Performance
A Red Eye Production by Emily Gastineau with Valerie Oliveiro, Anna Marie Shogren, and J H Shuǐ Xiān
Generic Specific
Dates
Fri, Apr 29, 2022, 1:00 am
Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 1:00 am
Sun, May 01, 2022, 1:00 am
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.
Accessibility
Covid Policy
Red Eye requires either proof of COVID-19 vaccination OR documentation of a negative PCR or proctored Rapid Antigen test taken within 72 hours of the event for all audience members who enter the space.
Attendees may present a physical vaccination record card, printout of test results with name and date clearly visible, or a digital document on a mobile device (such as a photo image of a vaccination record card or digital test results.) Documents must match the ticket holder’s ID. Note: showing your rapid test cartridge or picture of cartridge will not qualify as proof.
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.
COVID Policy
For faster screening, ticket holders are encouraged to send digital vaccine or negative test proof to covidsafety@redeyetheater.org in advance of attending an event.
High-quality masks are required to be worn by audience at all times.
All artists participating in Red Eye programs are required to be vaccinated and boosted as eligible.
If you have questions about this policy, or concerns related to accessibility, please contact the Red Eye Artistic Directors with as much advance notice as possible at staff@redeyetheater.org.
Please note that this policy is subject to change.
About the Artists
Emily Gastineau (she/her))
Emily Gastineau is a choreographer, performer, writer, and editor based in Minneapolis. Recurring concerns in her body of work include objects, desire, value, citation, spectatorship, collectivity, and the generic. Her work has been supported, developed, or presented at Frascati (Amsterdam), On the Boards (Seattle), workspacebrussels, Garage29 (Brussels), The Luminary (St. Louis), SE.S.TA (Prague), Studio 303 (Montreal), Walker Art Center, Red Eye Theater, Soap Factory, Southern Theater, Weisman Art Museum (Minneapolis), Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, and Minnesota State Arts Board, among others. She created over a dozen collaborative works with Billy Mullaney (US/NL) as part of the performance duo Fire Drill, and curated events at former studio space Fresh Oysters Performance Research. Emily engages with language within her choreographic practice as well as through arts writing and publishing: she co-founded the platform Criticism Exchange, and her writing on performance has been published at Mn Artists, MARCH.international, Temporary Art Review, Culturebot, and elsewhere. She worked with Mn Artists at the Walker Art Center for a decade, where she was most recently the editor of the interdisciplinary arts writing publication. She studied at DAS Choreography, Amsterdam University of the Arts.
Valerie Oliveiro ((she/he/they)))
Valerie Oliveiro (she/he/they) is a queer artist and activist in performance based in Mni Sota Makoce and born in Singapore. They are first a choreographer and performance maker. Their choreographic work surfaces inquiry through specific, cross-focal, multi-racial and densely relational perspectives, through the lens of SE Asian sensibilities. They also move between worlds of visual art, lighting design, writing, and technical direction. They have designed and performed in the work of Jennifer Monson, Morgan Thorson, Pramila Vasudevan, Rosy Simas, Chitra Vairavan, and Emily Gastineau, among others. Their most memorable performance experiences were at BASE (Seattle, WA), Danspace (New York, NY), New York Live Arts (New York, NY), Portland Art Museum (Portland) and Maui Arts and Cultural Center (Maui, HI). Their own choreographic work has been presented at Walker Art Center, Red Eye Theater, Hair+Nails Gallery and Bryant Lake Bowl and Cowles Center and they have been supported by The Waterers, Racing Magpie, Minnesota State Arts Board, MRAC, and the Jerome Foundation. They are a Co-Artistic Director at Red Eye Theater, core ensemble member at Lighting Rod (a queer trans led performance group), and co-run a performance incubator MOVO SPACE for QTBIPOC dance artists. A 2023-2025 Jerome Fellow for Choreography, they also currently design the work of Meg Foley, dance in the work of Rosy Simas, and cultivate a long term multi-modality creative relationship with Jennifer Monson.
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
Judith H Shuǐ Xiān is a choreographer, improviser, and sound artist based in Minneapolis. She is a 2017/2022 Q-Stage: New Works and 2019 Momentum: New Dance Works recipient and was part of the 2022 Red Eye Works-In-Progress cohort. She is currently focused on researching ritual & meditation through experimental performance.
Photo: Elise Radspinner