Artistic exchange and creative collaboration abound at Live Arts Exchange (LAX) Festival, a showcase of contemporary work presented by Los Angeles Performance Practice (LAPP) running through November at various downtown Los Angeles venues and cultural institutions. Now in its 10th edition, the festivities and boundary-pushing artmaking continue with works and performances by CalArtians.
Following Anna Luisa Petrisko (Music MFA 14), who kicked off the festival with her latest experimental opera All Time Stop Now at REDCAT last month, is a new work by School of Critical Studies faculty Gabrielle Civil. Learn more about Civil’s work and those of numerous other CalArtians in this year’s program, listed chronologically below.
Black Weirdo School (Pop Up Critique)
Saturday, Oct. 14 | 8 pm
Sunday, Oct. 15 | 2:30 pm
Automata LA
504 Chung King Rd, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Tickets
In need of an art boost “with a jolt of Black feminism”? School of Critical Studies faculty Gabrielle Civil promises a unique creative experience with this weekend’s hybrid event:
Join Gabrielle Civil in Black Weirdo School (Pop Up Critique)! There you will witness, experiment, study, and play with other artists/creatives/weirdos. Make sure to bring a LIVING OBJECT with you—something representing your creative practice, something you are willing to have witnessed and appreciated, something suitable for the classroom! Part workshop, part ritual, part improvisation, this show will activate instant art education and recharge your CREATIVE ENERGY.
Watch Civil discuss Black Weirdo School with LAPP Director of Programs Patricia Garza on YouTube.
Hide & Hide
Friday, Oct. 20 | 8 pm
LA Dance Project
2245 E Washington Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90021
Tickets
Playwright, writer, and performer Roger Q. Mason presents a stirring new work, starring CalArtian actor August Gray Gall (Theater BFA 20) as Billy.
Along the Golden Coast of California, two souls collide while chasing freedom. Set in the last days of disco, Billy, a queer rent-boy, is on-the-run from the Texas police; Constanza, a Filipina immigrant, has a visa that’s about to expire. Together they enter a sham marriage to achieve their own American Dream. Full of sex, harm, and violence, Hide and Hide takes audiences on a Homeric Odyssey that disrupts and rebuilds The American Fantasy.
How lonely sits the city
Saturday, Oct. 21 | 8 pm
LA Dance Project
2245 E Washington Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90021
Tickets
Choreographer and performance artist Marissa Brown (Dance MFA 21) presents an intriguing exploration of the city’s past through her Lone King Projects.
How lonely sits the city is a poetic layering of dance film and live performance that reveals the quiet interior stories of Black identifying dancers who take on angelic-like characters. Personal and historical histories unfold throughout the film works that have been formed publicly in and around historically black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, CA. In this moment, we open vast interior landscapes and embrace the multiplicity of our expression.
Among the work’s collaborators are several of Brown’s fellow CalArtians: Damontae Hack (Dance BFA 20) and Maya Allen (Dance BFA 19) as performers, and Max Harper (Film/Video BFA 23) as cinematographer and lighting technician.
The filming of How lonely sits the city was supported in part by CalArts and Lone King Projects.
Model Killer: Giant Crimes + Tiny Cover-Ups
Saturday, Oct. 21 | 1 pm, 2:30 pm, 4 pm, 5:30 pm
Sunday, Oct. 22 | 3:30 pm, 5 pm, 6:30 pm, 8 pm
Automata LA
504 Chung King Rd, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Tickets
CalArts alum and LAPP Artist + Development Specialist Marsian De Lellis (Theater MFA 09) conjures a half-hour of suspense in this immersive guided tour.
A disgruntled dollhouse maker turned investigator transforms herself into a blood thirsty serial killer in this noir walk-through puppetry experience that uses fragments of dollhouses as staging areas. This 30-minute work-in-progress presentation invites small groups to travel throughout an immersive environment guided by the artist, where they can reconsider women who kill, the historically feminine craft of miniatures, and the sensationalism of crime. By activating the familiar domestic architecture of dollhouses, De Lellis deactivates romantic notions of innocence. Space is limited.
ACCELERATEDDDDDD: Works In Progress
Sunday, Oct. 29 | 6 pm
NAVEL
1611 S. Hope Street Los Angeles 90015
Tickets
Among this showcase of works by four artists are former CalArts faculty Daniel Corral (Music MFA 07) and alum Mireya Lucio (Theater MFA 11).
Featuring: Future Human Support Positions by Chelsea Zeffiro, Untitled Sisters Project by Mireya Lucio, Two of Pentacles by Daniel Corral, and Object Permanence by Daria Kaufman. ACCELERATOR is a program of LAPP which builds a community of independent artists who are actively seeking to resource and develop a current project.
Also in the festival lineup is Intimates, a “virtuosic, multidisciplinary piece” by former Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance faculty Spenser Theberge on Saturday, Oct. 28 at 8 pm at LA Dance Project.
