Lelis K. Brito

A Binding Strangeness

Direction and choreography: Lelis K. Brito

Dancers: Genevieve Draškocí, Masanari Kawahara, Arwen Wilder

A Binding Strangeness is an intimate physical theater work that combines a vocal soundscape, dancers, and an otherworldly installation to bring us together—in person—to meditate on the ties that bind us. We are all connected to each other in visible and invisible ways—through time, by circumstance, friction, through neural pathways laid down in a time without memory, through genetics, through powerful chance and slippery serendipity. We are entangled with forces far away yet close in their reactions. We swim in this sea of the incomprehensible, this binding strangeness.

Lelis K. Brito is a Venezuelan-American theater director, choreographer, educator, performer, writer and director of the Center for Moving Cultures. As director of CMC, Brito advocates for tactile/kinaesthetic knowledge in education and cultural transmission. As an artist, Brito has performed with local and national companies and has created over 80 original works, varying from six-minute dance solos to one-hour plays and three-hour long movement-theatre works. The core of Brito’s work is the human body’s potential and activation—the work of clarifying choice-making through the knowledge gained within the direct experience of a moving sensing body. Of particular interest are the themes of relationality with all beings; recognizing how we physically code-switch; the politics of resting and nesting; how to be inclusive of a wide range of cultural bodies; and how to include our whole moving bodies in life, work, and education. www.lelisbrito.com

How Fun by Ricardo Beaird will not be performed this weekend due to COVID, and to prioritize the health and well-being of artists, staff, and audience. Ticket holders may request a full or partial refund, but we encourage you to still come out to see A Binding Strangeness by Lelis K. Brito! It's one new work instead of two this week, but contemporary performance forever!

Ricardo Beaird

HOW FUN

Written, directed, and developed by Ricardo Beaird, Megan Burns, Daisuke Kawachi, and Connor Lane

When’s the last time you had fun? Gabriel can’t remember. Set adrift after loss, Gabriel seeks out an online therapist to help him remember what it feels like to have fun. Using unusual methods ranging from telepathy to balancing LaCroix cans, the two hunt for the elusive nature of fun like their worlds depend on it. Neurosurgery by way of TikTok, How Fun asks what it costs to have a good time.

Ricardo Beaird is a Twin Cities-based theater maker originally from Nashville, Tennessee. In addition to performing with Pangea World Theater, Park Square Theatre, Red Eye Theater, and Ten Thousand Things Theater, Beaird is an advisory council member with the queer-led theater collective Lightning Rod and an artist council member for the 2021 Northern Spark arts festival. As a playwright and director, their work includes DOOMSCROLL with MK and Tia!, a play that follows two podcasts hosts as they fall down a rabbit hole of conspiracies involving 5G paranoia, presented at the Guthrie Theatre’s Blackness Is Festival; SPOOK, a devised ritual exploring the gifts and curses of Black ancestry created in partnership with Suzanne Cross and Umbrella Collective; and COUNTDOWN!, a dance party at the end of the world that explores weaponized nostalgia, created with Megan Burns through the Red Eye Theater’s New Works 4 Weeks Festival. Currently, Ricardo is the Community Development Director at Springboard for the Arts, whose mission is to support artists with the tools to make a living and a life and to steward just, equitable communities.