Ray Ferreira's TO SPIRAL SEEMS TO BE THE ONLY OPTION Announced At Performance Space New York

Performance Space New York continues The Stages Series-rethinking the dominant form and aesthetics that have informed the stage for centuries-with the world premiere of ray ferreira's to spiral seems to be the only option (December 19-21). ray ferreira-a blaqlatinx performer, born in Queens, via the Caribbean, the Greater Antilles, Hispañola, the Dominican Republic-uses her so-informed body to make and remake histories with movement and language.

In to spiral seems to be the only option, ferreira immerses her own body and person within the histories of the spirited many who leapt, sometimes together, from the slave-ships that were heading to Northern America and the Caribbean, and the underwater communities they formed. There is a parallel history between the archipelagos that hold New York City and the Dominican Republic, embodied in ferreira, too. One thinks of Marsha P. Johnson's dead body that was found floating in the Hudson-the unknowns of her death, how she'd made a pact with Sylvia Rivera to "cross the River Jordan" together-or Mami Wata, Yemallá, and sister oceanic beings. to spiral seems to be the only option engages histories, mythologies, and the confluence of both across space and time, disrupting said spacetimematterings, opening our minds to the potential of para-knowability. Through ferreira's work, we piece together new worlds by giving in to the fact that not everything makes sense-some is felt.

ferreira's performance takes the form of three acts (a bow breaks skin, enter chevron, vortex keloid: shewokeorshedreamin; benthic bit*h fantasy; and posthorizon spiral kunt) and in part imagines, for people forced into bondage, the agency in the act of plunging beneath-spiraling downward through the ship-scarred skins of waters connecting colonized lands, through vortexes and down through the benthic zone of the ocean, to find something else. Eventually dissolving the neat spatiality of diving, ferreira dreams of who might get (to be) down on the floor, moving into a messier territory of the unknown. ferreira traverses these supposed planes of existence with movement; video projection; and lip-synced, spoken, and sung rhythmic and mediated text that slips between various codifications and representations of Englishes and Spanishes.

"Not surprisingly, we are living in a dystopia that's been," says ferriera. "While not new, this intensification of whiteness forces us to search for those futurities that are always being enacted. The impulse is to disrupt the neatness of spacetime and center a paraontology and reengage speculation. This work is for the girls, particularly black queer femmes, to feel at home. Likewise, it is to slap those who need it."

Performances of to spiral seems to be the only option will take place at Performance Space New York (150 1st Avenue 4th floor, New York) December 19-21 at 7pm. Tickets are $15, and are available at performacespacenewyork.org. ASL will be available on December 21. If you have any questions please email boxoffice@PerformanceSpaceNewYork.org.

The Stages Series, Performance Space New York Deputy Director Pati Hertling's first large-scale curatorial project at the organization, invites artists to propose new platforms and conditions that transgress the black box and its institutional walls, positioning performance as an act of creation for and towards the future. The series began with work from rafa esparza (September 23), and features installations by Sarah Zapata (through January 19) and Renata Lucas (through November 2). Beyond ferreira's to spiral seems to be the only option, it includes An Evening With Princess Nokia (November 3), performances from Kia LaBeija (November 7-9), Martine Gutierrez (November 20, 22-2), Julie Tolentino (December 7-13), Julie Tolentino and Stosh Fila (December 12), and Mariana Valencia (January 9-11, 16-18); a queer nightlife experiment by Julie Tolentino and Oscar Nñ (November 16); a GUSH party (October 25); a series led by S.J Norman and Joseph M. Pierce (January 11-12); and a Marathon Reading of Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, co-organized by Sarah Schulman with Shellyne Rodriguez, Charles Rice-González, and Norma Cantú (October 20).