NOW 2025: Week Two

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The 22nd annual New Original Works continues with a program of works by Gabriela Burdsall; Orin Calcagne and Jenson Titus; and Divya Victor, Carolyn Chen, AMOC*.

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Gabriela Burdsall
MENEO
Gabriela Burdsall presents the body as a fluid canvas for identity, resistance, and celebration in this solo dance performance. The artist takes up el meneo, a movement rooted in Caribbean social dances, in conversation with la clave, the core syncopated rhythm of Cuban music, in a dynamic interplay between rhythm, body, and cultural heritage. MENEO presents dance as a fleeting monument that questions power and its political symbols. As Burdsall’s body meanders and sways, she moves between trance-like states of ecstasy and introspection. Her raw physical presence becomes a vessel for primal energy, as the pulse viscerally binds her to history.

Orin Calcagne and Jenson Titus
Mommy
Mommy is a comedy-horror play about a family plagued by their mother’s mental illness. When Daddy announces that he will be moving his homosexual lover into the family home, an already unstable Mommy is pushed past her limit and descends into emotional chaos, dragging the rest of her family down with her. In this surreal family farce, the artists utilize their clowning backgrounds to bring humor to painful circumstances. A live foley soundscape and musical score composed and performed by Cleo Henman bring further texture to this absurd melodrama. Mommy ultimately uses comedy to dissect relationship dynamics and traditional norms in an exploration of what makes society sick.

Divya Victor, Carolyn Chen, AMOC*
Thresholds
In Thresholds, composer Carolyn Chen presents a musical adaptation of poems from Divya Victor’s books KITH and CURB, which explore immigrant experiences of everyday life amidst racist violence in the United States. Reading selections live, Victor traces an arc of arrival, assimilation, and loss as immigrants move through the paperwork of visas and citizenship, mythic underpinnings of air travel, diasporic memories of homeland, and white-supremacist violence against South Asians. The music responds to the expressivity of Victor’s text with notated compositions and improvised materials developed for an ensemble integrating Western and Carnatic music assembled by American Modern Opera Company (AMOC*).

NOW 2025: Week Two will be presented as one shared program of all three works on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

Please note: Mommy contains mature content, loud sounds, gunshot sounds, and mentions of suicide and self-harm.