Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born: let slip, hold sway
World premiere of swallow the moon at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Aug. 6-7 2021. Photo by Cherylynn Tsushima, courtesy of Jacob's Pillow.
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Floor 3, Theater
Thursday, February 6 at 1 pm
Friday, February 7 at 4 pm
Saturday, February 8 at 1 pm
Presented as part of Edges of Ailey, Sweat Variant continues ongoing research into the entanglement between ancestors, future generations, and the role of ritual using the aesthetics of experimentation and unexpected collaborations as an homage to Alvin Ailey.
Choreographer: Okwui Okpokwasili, Peter Born
Stage Manager: KeAysia Middlebrooks
Producer: Annabel Heacock, Linsey Bostwick
Project Manager: Kearra Gopee
Okwui Okpokwasili (she/her) is a Brooklyn-based performer, choreographer and writer creating multidisciplinary performance pieces. The child of immigrants from Nigeria, Okpokwasili was born and raised in the Bronx, and the histories of these places and the girls and women who inhabit them feature prominently in much of her work. Her highly experimental productions include Bessie Award-winning pent-up: a revenge dance, Bessie Award-winning Bronx Gothic, and Poor People’s TV Room, when I return who will receive me, Adaku’s revolt, and the participatory performance installation Sitting on a Man’s Head. In 2022, she was the inaugural artist for the Studio Residency program at MoMA. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including a 2018 Princeton University Hodder Fellowship, a 2018 Herb Alpert Award in Dance, a 2018 Doris Duke Artist Award, and a 2018 MacArthur Fellowship.
Peter Born works as a director, composer, and designer of performance and installation, often in collaboration with Okwui Okpokwasili, with whom he has created the installations repose without rest without end in Trondheim, Swallow the Moon at Jacob’s Pillow, on the way, undone at the High Line, and Bronx Gothic, among other projects. Four of Born’s collaborations have garnered New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards. His work as an art director and prop stylist has been featured in video and photo projects with Vogue, Estée Lauder, and Barney’s. He is a former New York public high school teacher, itinerant floral designer, corporate actor-facilitator, video maker, and furniture designer.
This performance is produced by Sweat Variant. Support for Sweat Variant is provided in part by the Mellon Foundation. Commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art as part of Edges of Ailey.