Justin Allen FREQUENCY Announced At The Chocolate Factory Theater

The Chocolate Factory Theater presents the world premiere of Frequency, a new performance by Justin Allen. Tickets are $20 and may be purchased in advance at (212) 352-3101 or www.chocolatefactorytheater.org.

An improvisational performance by Justin Allen and collaborators Yulan Grant and Ian Andrew Askew, Frequency intersects percussive and rhythmic instruments and dance styles to produce, respond to, and interact with vibration. Situating bass shakers within The Chocolate Factory's cavernous industrial space, the performance will utilize physical and musical scores which respond to, and build upon, the pulsation of techno music.

This new performance takes inspiration from Allen's first encounters with punk and club subculture as a teen and young adult, and connections among collective movement, sound systems, architecture, and the body. With this work, Allen keys in on the sensations of sound and music to speak to the felt impact, physical and emotional, of these environments. The performance's title references vibratory frequencies as well as the way rhythms are constructed with repetition in time. The performance also winks at the expression "shake things up" and the ways subculture breaks from mainstream conventions through experimentation.

Created and Performed by Justin Allen with Yulan Grant and Ian Andrew Askew. Justin Allen previously appeared at The Chocolate Factory in October 2020 with Bass and Drums, co-presented with ISSUE Project Room. Justin Allen uses performance, music, writing, language construction, and video to create unique and moving experiences. Working across disciplines, he tries out forms and techniques learned from time in the tap world, the Black art world, at punk shows, at techno clubs, among poets, and perusing conlanging websites and message boards. While his work zeroes in on specific "scenes," it surfaces broader themes of connection, risk-taking, and the constraints of cultural norms.

His practice also takes a cue from subculture, bringing together like minded collaborators around niche topics to chat, experiment, and play. He has received support from Franklin Furnace, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the Jerome Foundation, and shared his work at a variety of venues both stateside and abroad. He received his BA in literary studies from The New School and is currently pursuing his MFA at Yale School of Art. Ian Andrew Askew is an artist working in music and performance. Their research is concerned with historical absurdities, manufactured scarcities, and contrary negritudes. Their project SLAMDANCE began in residency at Arts @ 29 Garden in 2019 and continued at The Performing Garage in 2021. SLAMDANCE TV, a video component, was commissioned and premiered by The Kitchen online in 2021.

Other performances include love conjure/blues at American Repertory Theater and : A Story Project at Farkas Hall. As a sound artist collaborating with Camila Ortiz, they have created scores for film, performance, public sculpture, gallery installation, and AR for artists including Christopher Myers, Kaneza Schaal, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Joie Lee, and Kamal Nassif. Their short essays and poetry have been published by Aperture and featured in To Make Their Own Way in the World, published by Aperture and the Peabody Museum Press. As an assistant director alongside Zack Winokur and AMOC, Ian has shown work at Lincoln Center, American Repertory Theater, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

As an associate director and sound designer with Kaneza Schaal, they have presented work with Michigan Opera Theater and Performance Space New York. Yulan Grant is a New York based multi-disciplinary artist, DJ (SHYBOI) and researcher from Kingston, Jamaica. As a creative positioned between Caribbean and American culture, their work interrogates ideas of identity, notions of power, perceived histories and the entanglements that happen within these topics. Grant is interested in the role that new media plays in artistic practices and the dialogues they hope to create. Grant's recent exhibitions include Paradise Garage, MoMA PS1, The Kitchen, Bowerbird, Edel Assanti, Whitney Museum and GAMeC among others.