Cla Udia Rankine and Will Ra Wls Wha T Remains
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Eyes REMAINS WHAT AND WILL RAWLS RANKINE CLAUDIA Wide Lights Low at MCA Dec 5–9 Wed–Sun, Notes Program Stage W St Hubbard 1747 Warehouse MCA Winter/Spring What Remains running 2018–19 time is 70 minutes with no intermission. SUPPORT FOR THIS REMAINS WHAT AND WILL RAWLS RANKINE CLAUDIA MCA STAGE PROJECT –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– CREATED IN COLLABORATION WITH FROM THE CURATOR The MCA Stage staff gives special thanks for AND PERFORMED BY: their advice and support to Lee Bey; What Remains presents contemporary black Naomi Beckwith, the Leslie Cuyjet MCA’s Manilow Senior Jessica Pretty Curator; John Green; life as constructed by the dominant values Jeffreen Hayes and Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste Regina Martinez of Tara Aisha Willis of our society—its weight and pain, but also Threewalls; Onye Ozuzu; Amina Ross of the Rebuild Foundation; –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– its joy and light. Nikki Springer; and Lauren Williams. PRODUCTION Generous support for What Remains at the Direction and Will Rawls The work is an opportunity to reflect on how Museum of choreography Contemporary Art we exist with and perceive those around us and Chicago is provided by the Nathan Cummings Text Claudia Rankine Foundation, with the how we, in turn, might be perceived. What support and encouragement of Jane Creative consultation John Lucas new information is gleaned with a simple shift Saks. Lead support for the Production design David Szlasa in perspective? Curator and performer Tara 2018–19 season of MCA Stage is provided by Aisha Willis has described the repetitive deep Elizabeth A. Liebman. Costume design Eleanor O’Connell Generous support is lunging in What Remains as an embodied provided by Lois and Sound design Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste Steve Eisen and The moment where such a shift might be possible: Eisen Family Foundation, Ginger Music Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste Farley and Bob Shapiro, is the lunge the result of collapsing under a the Martha Struthers with Will Rawls Farley and Donald C. great burden, or is it the starting place from where Farley Jr. Family Foundation, Susan Producer Live Arts Bard Manning and Doug the performer might take off in a sprint? Doetsch, Ock Ju Noh, Sharon and Lee Oberlander, Maya Polsky and Nicholas Bridon, Carol Prins and The performance asks how we might come to John Hart/The Jessica Fund, and Ellen Stone see ourselves, and each other, more fully as Belic. Additional support for humans. How might we abandon assumptions MCA Stage is provided by Ms. Shawn M. that hinder the communication of our truths? Donnelley and Dr. Christopher M. Kelly, Nicholas and Nancy How can we learn to see, and see differently? Giampietro, Carol Honigberg, Cynthia Hunt and Philip Rudolph, Anne L. Kaplan, Anne and John Situated in a corner of the MCA Warehouse and Kern, and D. Elizabeth Price and Lou Yecies. framed by the backdrop of Chicago’s gleaming Dec 5–9 Wed–Sun, Notes Program The MCA is a proud member of the skyline, Claudia Rankine, Will Rawls, and the cast Museums in the Park and receives major of What Remains do not allow us to forget the support from the Chicago Park District. pain or darkness of their world, but they do share their light—and for that, I am hopeful. Laura Paige Kyber W St Hubbard 1747 Warehouse MCA ABOUT THE MCA WAREHOUSE –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Curatorial Assistant, Performance Many museums, including the MCA, cannot store all of their collection works on-site due to space limitations. The MCA Warehouse is designed in part to house and protect a portion of the more than 2,500 artworks in our permanent collection while The performance was curated by Associate Curator of Performance Tara Aisha they are not on rotating display at the museum. Willis, who has invited Curatorial Assistant Laura Paige Kyber to write this note. SUPPORT FOR THE ARTISTS ABOUT THE WORK RELATED PROGRAMS What Remains was commissioned, ————————————————————————————————————— developed, and “In making What Remains, we are trying to premiered by Live Arts POST-SHOW TALK Bard, the commissioning and residency program imagine the state of being both living and Fri, Dec 7, immediately following the performance of The Richard B. Fisher Center for the already slated for death as a habitable place, Performing Arts at Bard College. What Remains The audience is invited for a conversation with Will Rawls was developed with a vast void or tundra where we use our additional and the performance cast moderated by MCA Manilow commissioning support voices and bodies to call ourselves into existence. from the French Senior Curator Naomi Beckwith. Institute Alliance Française’s (FIAF) It may be the ‘already-dead’ space, but it is Crossing the Line Festival, the American ours, or at least a space where we are already ————————————————————————————————————— Repertory Theater at Harvard University, Yale MCA TALK: CLAUDIA RANKINE WITH WILL RAWLS Repertory Theater, and accustomed to its particular discomforts. Summer Stages Dance Tue, Dec 4 at ICA/Boston. What does it mean for us to welcome an Rehearsal space support was provided by Gibney Dance. What audience into our space?” The MCA’s Learning and Public Programs department hosted Remains was developed in part during a Claudia Rankine in a public symposium with Will Rawls BRIClab Residency at BRIC (Brooklyn, on Tue, Dec 4. The MCA Talks series highlights cutting-edge New York). Tara Aisha Willis, thinking and contemporary art practices across disciplines. “What Remains: Reflections on Blackness, ————————————————————————————————————— Dance, and Curation,” Performa Magazine, GUEST TEACHING AT COLUMBIA COLLEGE CHICAGO October 2018 Tue, Nov 6 Through an ongoing partnership with Dr. John Green, Director of the Graduate Program in Theatre at Columbia College Chicago, Will Rawls participated as a guest lecturer in the Department of European Devised Theater. ————————————————————————————————————— THREEWALLS IN-SESSION What Remains is presented in association with Threewalls In-Session 2019, a series of discussions and performances with Chicago-based artists centered on Claudia Rankine’s book-length poem Citizen, which captures the invisibility and hypervisibility of black Americans. During his November 2018 visit to Chicago, Will Rawls met with several local artists associated with the Threewalls Research and Development Lab Outside the Walls program. ACCESSIBLE PERFORMANCE ————————————————————————————————————— Fri, Dec 7 ASL Interpretation by Veramarie Baldoza and Julikka LeChe Audio Description by Victor Cole ABOUT THE ARTISTS CLAUDIA RANKINE (TEXT) is the 2015 Foundation for Contemporary author of five collections of poetry, Arts Grant. He has held teaching including Citizen: An American Lyric fellowships at Wesleyan University and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely, two and Williams College and continues plays including The Provenance of to lecture widely in university and Beauty: A South Bronx Travelogue, festival contexts. and video collaborations, and is the editor of several anthologies, JOHN LUCAS (CREATIVE including The Racial Imaginary: CONSULTATION) is a documentary Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind. photographer and filmmaker Her recent play The White Card working in the humanist tradition. premiered in February 2018 Lucas has directed and produced (ArtsEmerson/American Repertory several cutting-edge multimedia Theater). Among her many awards projects, including a collaborative and honors, Rankine is the recipient series of video essays with poet of the Bobbitt National Prize for Claudia Rankine entitled Situations. Poetry, the Poets & Writers Jackson In 2014 he completed his first Poetry Prize, and fellowships from feature-length documentary film, the Guggenheim Foundation, the The Cooler Bandits, awarded “Best Lannan Foundation, the MacArthur Documentary” at the 2014 Harlem Foundation, United States Artists, International Film Festival. His work and the National Endowment of has been exhibited in museums and the Arts. She is a chancellor of the galleries including the Brooklyn Academy of American Poets Art Museum, the Cleveland Museum and teaches at Yale University as of Art, REDCAT (Los Angeles), OK the Frederick Iseman Professor Harris Works of Art Gallery (New of Poetry. In 2016, she cofounded York), the Smithsonian Institution The Racial Imaginary Institute. (Washington, DC), the Pulitzer Arts Foundation (St. Louis), La Panadería WILL RAWLS (DIRECTION AND (Mexico City), Aeroplastics CHOREOGRAPHY) is a choreographer, Contemporary (Brussels), and writer, and lifelong performer Fieldgate Gallery (London). based in New York. His practice combines dance with other media DAVID SZLASA (PRODUCTION to investigate the poetics of DESIGN) is a designer and producer blackness, ambiguity, and abstraction. working in performance, dance, video, Rawls has presented his work at The and social practice. Collaborators Chocolate Factory Theater, MoMA include Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Joanna PS1, Performa 15, the Whitney Haigood, Hope Mohr, Sara Shelton Museum of American Art, ImPulsTanz, Mann, Joe Goode, Myra Melford, and the Portland Institute for Boots Riley, Yuri Zhukov, Rennie Contemporary Art. He cocurated the Harris, and Bill Shannon in venues Danspace Project Platform 2016: Lost including the Brooklyn Academy of and Found with Ishmael Houston- Music, the Sydney Opera House, the Jones. Focusing on the Walker Arts Center, the Yerba intergenerational impact of the AIDS Buena Center for the Arts, JazzFest epidemic on dancers, women, and Berlin, and the Harare International