fredrik Soderberg. Performed by Celander, Asma Feyjinmi, Michaela Lind, and Katja Otero. Millstone design by Emma Oppenheimer, lighting by Federico Restrepo.
Marina Celander's "Stone She: Space Edition"; image courtesy of the artist
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