Will Rawls
(Brooklyn, NY)
[siccer]
(performance)
PROGRAM DETAILS
Performances: October 6 & 7 at 7:00 pm / October 8 at 2:00 pm
— The performances are ticketed at a sliding scale starting at $10. Click on the "Get Tickets" button on the left menu to purchase.
Artist Talk with Will Rawls and Kemi Adeyemi: Saturday, October 7 at 5:00 pm / free to attend
Masks recommended.
ACCESS
PICA’s Annex is on the ground floor and is accessible to those with mobility aids. ADA-accessible, gender-neutral restrooms and a water cooler are located inside. If you have questions about accessibility, you can contact us at boxoffice@pica.org or call 503-224-PICA.
DESCRIPTION
In [siccer], Will Rawls experiments with stop-motion, a filmmaking technique in which still photographs are strung together to produce a moving image. Through a dance performance and accompanying video installation, Rawls invites us to consider the ways in which Black bodies are relentlessly documented, distorted, and circulated in the media. Throughoutﾠ[siccer]'s live performance, five dancers are suspended in an uncanny reenactment of an iconic American film. When the camera’s shutter closes momentarily between photographs, a gap in surveillance occurs that allows Rawls and collaborators to play within this interval through physical and vocal improvisations.
The project's title is driven by the usage of “[sic],” a Latin adverb that indicates incorrect spelling within a quotation. [sic] is often employed to contrast Black vernacular with standard English. Upturning this perceived conflict, [siccer] illuminates the verbal, physical play that marks how Black performance actively eludes capture and speculates on the potential for collective strategies of narrating the world, uncorrected.
Concept, Choreography, and Direction: Will Rawls
Performance: Holland Andrews, keyon gaskin, jess pretty, Katrina Reid, Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste
Sound Design and Vocals: Holland Andrews and Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste
Director of Photography, Video Editor, and FX: Lauryn Siegel
Technical Director: David Szlasa
Lighting and Scenic Designer: Maggie Heath
Costume Designer: Saša Kovačević
Assistant Costume Designer: Dana Doughty
Audio Designer: Jimmy Garver
Dramaturg: Kemi Adeyemi
Studio Rawls Director: Rebecca Fitton
Producer: Sasha Okshteyn
Company Manager: Alejandro Flores Monge
ADDITIONAL PROGRAMMING
[siccer] Exhibition
Dates: September 23 to November 5, 2023
Opening Reception: September 23 from 12:00 – 4:00 pm
Gallery Hours: 12:00 – 6:00 pm Thursday & Friday / 12:00 – 4:00 pm Saturday & Sunday (free)
— The exhibition is open to the public and free to attend.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Will Rawls is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice encompasses choreography, dance, video, sculpture, works on paper, and installation. Rawls is best known for his choreographic work that employs repetition to explore the limits of language and gesture as tools for staging performances of black presence and becoming. Rawls has created a solo exhibition for Adams + Ollman Gallery (2022) and a multi-part installation at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, Everlasting Stranger (2021), as well as presenting work at the Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn Museum, Performa 15, Danspace Project, The Chocolate Factory Theater, High Line Art, REDCAT, the 10th Berlin Biennale, and the Hessel Museum at Bard College. He has received fellowships and residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, The Alpert Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Mellon Foundation, United States Artists, the Rauschenberg Foundation, Creative Capital, New England Foundation for the Arts, National Performance Network, MAP Fund, the MacDowell Colony, Headlands Center for the Arts, and Movement Research. Rawls recently joined UCLA’s Department of World Arts and cultures/Dance as an Associate Professor of Choreography. In 2016, Rawls co-curated Lost and Found—six weeks of performances at Danspace Project that addressed the intergenerational impact of HIV/AIDS. His writing has been published by the Hammer Museum, MoMA, Museu de Arte de São Paolo, Dancing While Black Journal, Brooklyn Rail, and Artforum.
Holland Andrews (they/them) is a vocalist, composer, and performance artist whose work focuses on the abstraction of operatic and extended-technique voice to build cathartic and dissonant soundscapes. Andrews arranges music for voice, clarinet, and electronics and frequently highlights themes surrounding vulnerability and healing. Andrews harnesses these instruments’ innate qualities of power and elegance to serve as a cohesive vessel for these themes. As a vocalist, their influences stem from a dynamic range, including contemporary opera, theater, and jazz, while also cultivating their own unique vocal style, which integrates these influences with language disintegration and vocal distortion. Andrews previously performed solo music under the stage name Like a Villain.
In addition to creating solo work, Andrews composes and performs for dance, theater, and film, and their work is toured nationally and internationally with artists such as Bill T. Jones, Dorothee Munyaneza, Will Rawls, and poet Demian Dinéyazhi. Notable musical collaborations include Son Lux, Christina Vantzou, William Brittelle, Methods Body, West Thordson, Peter Broderick, Darian Donovan Thomas, and Nils Frahm.
Their previous work also includes composing the film score for Rebeca Huntt’s BEBA, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2021 and screened at other festivals, including Berlinale and Tribeca Film Festival. BEBA was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and acquired by Neon and Onyx Collective/Hulu. Andrews has gained recognition from publications such as The Wire, The New York Times, Le Monde, and BBC Radio. Holland Andrews is currently based in Brooklyn, New York.
keyon gaskin prefers not to contextualize with their credentials.
jess pretty received an MFA in Dance with a minor in Queer Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. she has shown her work at La Mama Experimental Theater Club (2017 La Mama Moves Festival), New York Live Arts (as a 2016/17 Fresh Tracks artist), CATCH!, Gibney Dance Center, Brooklyn Studios for Dance, the CURRENT SESSIONS, panoply performing arts space, Green Street Studios, three ACDA conferences, and the Chocolate Factory Theatre. pretty has been an artist in residence at Kent State (2017), the Chocolate Factory Theatre, and the Center for Performance Research (2019-2020) and was also a 2020 member of the Queer Art Fellowship. pretty has collaborated and been a part of the works of Will Rawls, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Beasley, Okwui Okpokwasili, Peter Born, Catherine Gallasso, David Thomson, Katie Workum, Niall Jones, Jennifer Monson, Cynthia Oliver, Leslie Cuyjet and Dianne McIntyre. pretty recently took over as Director of AUNTS; a punk/DIY performance series that hosts events/festivals/shows to highlight the works of experimental dance makers in NYC.ﾠ
pretty recently relocated to Minneapolis, MN where she is an Assistant Professor of Dance at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities.
Katrina Reid is a dancer, choreographer, and storyteller. She collaborates with a range of artists who explore performance across dance, theater, ritual, music, and film. Select presentations include Queens Museum, ISSUE Project Room, the Knockdown Center, Current Sessions, AUNTS is Dance, the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, and Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX) as 2016-2017 Dancing While Black Fellow with Angela’s Pulse. Learn more at katrina-reid.com.
Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste (b. 1984, Baton Rouge, LA), MFA in Performance and Interactive Media Arts from Brooklyn College.
Select exhibitions include: “I Would Prefer Not To (Stay Cool),” Human Resources Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA (2022), "Set It Off," ICA @ Virginia Commonwealth University and 1708 Gallery, Richmond, VA (2021), "Devo (Listenin' Out The Top Of Ya Head)," Berlin Atonal, Berlin, DE (2021), “Pendulum Music: An Arrangement for Four Performers and Geodisic Dome,” MoMA PS1, Queens, NY (2018); “Club,” Performance Space New York, New York, NY (2018); “Evil Nigger: A Five Part Performance for Julius Eastman,” The Kitchen, Brooklyn, NY (2018); “Study Of ‘Study Of Three Heads’,” Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA (2018); “Evil Nigger Part IV and Evil Nigger Part V,” Issue Project Room, Brooklyn, NY (2017); “Who Needs To Think When Your Feet Just Go+ Never Not Doing,” The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY (2016).
Select awards and residencies include Camargo Foundation Core Program Fellow (2022), Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts Sound Artist-In-Residence (2021), Bessie Award for Outstanding Music Composition and Sound Design (2018); Issue Project Room Artist-in-Residence (2017); Jerome Foundation Airspace Residency at Abrons Arts Center, New York (2019); Rauschenberg Residency 381 (2019). He is also a founding member of the performance collective Wildcat!. Toussaint-Baptiste is currently Visiting Assistant Professor in Technology In Music And Related Arts at Oberlin College & Conservatory.
Kemi Adeyemi Associate Professor of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies and Director of The Black Embodiments Studio at the University of Washington. Her writing and curatorial projects use performance as a site and methodology for theorizing the contours of contemporary black queer life. She wrote Feels Right: Black Queer Women & the Politics of Partying in Chicago (Duke University Press, 2022) and co-edited Queer Nightlife (University of Michigan Press, 2021) with Kareem Khubchandani and Ramón Rivera-Servera. Her most recent writing has appeared in GLQ, Women & Performance, and in the Routledge Handbook of African American Art History.
Alejandro Flores Monge is an artist and international arts administrator based in Querétaro, México. While studying for a BA in Art at Williams College, he performed with various dance ensembles, including Ritmo Latino, Kusika, and CoDa, as well as with Daniel Roberts and the Department of Dance of Ohio State University. His photography, videography, textile, and performance art has been showcased both in student exhibitions and sight-specific, solo showings. His administrative experience began as Artistic Director for the student ensemble, Ritmo Latino, and would lead to him to collaborating on curatorial and production projects alongside the ‘62 Center for Theatre & Dance at Williams College, The Williams College Museum of Art, The Clark, MassMoCA, Jacob’s Pillow, The Foundry, and The Yard.
Rebecca Fitton is from many places and peoples. She cultivates community through movement, food, and conversation. Their work in the dance field as an artist-scholar, producer, and advocate centers on shifting cultural policy, Asian American communities, and disability justice. Fitton serves as the Studio Director for Will Rawls, Co-Director/Director of Operations and Development for Bridge Live Arts, and performs and writes audio descriptions for Adrienne Westwood. She holds a BFA in Dance from Florida State University and an MA in Performance as Public Practice at the University of Texas at Austin.ﾠ
Jimmy Garver has over 17 years of experience creating sound designs and composing music for live performances, films, & art installations. He works primarily with composed sound and the spoken word, often mixing the timbres of acoustic instruments and human voices with synthetic audio to sculpt imagined textures and environments. In addition to this work, Jimmy has also consulted on large, AI-powered, synthetic voice projects for Microsoft Research and Descript. He is one half of The Sending, an electronic music group. His work has been heard at and/or commissioned by Ballet Hispanico/Apollo Theatre, Lincoln Center’s Dance On Camera Festival, the Smithsonian Institute, Microsoft Research, Descript Inc., Pushkin Industries, BAM, PS-122, Joyce SoHo, 92nd St. Y Harkness Dance, Bearnstow, Atlantic Theatre Company, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Signature Theatre (DC), Folger Theatre Company, Studio Theatre Company (DC), A Contemporary Theatre, UMO Ensemble, Chamber Dance Project, Whitman College, Georgetown University, Bowdoin College. Some previous collaborators include Kimberly Bartosik, Diane Coburn Bruning, Shana Cooper, Katie Pearl & Lisa D’Amour, Michael Garces, Derek Goldman, Elizabeth Klob, Peter Kyle, Duncan Macmillan, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, Will Rawls, Mary Stuart Masterson, linn meyers, David Muse, Christopher Petit, Aaron Posner, Kameron Steele, Matthew Torney, Eric Tucker, Yury Urnov.
Maggie Heath is an artist and production designer who has recently relocated to NYC, departing from 15 years in Portland, OR. They received a BFA from Portland State University, focusing on sculpture, though they found a creative home in theaters. Heath is an avid collaborator and makes work that is in search of crudely built tender moments.
Sasha Okshteyn is a creative producer with over ten years of experience in live performance production. Sasha has collaborated and worked with artists and institutions such as Miles Greenberg, Adam Linder, Madeline Hollander, Jacolby Satterwhite, Yvonne Rainer, Pam Tanowitz, Baye & Asa, Stephen Petronio, Gerard & Kelly, David Gordon, Michael Portnoy, Performa, Museum of Modern Art, Pace Gallery, MCA Sydney and Imprint Projects. A native New Yorker, Sasha received her B.A in Art History and Dance from George Washington University, DC, and M.A in Visual Arts Administration from NYU, NY.
SADAKﾠprefers not to contextualize with their credentialsﾠ
Lauryn Siegelﾠ(aka STUDIO SIEGEL. she/they) is an independent mixed-media and lens-based artist, designer, photographer, video director, and educator who has worked collaboratively across an extensive range of media and scales for nearly two decades. Having got their start in media production at Wesleyan University’s radio station WESU Middletown, they have nurtured a focused relationship with music, dance, and performance practitioners for much of this time.
Working fluidly between cultural and commercial realms, they have intentionally evaded categorization throughout much of their career, instead choosing to evolve, grow, fail, change, and learn with every project they engage in.
They are eternally grateful to have worked with long-time friend Will Rawls on this latest piece and would like to extend gratitude to the brilliant cast and crew who helped bring this vision to life over many years, states, and situations.
David Szlasa has designed and toured internationally with artists including Bill “Crutchmaster” Shannon, Boots Riley and the Coup, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Sara Shelton Mann, Rennie Harris, Hope Mohr, and numerous others. His work has been called “so timely as to feel timeless” by the SF Chronicle and has received an Isadora Duncan Award, Future Aesthetics Award, and a Gerbode. Szlasa has taught design at Stanford University, St Mary’s College of Moraga, NYU, and Bard College. Szlasa keeps bees and chickens, tends a small garden and orchard, and lives with his partner and two sons in a 200-year-old farmhouse in Clermont, NY.
SPONSORSHIP
[siccer] was originally commissioned by The Kitchen in partnership with co-commissioners, The Momentary, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, On the Boards, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.ﾠ[siccer] was made possible, in part, by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The MAP Fund, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and is a Creative Capital Project.ﾠ[siccer] is also a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project which is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). For more information:ﾠwww.npnweb.org.ﾠ[siccer] also received substantial developmental support from THINKLARGE.US, a family run nonprofit created by Don Quinn Kelley and Sandra L. Burton to aid in the creation of new work.
[siccer] was developed and supported, in part, by residencies at The Momentary and Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, with additional support by On the Boards and The Kitchen; a creative residency at Petronio Residency Center, a program of the Stephen Petronio Company; with financial, administrative and residency support from Dance in Process at Gibney with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Movement Research; the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at the University of California Los Angeles and The Hammer Museum Residency; the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography at Florida State University; with production support and residency provided by EMPAC / Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Williams College and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.ﾠﾠ