RUPTURE: SNEAK, SALSĀL to Headline ARCOS Creative Resistance at Crashbox
Lichen Bouboushian, Venese Alcantar and Omar Mousa present new works exploring diaspora and protest.
ARCOS Presents: Creative Resistance, the seventh edition of the mentorship program that walks Austin-based independent dance artists through self-producing, will bring a double bill of new interdisciplinary work to CRASHBOX September 4-12. Rupture: Sneak by Lichen Bouboushian is built inside an unraveling nest that evokes a disaster zone or refugee camp. SalSāl (clay that makes sound) by Venese Alcantar and Omar Mousa is a dance/film that stages a choreographic confrontation between American lawn sod and the clay beneath it.
Rupture: Sneak moves across three generations: Lichen Bouboushian's grandfather's childhood in occupied Armenia after the genocide, their father's life after forced migration due to the Lebanese civil war, and Bouboushian's own life as a first-generation American. The artist builds an unstable nest inside the set, then slowly unravels it to see what it may offer them. It acts as both home and obstacle as they transform being made small by empire into a survival tactic in Diaspora.
Bouboushian is a hybrid artist straddling the worlds of dance, theater, and performance art. While they have presented their work through festivals and residencies throughout the US and Canada, this is their first opportunity to learn the ropes of self-producing, an important step in their artistic trajectory that inspired their application to ARCOS' program.
Alcantar and Mousa's SalSāl (clay that makes sound) is a surrealist work combining live dance and film, casting 'the American LawnTM/sod' as a symbol of silence and immobility in the face of imperial violence. The work asks what it means to be a criminalized body by default, contemplating the body in protest and celebrating collective resilience.
Alcantar and Mousa have a deep, ongoing relationship rooted in protest and activism, making SalSāl a natural creative extension of their existing work together. Bridging their worlds of site-responsive dance and film, respectively, they have embraced the challenges of self-producing work that evades categorization.
At a kickoff event for the CRASHBOX presentation at Hyperreal Film Club on August 30, the artists will share a preview of their work, including a premiere screening of the film portion of SalSāl, a reading by Bouboushian, a conversation with the artists, and a preview of a documentary following their processes. The full run includes an ASL-interpreted performance on Thursday, September 10 and a masks-required performance on Friday, September 11. Monday, September 7 is a reduced-price industry night.
ARCOS directors EG Gionfriddo and Eliot Gray Fisher selected this year's projects from 11 applications for how the artists embody the call's theme of 'creative resistance,' joined by external reviewers who are alums of past mentorships and have since left Austin. Michael J. Love is a former Princeton Arts Fellow and Austin Critics Table awardee who has performed from Fusebox to Carnegie Hall. Lizzy Tan is a London-based movement director whose work has appeared at the Edinburgh Fringe.
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Rock of Ages TexARTS (7/10-8/09) |
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Noon Tunes: Critter City & Sing-Along Draylen Mason Music Studio at KMFA (7/28-8/11) |
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Guns N’ Roses Globe Life Field (9/09-9/09) |
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John Cameron Mitchell: Hedwig 25th Anniversary Movie Tour Emo's Austin (8/05-8/05) |
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Patricia Vonne’s “My Heart’s Got A Mind of Its Own” official album release show The Continental Club (9/25-9/25) |
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Midnight The Stage (8/06-8/16) |
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ARCOS Presents: Creative Resistance Crashbox (9/04-9/12) |
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Foster The People Moody Amphitheater (10/16-10/16) |
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Disney’s Newsies Bastrop Opera House (9/04-9/27) |
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Cinderella McCullough Theatre (7/23-8/09) |