Generic Specific

A Red Eye Production

by Emily Gastineau

with Valerie Oliveiro, Anna Marie Shogren, and J H Shuǐ Xiān

April 28-30, 2022

Red Eye Theater

What a mess. The smell of dust, burnt plastic, a slight rot. The room is thick with symbols and sentiment. Everything is rubbing up on everything else. I want this, I need this, this exact thing, it’s irreplaceable, oh god, I’m so embarrassed. Ring! Someone is calling on the banana phone. Hello?! Every prop tells you how to pick it up. Wallet, phone, keys, a match. The generic is something so pervasive that we become unable to see it. A concept is cheap. Break the bookshelf, chew on the splinters, spit it out. How will we know whose garbage to take home? You wrote me a love letter but you said it wasn’t personal. I don’t remember getting a script but I keep talking. Dance means it’s stolen. Dance means it’s right now. Recycling means it will be used. Recycling means it will come back around. We want to start over and start over and start over but there is no getting out.  

Generic Specific is a contemporary dance work that examines affective economies through the lens of the generic and the personal. The piece explores how feelings circulate, how value is produced through proximity, and how normativity is constructed through repetition.

generic (noun): something so pervasive that we become unable to see its specificity. Ex: brand (of cola), a tool (a traffic cone), a dance movement (the step-touch), an expression (a smile), or an idea (the good life). The objects and ideas that saturate a culture until they become standard, ostensibly unmarked, even invisible—as we remain implicated, attached, choreographed by them. 

Red Eye's performance space is fully wheelchair-accessible. To request ASL interpretation, audio description, large-print programs, or other accessibility-related accommodations for any event, please contact us at least two weeks prior to the event. staff@redeyetheater.org | 612.870.7531

Note: There is a dog in the performance. Please contact staff@redeyetheater.org with any questions or concerns.

Emily Gastineau

Emily Gastineau is a choreographer, performer, writer, and editor based in Minneapolis. Her current research focuses on the generic: the objects and ideas that are so pervasive we become unable to see their specificity. Recurring themes in her body of work include neoliberalism and endurance, spectatorship and revulsion, desire and language, and how to wade through the mess of existing culture. She is committed to collaboration, collective structures, and reorganizing the structures of making and relating across the field. She created over a dozen works with Billy Mullaney (US/NL) as part of the performance duo Fire Drill, and has also co-authored works with Vilma Pitrinaite (LT/BE) and Samantha Johns (US). Her work has been developed and/or presented by venues such as Frascati (Amsterdam), On the Boards (Seattle), Garage29 (Brussels), workspacebrussels, SE.S.TA (Prague), Panoply Performance Laboratory (Brooklyn), FringeArts (Philadelphia), Walker Art Center, Southern Theater, and Red Eye Theater (Minneapolis), among others. She has worked for Mn Artists, a platform for local artists at the Walker Art Center, since 2014, and is currently the editor of the arts writing publication. From 2017-2019, she was based between Minneapolis and Amsterdam while completing a master's at DAS Choreography, Amsterdam University of the Arts. Since 2019, Emily has served as one of seven artistic directors of Red Eye Theater. www.emilygastineau.com

Valerie Oliveiro

Valerie Oliveiro is a queer transdisciplinary artist and activist in the performance field based in the Twin Cities and born in Singapore. While she currently engages movement as her primary motor for expression, she also presents drawing, writing, photography, video, environmental design and mixed media installation as simultaneously complicit, complexly relational proposals. She has performed in the work of Jennifer Monson, Morgan Thorson, Bouchra Ouizugen, Pramila Vasudevan, Rosy Simas and Emily Gastineau. Her work has been presented at Walker Art Center, Red Eye Theater, Hair+Nails Gallery and Bryant Lake Bowl. Currently, she is one of 7 Co-Artistic Directors at Red Eye Theater, an ensemble member at Lighting Rod (a queer trans collective led performance group), and co-runs a small performance incubator MOVO SPACE. She is also proud to be involved in the work of the MN Artist Coalition.

Anna Marie Shogren

Anna Marie Shogren is a dance artist connected to caregiving, social dance, and touch, researching this work recently as an Art and Health Resident at the Weisman Art Museum, working in collaboration with the UMN School of Nursing, and continuing for an exhibition at the Rochester Art Center in fall of 2022. She makes experiential and dance-based installation for public and visual art spaces. She has presented work largely in Minneapolis, and New York and performed in the work of Goshka Macuga, Emilie Pitoiset, Body Cartography Project, Yanira Castro, Hijack, Morgan Thorson, Karen Sherman, Faye Driscoll, Laurie Van Wieren. She is invested in care work and health justice as a memory care worker, a single mother, hospice CNA, and a fledgling death doula. Her practice is extended as a writer with MNartists, NY Arts Magazine, and artist-run publications.

J H Shuǐ Xiān

J H Shuǐ Xiān is an interdisciplinary choreographer, improviser, and sound artist whose work is interested in engaging with the deconstruction and parody of dominant culture narratives and conventional performance expectations, and standing in allyship to communities going through persecution and discrimination in the days we are living in. She has presented works at venues including Fresh Oysters Performance Research (R.I.P.), Public Functionary, Bryant Lake Bowl, Tek Box, The Southern Theater, Intermedia Arts (R.I.P.), Frey Theatre (Twin Cities, MN) and 9 Herkimer Place (Brooklyn, NY). She has recently enjoyed performing for/collaborating with others including Dua Saleh, Valerie Oliviero, Leila Awadallah, Judith Howard, Rosy Simas, Sophiaaaahjkl;8901, Shayna Allen, Pramila Vasudevan, Megan Mayer, Emily Gastineau, and Erin Drummond. She is a 2017 Q-Stage: New Works and 2019 Momentum: New Dance Works recipient, and currently works with the Lightning Rod Arts Organism as a teaching artist and ensemble member. She is currently working on a piece to be premiered as part of Red Eye’s New Works 4 Weeks festival from May 26th-28th.