The Kitchen Presents Colin Self and Raul De Nieves' Chamber Opera THE FOOL

From February 9-11, The Kitchen presents Raúl De Nieves and Colin Self's The Fool. Constructed as a chamber opera scored in four acts for chorus and string ensemble, The Fool is an allegorical journey drawing an ante-narrative around time, beauty, communion and mortality.

The Fool explores the story of the trickster, an archetypal character who breaks rules and disobeys convention as a means to educate, liberate and construct positive social change. In accordance with their artistic and cultural behavior, the trickster figure exhibits gender and form variability, comedically violating principles of social and natural order. Starring Colin Self as the Old Woman, Raúl De Nieves as The Fool and the Dog, Alexandra Drewchin as the Child, and Mehron Abdollmohammadi as the Mother. The production is organized by Matthew Lyons.

Tickets for The Fool, which starts at 8pm, are $15 and can be purchased online at www.thekitchen.org; by phone at 212.255.5793 x11; or in person at The Kitchen (512 West 19th Street), Tuesdays - Saturdays, 2:00 - 6:00 P.M.

The Fool shifts the semantics of "opera" into a meditation on the dynamic and revelatory construction of collective practice. Through their collaboration, Colin and Raúl have become aware of their shared ability to engage affect as a tool for creating action and raising consciousness through the orchestration of voice, sound and bodies. They both dedicate their work toward unseen possibilities and translate unseen, abstract social possibilities into composition. As queer, gender non-conforming individuals, they have developed pop modalities to create discourse around these interests, bridging communities to explore consciousness studies, liturgical ceremonies, and queer theory with sound, image, and language. Ultimately, their trans-disciplinary practices exhibit the power of expanding possibility, beauty, and subversion to engender an empowering and transformative change in the viewer.

About Colin Self

Colin Self is an artist, performer, and composer based between Brooklyn and Berlin. He composes and choreographs music, performance, and environemnts for expanding consciousness, troubling binaries and boundaries of perception and communication. He works with communities across disciplines and practices, using voices, bodies, and computers as tools to interface with biological and technological software. His recent work, The Elation Series, is a six-part sequential opera about queer family and global transfiguration. Last year he released his debut solo record "ELATION" and recently toured with Radiohead as 1/3 part of the Holly Herndon trio. Colin has presented work at The Dutch National Opera, The Hammer Museum, The Kitchen NYC, and HAU2 Berlin, and many other festivals and venues. He's currently an MFA candidate at the Bard Milton-Avery Program and runs a non-utilitarian choir in New York City called XHOIR. Colin is currently writing his second record to be released on RVNG International in Fall 2017.

About Raúl De Nieves

Raúl De Nievesis a multi-media artist, performer, and musician based in Brooklyn, New York. His body of work encompasses narrative painting, decadent multimedia performance (often with his band Haribo), large-scale figurative sculpture, live music, ornamentally crafted shoes, and garments. De Nieves has exhibited globaly, including at COMPANY (NYC), Mendes Wood DM (Sao Paulo), MoMA PS1, The Museum of Art and Design, Rod Bianco (Oslo), Shoot the Lobster, and elsewhere. He has also performed at Artists Space, BOFFO, The Kitchen, MoMA PS1, Performa 13, Real Fine Arts, and numerous other venues. In 2015, he was included in PS1's Greater New York, and will be included in the 2017 Whitney Biennial.

Funding Credits

Raúl De Nieves and Colin Self: The Fool is made possible with endowment support from Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust; annual grants from The Amphion Foundation, Inc., The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Howard Gilman Foundation, The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, and Marta Heflin Foundation; and in part by public funds from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. The Fool was developed over the course of 2014 as a part of Raúl De Nieves' year-long residency in ISSUE Project Room's Artist-in-Residence program which culminated in a premiere of the work at ISSUE as The Fool (Elation V), part of Colin Self's six-part Elation series.

About The Kitchen

The Kitchen is one of New York City's most forward-looking nonprofit spaces, showing innovative work by emerging and established artists across disciplines. Our programs range from dance, music, performance, and theater to video, film, and art, in addition to literary events, artists' talks, and lecture series. Since its inception in 1971, The Kitchen has been a powerful force in shaping the cultural landscape of this country, and has helped launch the careers of many artists who have gone on to worldwide prominence.

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