A Time For Action: Curated by Rivkah French
Sunday, May 30, 2021
6:00pm—8:00pm CT
FREE and open to the public
Location
Blaffer Art Museum
Visitor Information
Occupant capacity is limited: Reserve your FREE tickets
Please submit a required COVID-19 Screening
A Time for Action is necessary and now, confronting urgent political circumstances with an expansive performative language. An experimental inter-disciplinary micro-festival running for six nights at the Blaffer Museum, A Time For Action is sponsored by the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts.
The series of performances curated by Rivkah French features Marco Oliver, Shylah Salas, David Howard, Michelle Reyes, Kayla Mason, Matty Zarate, and eric anthamatten-dominguez.
About the Performers:
Rivkah French is an award-winning queer dance choreographer and community leader based in Houston, Texas. French embodies freedom in movement by breaking dance, gender and societal norms–merging multiple dance styles, powerful themes, and innovative technologies. Rivkah engages audiences and participants in a journey of transformational discovery and expression through both performance and social practice events.
Throughout their twenty-five year career, French has created over 30 full-length dance and multimedia performances, founded and directed the non-profit dance theatre FrenetiCore, built and managed the organization’s black box theatrical venue, founded and produced the Houston Fringe Festival, and taught movement arts to at-risk children and adults, as well as homeless and incarcerated teens.
Rivkah is currently focused on developing both spaces and experiences that foster healing and empowerment through self-expression for the LGBTQ+ community; expanding the field of Queer Dance Theory, and creating new movement techniques that fuse global dance styles with contemporary Western dance. French’s career exemplifies their endless belief in the power of art on individuals and society at large.
Matty Zarate (Belial): Belial is the stage name of multidisciplinary artist/musician Matty Zarate. Their works explore themes of autonomy, spirituality, ritual and technology, and how the marriage of the cybernetic and organic worlds have have shaped the performance of modern transgender identity.
Urethra Burns (David Howard): Urethra Burns is a multi disciplinary non-binary drag artist based in Houston, Tx. Urethra is constantly looking for boundaries to push within the nightclub and gallery scene, they are also a Resident artist at Box 13 artspace.
Shylah Salas (GeMnEye): ShyLah, a native from the beautiful island of Guam, showcases her versatility of performance art including dance, theatre/film, Butoh, BDSM, and other wild forms of movement meditation. ShyLah is also connected to the “Aliendrogynous” aesthetic couple known as “GeMnEye”.
Marco Oliver (GeMnEye): Marco Oliver is a visual dance artist with over fourteen years of teaching Dance. His styles are versatile from latin, hip hop, dance fitness, flashmobs, worship, and freestyle. He is a healing arts mentor for children at MECA Multicultural Education Counselling through the Arts.
Kayla Mason: Kayla Mason, Houston native and graduated from the University of Texas has always found joy on the stage. From acting, dancing to Aerials… the act of storytelling is what she loves most.
Michelle Reyes: Michelle Reyes is a modern/contemporary dancer and choreographer who graduated from the University of Houston with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in dance. She has presented original works in several shows including Emerging Choreographers Showcase, UH Goes to the MATCH, American College Dance Association South-Central Conference, Mind The Gap, and at the National University of Costa Rica’s Festival de Danza. Reyes is currently a member of 6 Degrees Dance under the direction of Toni Valle.
eric anthamatten-dominguez (Morse Covid music/video) is a New York based performance artist originally from Houston, where he began his performance career at the first annual Texas Performance Explosion. HIs most recent work includes performing alongside Pope.L at MoMA in a piece titled “Dressing Up for Civil Rights.”