REDCAT Closes Out The 18th Annual New Original Works Festival October 21-23

Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater presents the 18th annual New Original Works Festival, a celebration of Los Angeles' vibrant community of artists creating new contemporary performance work, over three weekends this fall: Oct. 7-9, Oct. 14-16, and Oct. 21-23.

This year's festival returns to in-person performances with nine new works by Los Angeles artists who are redefining the boundaries of contemporary performance, inventing hybrid artistic disciplines, reimagining traditions, and confronting urgent issues. The unprecedented 17th edition of the event, held across Fall 2020 and Winter 2021, streamed directly from REDCAT to viewers in over 30 countries around the world.

"This year's NOW Festival imagines a plethora of social and cultural possibilities," said Edgar Miramontes, REDCAT's Deputy Executive Director and Curator. "As we move through the constant disruption of our current moment, the NOW artists and their projects begin to envision what's next."

Each year, NOW Festival transforms REDCAT into a laboratory for premiering new contemporary dance, theater, music, and multimedia performances. All artistic teams receive free rehearsal space, technical support, and artist fees. Since the first edition in 2004, NOW Festival has presented the work of over 200 L.A.-based artists.

NOW Festival 2021 was organized by Miramontes with artists in the community, including Sebastian Hernandez and Ligia Lewis. In the spirit of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), REDCAT's parent institution, the NOW Festival serves as a catalyst for creativity and new ideas. Over its 18 year history, the program has launched nearly 150 works by an impressive list of artists who continue to be seen on stages throughout the U.S. and abroad.

Each of the three weekends features a triple bill of world premieres in a shared evening. Each program is premiered on Thursday evening and repeated Friday and Saturday evenings at 8:30 pm. This year, performances will also be live streamed each Saturday night during the festival's run.

Week Three, held Oct. 21-23, comprises a program of works by artists Jobel Medina, Jasmine Orpilla, and Amy O'Neal. Details:

Jobel Medina: David, My Goliath
Combining finesse technique with amateurism and excess with minimalism, choreographer Jobel Medina's trio queers the REDCAT stage in David, My Goliath, a highly physical and equivocally theatrical dance. Inspired by the melodramatic tendencies of soap operas and the theater, this dance is created as a loud expression of ROMANCE and QUEERNESS within its compacted and underproduced framework. Driven by humor combined with varying dance influences such as Tinikling (Filipino folk dance), hip-hop, and ballet, this work is stamped with each of the artist's unique relationship to performance.

Jasmine Orpilla: TALGED, Her Body She Cares for, Her Soul/s (She) Guards.
Based on pre-colonial combat systems and Ilokano witchcraft practices of the Philippines, TALGED is a solo, multi-lingual, counter-operatic sound and art installation, composed, written, choreographed, and sung by Jasmine Orpilla. Dedicated in loving memory of Pilipino/x caretakers as well as fellow survivors of violent hate crimes throughout the diaspora, TALGED rebukes the unnecessary emotional and intellectual labor of decoding white supremacy, while rejecting the patterns of desensitization that quietly haunt the Fil-Am body today.

Amy O'Neal: There is No Other (The Remix)
Through the merging of Black social dance practices from house and hip hop culture, contemporary dance, and experimental performance tropes, There is No Other (The Remix) reimagines and remixes concepts, choreography, and fashion from choreographer Amy O'Neal's body of work exploring societal constructs of gender. In There is No Other (The Remix), O'Neal asks: Are we hardwired to perceive gender from movement alone? When race is intrinsically connected to how we perceive gender, can we be a post-gender society when we are far from being a post-race society?

Tickets can be purchased at https://www.redcat.org/event/now-2021-week-three.

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