Choreographer, dancer and U of I Professor and Vice-Chancellor Cynthia Oliver‘s performance BOOM! will be available to stream June 11th through 18th. Additional information is available on the CoCo Dance Theater Facebook page.
A recording of a 2014 performance, done with Leslie Cuyjet, will be available starting June 11th at 6:30 p.m. through New York Live Arts. Stream the video here. The performance is described by NYLA as:
Choreography and text by Cynthia Oliver in collaboration with Leslie Cuyjet. In BOOM!, both performers are individuals, friends, strangers, family, younger/older versions of themselves, negotiating relations that are persistently in flux. BOOM! began as a short (17 minute) duet featured in Ishmael Houston-Jones Parallels in Black Platform Series at Danspace at St. Mark’s Church (2012). The duet was again featured a year later at New York Live Arts (2013), and was subsequently commissioned to be extended and presented in the 2014 New York Live Arts season in its evening-length entirety. BOOM! examines the conditions of the two performing black women, when LIFE happens, when “fairness” and cause and effect do not necessarily align. The evening length BOOM! builds upon Oliver’s signature investigation of slippages in everyday life where truest selves and real life conditions are revealed, where characters betray artifice and persist in the relentless continuous management of multiple social experiences.
Music by Jason Finkelman, Lighting by Amanda Ringger, Costumes by Susan Becker.
The performance also features the work of longtime collaborators Jason Finkelman and Susan Becker. Finkelman is a muscian and the Coordinator of the Robert E. Brown Center for World Music at the University of Illinois, and Becker is a designer, artist, and Clinical Assistant Professor in the School of Art + Design at the University of Illinois.
Top image from the CoCo Dance Theater Facebook page.