Larry Arrington Premieres New Work WOW MOM at ODC Theater This Month

ODC Theater will present wow mom, the culminating work of Larry Arrington's artist residency at ODC. A continuation of Arrington's exploration of astrological archetypes and planetary cycles, wow mom combines film with live performance. Sound and video artist Alexa Burrell is the project's lead collaborator. Wow mom runs April 29 - 30, Friday to Saturday at 7:30 p.m. Tickets, $15 - $30, are now on sale at odc.dance/wowmom.

Following No Quarter, in which Arrington explored the planetary cycles of Pluto and Saturn, presciently forecasting the global tumult to come in 2020, wow mom offers up a collage of images and questions related to Venus, her mythological association with Demeter, the goddess of fecundity and life, and their responses to cataclysm and loss.

"Just as I timed the premiere of No Quarter to fall on the exact moment of the Saturn-Pluto conjunction, so for wow mom we've timed our events to coincide with an important conjunction of Venus with Neptune and Jupiter in the sign of Pisces," said Arrington. Wow mom centers on two myths in particular: the transmutation of Venus and Cupid into fish as the origin story of Pisces, and Demeter's descent into the underworld in search of her daughter Persephone.

The centrality of mothers to the work finds its way into the title. "Venus was the mother of Cupid (Eros), and her iconography often portrays her floating on the water," continued Arrington. "The title figures forth the reflective property of water. I like that wow mom appears the same right side up as down, the same forward and back."

Wow mom marks Arrington's first foray into film, though it's her second collaboration with Burrell, a Bay Area-based artist who composes intricate sonic and video works consisting of sampled and found media. Burrell is the video artist for House/Full of Blackwomen, a ritual performance collective directed by amara tabor-smith and Ellen Sebastian-Chang.

Former LINES Ballet dancer and choreographer, Maurya Kerr, performs a lead role in the film. Additional performers include Brontez Purnell and Chelsea Reichert, as well as Arrington and Burrell. Elements of interstitial live performance will feature Keith Hennessy, Gizeh Muniz-Vengel and Amy Wasielewski, among other artists.

Other collaborators include lighting designer Grisel Torres and stop motion animator Clement Goldberg.

"To everything there is a season," said Arrington. "Dance and performance - and now film - are the instruments I use to practice astrology."

In addition to the live events on April 29 - 30, ODC will offer an online and fully captioned broadcast of wow mom on Friday, May 20 at 6 p.m. PT. The live event on April 29 will offer ASL interpretation.

Wow mom is a project of CounterPulse's House Artist Program. It is supported through grants from the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, the Creative Work Fund and rehearsal space from The Lab. This project marks the completion of an ODC Theater Resident Artist from the 2018-2021 cohort whose residency was delayed due to COVID-19.

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