Moved by the Motion (Wu Tsang & boychild, Patrick Belaga, Josh Johnson, Asma Maroof)

Sudden Rise

Part of the festival “The Present Is Not Enough – Performing Queer Histories and Futures”

Performance
Dance

English / 45 Min.

“Sudden Rise” is the latest piece of work from Moved by the Motion, the performance group founded by Wu Tsang and boychild. The performance is co-created with their collaborators, cellist Patrick Belaga, dancer Josh Johnson, electronic musician Asma Maroof, and poet Fred Moten. Drawn from a collection of fragments excerpted from the text “Sudden Rise at a Given Tune” written with Moten, the cross-boundary performance interweaves the words and actions of pivotal 20th century civil rights activists, poets, essayists, including Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, and W.E.B. Du Bois alongside Jimi Hendrix’s lyrics, Hannah Arendt’s musings, and Oskar Becker’s “mantic” phenomenology. A collage of words, filmic images, movements, and sounds, the performance is set as an exquisite corpse (the Surrealist chance-based game of consequences), which references 18th century "phantasmagoria" theater using proto-projections and scrims to echo stories of trauma and resistance across, through, and out of time. boychild and Johnson perform a duet in multiplication live and as pre-recorded images, reimagining the early days of cinema when projections shared the stage with theatrical performers. Belaga’s cello and piano intertwines with the electronic repetition of looped voices manipulated by Maroof, and the chiaroscuro lighting of baroque portraiture is diffused against digital architectures, spatial grids, and test patterns that continually re-form time and perspective on stage.

Cast

Direction & Performance: Wu Tsang / Co-direction & Performance: Tosh Basco / Performance: Josh Johnson / Cello: Patrick Belago / Electronics: Asma Maroof / Lightning: Elena Samoray / Video: Anthony Valdez

Dates

Past

German premiere
Fri 28.6.2019, 20:30 / HAU1
Sat 29.6.2019, 20:30 / HAU1

Credits

A commission by EMPAC / Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (USA).

Location

HAU1

Stresemannstr. 29, 10963 Berlin

There are two marked parking spots in front of the building. Access to the Parkett by means of a separate entrance with lift when necessary. Barrier-free restroom facilities are available. Tickets for wheelchair users and accompanying persons can be booked via the ticketing system. If you need any help, please contact our Ticketing & Service team at +49 (0)30 259004-27 or send us an email at
tickets@hebbel-am-ufer.de.

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