Velocity Presents NEXT FEST 2019 – Ritual And Rebellion

Velocity has announced 2019 Next Fest NW, running Dec. 12-15 at Velocity's Founder's Theater. Featuring a bill of brand new works from Pacific Northwest choreographers and dance artists, Next Fest 2019 will feature five new works created in response to this year's theme Ritual and Rebellion. Covering subjects ranging from Brutalist architecture, corporate sponsorship, queer coming of age and Slavic mythology, Next Fest 2019 is the Pacific Northwest's number one destination for discovering the region's next generation of bold, experimental dance innovators. This year's Next Fest artists are: Lucie Baker, Shane Donohue, Marco Farroni, Vladimir Kremenović, and Hannah Rae.

"Throughout its history, Next Fest Northwest has provided a platform for urgent explorations that will seed projects for years to come. This year the curatorial team...[is] inviting selected artists to experiment with us as we move Next Fest toward a system of multi-year peer support, organizational and artistic collaborations, and community sustainability." - Next Fest 2019 Curatorial Panel

For this year's Next Fest, Velocity Artistic Director Erin Johnson worked with the curatorial panel to craft a prompt and application process that could respond more holistically to the needs of today's dance artists. Hoping to go beyond the typical festival model, in which artists get a very limited window to develop and present a project, curators Nia-Amina Minor (Spectrum Dance Theater), Cameo Lethem (James Ray fellow), and Fausto Rivera (Spectrum Dance Theater) were interested in using this year's Next Fest process to explore how curators can cultivate projects and artists beyond the performance dates. The theme Ritual and Rebellion is also a part of that: instead of giving artists a theme that was hyper-specific or topical, the curatorial team wanted to find a theme that could encompass a broad range of practices, so instead of contorting their ideas to fit a theme, artists could come to the panel with authentic questions and ideas that feel urgent for them today.

"These words are about how we relate to the practices and systems we've inherited. They are ways we integrate the past into our present moment, and they are the actions that move us closer to who we want to be." - Next Fest Curatorial Panel

That broader approach to curatorial unity has resulted in a series of new works that are wide-ranging in style and content, but all of which wrestle with the integration of the past into the future, and a reckoning with what it means to belong to a collective or community:

Lucie Baker, who recently finished her MFA at the University of Washington, will be elaborating on a piece originally developed at the UW entitled "Singing Over the Bones." Inspired by her Croatian heritage, Baker and her dancers will respond to and build upon the myths and folk festivals of the Rusalki, figures from Eastern European folklore alleged to be the restless spirits of women who have died unjust or untimely deaths. Inflecting her contemporary choreography with references to Balkan folk dance, Baker brings to Next Fest a space that is as reverent as it is wild, in which audiences are immersed in the chthonic realm of the Rusalki.

Shane Donohue, whom Seattle audiences will no doubt remember for his tambourine reverie in Kim Lusk's 2018 Dance for Dark Horses, once again brings levity, wit, and irreverence to Velocity's stages with "THIS SPACE FOR RENT", a self-described "dance meets NASCAR." Tackling prescient themes of labor and sustainability in the arts, Donohue's cast will perform amidst a shower of advertisements that fall, appear, and pop up in the most unlikely places. Space on sets, costume pieces, and music will be sold to local businesses to fund the artists' minimum wage in what will be an undeniably absurd and ultimately delightful romp of hyperbolized capitalism.

As much as ritual and rebellion touch on themes of the collective, they are also where we confront our own memories and lived experience. Marco Farroni's "(papi)" explores the possibilities of creating spaces that feel nostalgic, spaces that carry past experiences, spaces that asks the body to respond. The work dismantles Farroni's lived experience to reframe meaning, inviting the viewer to participate in creating the space, using sound, physical placement and levels. Using performance practice as a method to understand displacement, adaptation, love, memory and trauma, "(papi)" is a state of being in real time.

As Farroni takes the audience on an exploration of how the past lives in our bodies here and now, Seattle dance artist Hannah Rae is interested squarely in the possibility of the present moment in "Filter Bubble." Inspired by the works and theories of luminaries like feminist performance artist Merle Aldermen Ukeleles, composer and sound artist Pauline Oliveros, and installation artists Olafur Eliasson and David Hockney, Rae will work with an ensemble of dancers to create an improvisational score informed by practices of witnessing and repetition, with the ultimate aim of creating a performance that is less a spectacle to be consumed and more a space for reflection. Playing with time and understated performativity, this durational work seeks a place of contemplation and quiet togetherness, with an eye as much towards watching ourselves as watching the other.

Velocity Bridge Project alum and local filmmaker Vladimir Kremenović will also be looking at the relationship between the individual and the collective, but through the lens of Yugoslav era Brutalist architecture in his piece "Utopia." While growing up in post-socialist Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kremenović was surrounded by buildings that projected cultural values carried over from Yugoslavia's past: an age of conformity, uniformity, apathy, and obedience. Kremenović and his ensemble draw inspiration from the socialist republic's built environment and the oppressive regimes they represented to explore the form and politics of conformity and codification, and the potential for bodies to rebel and resist.

To be presented at Velocity; 1621 12th Ave, Seattle. Tickets: $20 advance ($25 at the door); $17 MVP members; $15 Low-Income; $50 Patron. BUY TICKETS.