FISH SPIT FEAST Will Come to MAI in April

MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels) will present Fish Spit Feast by Camille Huang, from April 22 to 25 in the MAI theatre. First developed through a series of shorter iterations presented at Danses Buissonnières at Tangente (2023), Festival Entractes (2024), and Aeris Körper (2025) under the title Feast of Fishbones, the work now unfolds as a new full-length creation. On stage, Huang is joined by interpreters Evelynn Yan and Jo Laïny Trozzo-Mounet and producer and DJ Rodolfo Rueda.

Fish Spit Feast unfolds as a vivid and shifting performance landscape. Rooted in diasporic experience, the work approaches hybridity as a space of creation. When living between two cultures, something else begins to take shape. A third presence emerges, unfixed and constantly in formation. Rather than trying to reconcile or fit within two worlds, Huang turns toward this generative space and leans into its potential. The piece proposes a third space built through connection, imagination, and collective presence.

Huang draws on the idea of shared meals as a way of thinking through the work, where eating becomes a physical and communal act of transformation. Inspired by family gatherings, Huang returns to the visceral memory of parents chewing and spitting out fish bones. A gesture rooted in both intimacy and excess, at once ordinary and striking. This sensorial memory becomes a point of departure. It opens onto the feast as a space of celebration shaped by ongoing change.

The work lingers on what is carried, what is protected, what is lifted into celebration, and what remains unspoken. On stage, this becomes a gathering, a feast. A space where identities are continually reshaped and offered anew. This vision takes shape through a choreography that moves between precision and instability. The performers shift in and out of synchronicity. Their bodies transform into hybrid and sometimes elusive figures. At times playful, at others uncanny, these transformations reflect identities in motion.

Originally conceived as a duet, this full-length version now expands into a trio, with the integration of live music on stage. The presence of a third interpreter reshapes the dynamics on stage. It introduces another layer of relation and tension. For Huang, this reflects an ongoing interest in what emerges beyond dual structures, or living between two cultures. A third element acts as a shifting point of connection, a third space.