REDCAT Presents Closing Weekend of the 17th Annual NOW Festival

Rescheduled from December, Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT), CalArts' center for contemporary arts in downtown Los Angeles, presents the closing weekend of its annual -- and now virtual -- New Original Works (NOW) Festival Jan. 28-30, 2021.

The 17th edition of the esteemed event, a three-week celebration of Los Angeles' vibrant community of artists creating new contemporary performance work, will conclude with a triple bill of world premieres from artists DaEun Jung, Maria Garcia and Samantha Mohr, and Genna Moroni streamed from REDCAT to viewers around the world.

Starting on Thursday, Jan. 21, viewers will also be able to purchase tickets to watch programs from NOW Festival Weeks One and Two on demand.

Each year, NOW Festival transforms REDCAT into a laboratory for premiering new contemporary dance, theater, music, and multimedia performances. This year's festival launches nine new works by Los Angeles emerging and mid-career artists who are re-defining the boundaries of contemporary performance to invent hybrid artistic disciplines, re-imagine traditions, and confront urgent issues. All artistic teams receive free rehearsal space, technical support, and artist fees.

"The NOW Festival creates opportunities for artists that are all too rare. This year, the Festival takes on greater opportunity and urgency: supporting and keeping artists working safely in these uncertain times," said Edgar Miramontes, REDCAT's Deputy Executive Director & Curator, who oversees the festival. "It is especially important to have artists lead us and move us forward using this vital initiative of experimentation and development where artists share their unique perspectives, giving us an opportunity to view this changing world in real time and in different and imaginative ways."

NOW Festival 2020 was organized by Miramontes with artists in the community, including Carole Kim, Jasmine Orpilla, and taisha paggett. In the spirit of CalArts, REDCAT's parent institution, the NOW Festival serves as a catalyst for creativity and new ideas. Over its 17-year history, the program has launched over 130 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 premieres in a shared evening, debuting on Thursday evening and repeated Friday and Saturday nights. Details:

DaEun Jung
Byoul Part 1: 246 at 40
What would happen if the conventional flow of Korean dance is disrupted? Prompted by this question, dancer-choreographer DaEun Jung has built a compositional system inspired by Merce Cunningham's "chance operation" and the Korean alphabet, Hangul. Assigning the segmented moves of classical Korean dance to each morpho-syllabic block of the alphabet, Byoul Part 1: 246 at 40 -- consisting of 246 syllables, moves, and beats at 40 bpm -- finds Jung, pansori singer Melody Shim, and sound composer Daniel Corral exploring the concurrences of rigor upon arbitrary, spontaneity upon rules, flow upon interruption, dependency upon idiosyncrasy, and the conditional upon the absolute.

Maria Garcia and Samantha Mohr
Laocoön with Cabiria at 9
Maria Garcia's Laocoön with Cabiria at 9 is a one-woman show led by Vatican Museums tour guide Cabiria, who in a nightmare, is confronted with a Trojan Soldier sharing her reflection. Brought to life by choreographer and performer Samantha Mohr, Cabiria's obsession with the story of the Trojan Horse and the priest Laocoön sends her on a liminal journey of humiliation, pain, banishment, death, and love. Stuck between history and myth, Cabiria's investigation of the Trojan war explores the designation of "foreign" bodies as dangerous, devious, and in need of discipline.

Genna Moroni
More
Employing unapologetically "ugly," yet beautiful and raw physicality, dancer-choreographer Genna Moroni's More invites viewers into the vacuum of female relationships. Slipping between different worlds, stories, and perspectives with no clear end in sight, More creates a labyrinth. The audience will have the opportunity to both witness and sense the effort, disappointments, and complexities expressed in movement. Layered with music by Adam Starkopf, Moroni and her team of dancers explore the ever-evolving and shifting nature of relationships, inspiring us to find ourselves and leaving a lasting sense that there is still "more." For the best sonic experience, headphones are suggested.