Dresher Ensemble Artist Residency 2024 Awards
e. Franklin – Anne Hege – Zoe Klein – Labonee Mohanta – Danishta Rivero and Roco Córdova – Ambrose Trataris aka DestroyHerr
e. Franklin
Photo: Alexis Molina
The Pla[y/n] for Reparation$ is a multidisciplinary immersive performance that allows participants to learn about, discuss, envision, and practice individual and collective healing. The experience is intended for an audience of diverse identities and opinions whose choices will guide them through various chapters of the piece, much like a choose-your-own-adventure book, punctuated and/or interwoven by discrete moments of performance by e. Franklin and self-selecting participants.The project aims to heighten participants’ understanding of intersectional healing/repair and build practical skills in advancing this notion through role play and experiential learning. efranklin.tv
Anne Hege
Photo: Brian Dalthorp
Anne Hege will collaborate with instrument builders Curtis Ullerich and Daniel Iglesia and vocalists Shauna Fallihee, Michele Kennedy, and Sidney Chen to create an immersive opera for laptop orchestra and live voices in this modern retelling of the Orpheus myth. In The Glance, lovers Orpheus and Eurydice navigate intimacy in a time of constant surveillance and wrestle against their roles in the private domestic sphere. Through a journey to the underworld, they confront their unique inabilities to form trusting, intimate bonds with each other. Weaving together composition, choreography, costume, and set design, the opera engages the laptop orchestra to physicalize questions at the root of the Orpheus myth, including the space between surveillance, control, and care. Analog instruments, augmented with electronics and physical controllers, bring contemporary relevance to an ancient story. annehege.com
Zoe Klein
Photo: Robbie Sweeny
Artistic collaboration between two Colombian adoptee multidisciplinary artists: Zoë Klein (acrobatic dance choreographer in Oakland) and MasPaz (pre-Columbian art-inspired muralist and multimedia artist in D.C.). Inspired by the mola art of the Kuna natives of Colombia, will weave our life experiences together and create an environment where we sew, carve, paint, move, dance, connect, contradict, oppress, heal, and liberate. We will work towards building a physical, performative piece that speaks to the socio-political complexity of transracial adoption. In this new collaboration, we will reveal our past and heritage while creating a new narrative that empowers, inspires, and facilitates peace with our culture of origin, our culture of upbringing, and our future lives. zoekleinproductions.com
Labonee Mohanta
Photo: Donald Woodrow
Milana is the collaboration between North Indian Classical Kathak dance (Labonee Mohanta), South Indian Carnatic + Jazz Drum Kit percussion (Rohan Krishnamurthy), and American Jazz piano (Colin Hogan) that dissolves walls between genres and reimagines the relationship between dancer and musician. It introduces a new way of thinking of a world music + dancer band performing together, where the dancer is seen as a homologous musical band member, or a “visual musician,” while the musicians play and “visualize” as dancers. Improvisation plays a key role in the relationship between the disciplines, which challenges conventional approaches where the musicians typically play per the dancer’s lead and choreography, or where the music is a fixed score upon which a dancer choreographs. As we blur these lines and traditional boundaries, we create a blending or convergence, or “Milana” of the art forms. labonee.com
Danishta Rivero and Roco Córdova
Photo: Sabrina Sellers
Geografías del Cuerpo (Geographies of the Body) is an experimental multidisciplinary exploration by artists Roco Córdova and Danishta Rivero. Using the voice, the body, and live processing of sound and visuals, they will create an installation and site-specific performance that will explore and entangle varied conceptualizations of the body and its physical and imagined landscapes. danishtarivero.com
Ambrose Trataris aka DestroyHerr
Photo by Vita Hewitt
“Daisy-Chain<><><>Star-Connection” is a performance piece by Ambrose Trataris, aka DestoryHerr, a trans technologist, Drag, and performance artist experimenting with the ways that virtual reality interplays with the trans experience. Breaking the anonymity and isolation of online worlds by making the player and world visible simultaneously, this piece explores how integrating your authentic lived experience is necessary to build inclusive worlds. During this residency, Trataris will co-create avatars that will live in VRChat (an online social platform) and represent a diverse array of drag artists worldwide. The live performance will include live full-body tracking dancing in Virtual Reality, costume, and dance practices rooted in Drag, hip-hop, ballet, and contemporary dance movements. “Daisy-Chain<><><>Star-Connection” engages with the multitude of connection points we make with each other and builds a playground for the queer imagination to experiment and thrive. ambrosetrataris.com