BABYLIFT By Anh Vo A Solo Performance in Memory of the Ghosts of the Vietnam War To Have Canadian Premiere

A semi-naked body kneels in front of the iconic image of Thich Quang Duc's self-immolation (1963). An altar is carefully set up centre stage. Rituals are meticulously performed. Fragmented narratives unfold, interspersed with myriad historical and contemporary references.

Anh Vo's solo, BABYLIFT, attempts to conjure the ghosts of the Vietnam War (a.k.a. the Resistance War Against Imperialist America). Named after a 1975 mass evacuation of children from South Vietnam to Western countries - which resulted in a plane crash that killed 78 of those children - BABYLIFT is first a memorial to the unmourned and unremembered. Striving to queer linear masculinist history, Vo weaves together cultural memories of the US Civil Rights Movement, freedom fantasies of the 1960s, contemporary pop culture, and current leftist activism.

Set to a disorienting soundscape, BABYLIFT juxtaposes repetitive ritualistic movements with sexually provocative gestures, speculating on the erotic of haunting that can be both terrifying and pleasurable.

"I can't just conjure the ghosts and let them run wild. I try to stay with my emotions and memories." - Anh Vo for The Brooklyn Rail

Premiered in Sunset Park, Brooklyn at Target Margin Theatre, this performance was first presented in an empty theatre with no digital or in-person audience. Vo chose instead to offer these first performances of BABYLIFT to the ghosts of the Vietnam War. Montreal audiences are now invited to this multimedia performance where ritual, queerness and pop culture intertwine.

www.m-a-i.qc.ca/en/babylift

Anh Vo is a Vietnamese dancer, writer, teacher, and activist. They create dances and produce texts about pornography and queer relations, about being and form, about identity and abstraction, about history and its colonial reality. They earned their degrees in Performance Studies from Brown University (BA) and New York University (MA). Currently based in Brooklyn, NY, Anh is also developing a sustainable relationship to Hanoi, Vietnam.

Their most recent work, BABYLIFT (2021), which attempts to conjure the ghosts of the Vietnam War, premiered at Target Margin Theater to no audience. Other institutional supporters include Movement Research, New York Live Arts, Leslie-Lohman Museum, Portland Institute for Contemporary Arts, Brooklyn Arts Council, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, MORUA (Vietnam), Montréal Arts Interculturels (Montreal), greenroom (Seoul), and Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (Madrid).

BABYLIFT

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