WELCOME

Thank you for joining us for this annual performance gathering—the third iteration taking place in this space, located on unceded Dakota land in Mni Sota Makoce. Red Eye holds this space as a community resource that we steward with care, intention, and reciprocity. As a collective of working artists ourselves, each year we have the gift of accompanying twin cohorts of performance makers through their artistic process. As creation developed this year, our urgent attention has been drawn to the ongoing genocide in Palestine, our society’s complicity, and the practice of resistance. Many of the artists in this year’s festival brought forward proposals around futurisms, drawing on multiple contexts and lineages. We invite you, the audience, into this generosity—to imagine our shared futures moving towards transformation and liberation. 

The work that you are experiencing tonight grows out of Isolated Acts, a program that has been nurturing the Twin Cities performance-making community since the early 90s. Isolated Acts annually invites early and mid-career artists to come together for six months of deep artistic inquiry and critical dialogue as they develop and premiere a full new performance work. Artists are curated by Red Eye’s Artistic Directors; each year, we look for artists who are pursuing projects that reflect our core tenets of collaboration, experimentation, and critical discourse (expansively defined) and, collectively, embody a balance of varied artistic disciplines and practices, personal identities, and lived experiences. Throughout the winter and spring, artists are encouraged to take risks in a supportive environment; they develop their work in the same space where it is ultimately shared with audiences; and they have access to Red Eye’s equipment, as well as technical support, marketing support, and modest stipend. We are thrilled to share the fruits of this labor with you tonight, and invite you to share your thoughts with the artists after the performance.

We hope to see you at a future performance! Thank you for bringing your presence, attention, and reflection to this place, and to the work of the incredible artists in this year’s festival. 

Valerie, Rachel, and Emily
Red Eye Co-Artistic Directors

O.S.A.G.D. (Of Starlight And Great Distances)

Movement Coach: Pramila Vasudevan

O.S.A.G.D. is a part of my Afrofuturistic BlaqSonic Universe series, and is a time traveling journey of healing from generational trauma passed down between Black men, learning to accept the gifts from ancestors and using them to transcend that trauma and earthly barriers to become the best version of one's self. Observe the alchemy. Previous versions of O.S.A.G.D. were made possible via the ACF|create Award funded by the Jerome Foundation.

Dameun Strange is a sound artist, multi-instrumentalist, and award-winning composer of conceptual electronic and improvised electro-acoustic works focusing on the African diaspora's stories and themes, often exploring surrealist and afro-futurist ideas. Dameun aims to express through sound and poetry, the beauty and resilience of the Black experience, digging into a pantheon of ancestors to tell stories of triumph while connecting the past, present, and future. Dameun has composed music with such artists as Leslie Parker, Ananya Chatterjea, Joanna Lees, Pramila Vasudevan and has been a featured performer in concerts celebrating the work of George Lewis, Thurston Moore, and Henry Threadgill. He is a 2018 recipient of the ACF | Create Award and 2019 Jerome Hill Fellowship. Most recently, his work was commissioned by BMI Foundation for renowned flutist Adam Sadberry, _not running. (The Life of L. Alex Wilson) for flute and electronics was premiered at Merkin Hall, Kaufman Music Center in March 2023. Dameun lives in Saint Paul, MN with his wife, Corina, and their daughter, Ezra. Like any good nerd, he enjoys a good sci-fi story and has a soft spot for anything related to cosmology.

Marcela Michelle

MILFFEEDSBABYDEER100%Real

Performed by Pedra Pepa, Emily Gastineau, and Marcela Michelle

Developed in ensemble with additional research support from Mads Granlund

Stage Manager: Winona Honey

Sound Design and Original Music: Brandon Anderson Musser

Set and Costume Design: Marcela Michelle

Custom Prints: Natasha Malmberg

From the choreographer:

MILFFEEDSBABYDEER100%Real is a choreographic dreamscape situated somewhere between the wet dream and the anxiety nightmare. Part live sculpture making, part kink show, the work is an experiment in Divisionist techniques, drawing inspiration from pointillist works, dream logic, and my own transdisciplinary background and metamodernist aesthetics. I am incredibly proud of the team of artists who have come together to present this expansive, maximalist work, and I thank you for joining us for an evening of embodied risk-taking performance that also lives in the present fever dream we all inhabit together. 

Marcela Michelle is a community-engaged transdisciplinary artist, educator, facilitator, and producer living and working on Mni Sota Makoce. She is a 2023-2025 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow in the inaugural Combined Artistic Fields, a 2020-2022 Hennepin Theatre Trust Teaching Artist in Residence, a 2019 Mentee of the National Institute for Directing and Ensemble Creation, and a member of Actor’s Equity. She is currently the Resident Dramaturg for Doma Dance Theater and a Beverage Co-Director with Mamasan Bartending Collective. She has held residencies at Rosy Simas Dance 331 Studio, Pancake House, and, with Mamasan, Walker Art Center. Her original work has been presented by WAC (Choreographer’s Evening), Red Eye Theater (NW4W), Guthrie Theater’s Dowling Studio, Northern Spark, Right Here Showcase, The Minneapolis Burlesque Festival, Patrick’s Cabaret, Queertopia, Wanderlust Productions, and 20% Theatre Company, where she worked in many capacities from 2015 to 2021, ultimately serving as Artistic Director in its final years. She enjoys cooking, reading, video essays, and long periods of rest with her Wife and Dogter.

Emily Gastineau is a choreographer, writer, performer, and editor based on Minneapolis. Key concerns (or deep patterns) in her body of work include objects, desire, value, citation, spectatorship, collectivity, and the generic. She engages with language within her choreographic practice as well as through arts writing and publishing. Former projects and affiliations include: Fire Drill, Criticism Exchange, Fresh Oysters Performance Research, DAS Choreography (Amsterdam University of the Arts), and Mn Artists (Walker Art Center). Emily is a Co-Artistic Director of Red Eye. www.emilygastineau.com

Brandon Anderson Musser is a son of a saxophonist truck driver and a union head nurse, born 1989 near present day Pittsburgh, PA. He is primarily working with music and sound for dance and theater.  He prioritizes projects that possess self awareness, tenderness, humanity, and that strive for reformation. He is the Producing Artistic and Music Director of Doma Dance Theater. Notable credits reflect service as artistic associate to Alexandra Bodnarchuk Dance Projects, company composer and sound designer to the Taja Will Ensemble, and creative technical work for Hatch Dance. Most recently he is collaborating with Marcela Michelle. Occasionally he creates solo work.

Citations:

All original text written by Marcela Michelle

Additional Text:

Carson, Anne - Eros, the Bittersweet

Nathan, Patrick - Image Control

Edited by Lang, Silvio - Territorios

Hamrah, A.S. - The Earth Dies Streaming

Elliot, T.S. - Murder in the Cathedral

Edited by Joseph, Melanie and Bruin, David - A Moment on the Clock of the World

Anzaldua, Gloria - Borderlands

Queen, Hadijah - I'm So Fine

Carson, Anne - Hekabe, from Grief Lessons

Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix - Anti-Oedipus

Nosrat, Samin - Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat

Hooks, Bell - All About Love

Sondheim, Stephen - Look, I Made a Hat

Miller, Arthur - After the Fall

Corelle, Lyn and cooper, jimmy - Make the Golf Course a Public Sex Forest!

Comitta, Tom - A Life of Brunch

Eyen, Tom - Dreamgirls

All original music composed by Brandon Anderson Musser

Additional Music:

Susumu Yokota - “Sleepy Eye”

Tina and Ike Turner - “Whole Lotta Love”

D'angelo - “How Does it Feel”

Claude Debussy - “Claire de Lune”

Additional acknowledgement is owed to Sondheim's Sunday in the Park With George, David Tudor's work for Cunningham's Rainforest, Valerie Oliveiro’s VASTNESSESS, Sun Yuan and Peng Yu's Can't Help Myself, Pierre Huyghe's Human (the Ibizan with a pink leg), and Nicole Pivirotto’s Prism Oracle Deck.

Thank you:

Shoutout to MOVO SPACE, the Jerome Foundation, Doma Dance Theater, the Red Eye ADs, Jeffrey Wells, The IA Cohort, Keila Anali Saucedo, Brie Morris, snem DeSellier, Anka Michelle, Milani-Lynn Michelle, and all the MILFS and Baby Deer who I have crossed paths with. 

Thank you always to Liv Hnilicka, the original MILF who fed me when I myself was a Baby Deer.