REDCAT’s 2022 Winter/Spring Season

admin January 6, 2022 Dance News USA No Comment

Ringing in a hopeful New Year, Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT), CalArts’ downtown center for contemporary arts, has announced their 2022 Winter/Spring Season. Through performances, screenings, and exhibitions, REDCAT will once again welcome in-person audiences—as well as online audiences around the world—from January through June 2022.

“The performances, exhibitions, screenings, and conversations in REDCAT’s new season continue to be guided by our commitment to supporting artists, and to sharing transformative work with our varied audiences,” said João Ribas, REDCAT’s Executive Director and Vice President for Cultural Partnerships. “As we’ve begun to gather and share art and performance together again, artists are once again leading us to novel directions and insights into what performance, art, storytelling, and innovation can be.”

The new season sees the triumphant return of two live performances originally scheduled to appear at REDCAT in 2020: New York-based performance ensemble Elevator Repair Service with their powerful new adaptation, Baldwin & Buckley at Cambridge, March 3-5; and writer/composer Dahlak Brathwaite’s Try/Step/Trip, a spoken word, multi-character musical performed through the language of step dance, March 24-26.

Kicking off a season of remarkable theater, critically-acclaimed theater artist and Guggenheim Fellow Kaneza Schaal exorcises the ghost of King Leopold II through a tour-de-force performance Jan. 20-22. Actress and artist Sola Bamis presents The Tutorial, an original work deconstructing Toni Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye, April 21-23. Mark-n-Sparks present The Most Beautiful Home…Maybe on May 19-21, part of a multi-year, multi-platform experiment to influence housing policy through art and dialogue. And on June 9, REDCAT presents The Baptism, a three-part poem and tribute to the legacies of civil rights leaders John Lewis and C.T. Vivian, written and performed by poet and artist Carl Hancock Rux, and featuring two short films directed by seminal artist Carrie Mae Weems.

On Feb. 4-6, Doris Duke Award-winning dancer, choreographer, and director Faye Driscoll brings Thank You For Coming: Space—a conjuring of the transformative powers of presence, and of absence—to the REDCAT stage. And March 27 through May 14, REDCAT’s annual Studio series returns, after a two year absence, to present a diverse program of multidisciplinary works-in-progress from Los Angeles artists.

The season’s music programming features dynamic performances from prolific jazz artist Georgia Anne Muldrow on Jan. 28; a double-bill exploring future and ancient indigenous ideas with Elisa Harkins and interstellar synths, hymnal vocals, and tropical beats by Anna Luisa Petrisko on Feb. 18; German-born sound artist Florian Hecker on March 12; Futures of Music explores various possible futures in performing and experiencing music on Jan. 15; Los Angeles composer and musician Derrick Skye on April 2; a new one-man opera by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Du Yun, presented with LA Opera, on April 13-17; Pan Afrikan People’s Arkestra, celebrating 60 years of revolutionary music, on June 4; and GRAMMY Award-winning PARTCH Ensemble with two world premieres June 17-18.

Additionally, the season sees the live return of CalArts’ beloved student showcases with CalArts Film/Video Showcase April 27-30; and CalArts Spring Dance May 6-7.

Opening on May 28, American Artist: Shaper of God, is an exhibition consisting of a new video and sculpture conceived for REDCAT, taking inspiration not only from Octavia E. Butler’s novels, but from her own life. This exhibition has been developed in conversation with classmates and scholars of Butler and Pasadena’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in an attempt to give breadth to Butler’s legacy. Shaper of God observes how Butler’s writing tapped into the vital heartbeat of American history.