Buy Tickets
Doors 7pm / Performance 7:30pm
Suggested $10-25 donation NOTAFLOF / free for members
Eva Priečková (SK) + Zuzana Žabková (SK) - Weak Women
Nkechi Deanna Njaka
Emma Quan Dewey + YolkwalliCass
ROT (formerly FRESH Festival) presents an evening of experimental performance curated by Kevin CK Lo.
Eva Priečková (SK) + Zuzana Žabková (SK) - Weak Women:
We start from the assumption that we remain in a problem, and our strength lies in our weakness. What if instead of celebrating a woman's strength, we conjugate her weakness and acknowledge how okay it can be? Can we be emotional, fragile, sentimental, naive, while also being fierce, manic, hysterical, erotic, ecstatic, and vulgar at the same time?
We observe studies that calculate the gender pay gap. We perceive the heavy emotional labor and care that is taken for granted. In addition to all this, we should stand upright and act determinedly, unflinchingly. But we have long been broken, and together we are shaping ourselves into a new form that may not fulfill societal patriarchal norms.
In the collaborative duo "Weak Women," we draw attention to the emancipation of weakness, vulnerability, sensitivity, pain, and the emotional labor of women around us. We also address unpaid female labor, chronic pain and fatigue, and the figure of strong, unyielding representation of women in contemporary society. In the dance piece, we translate these themes into movement qualities through a creative method that we have been exploring together since 2018. Through Intention, Improvisation, and Interpretation, we delve into the exploration of a meticulous movement language, which we shape and choreograph to articulate the aforementioned themes towards the audience through comprehensibility, strong imagery, and imagination.
Two female fossils holding on until the last moment. The moment before exhaustion equals the moment before ecstasy. Since 11.00, we have been grinding to the last. In a state of constant exhaustion, we kneel and bend our limbs into various shapes. Towards our female ancestors, to the gestures, tics, and nervousness that we have memorized from our grandmothers and from the photos of women in the Slovak National Uprising.
Petrified and stiff bodies participate in the dance marathon of the precarious profession of the "independent" artist in Slovakia. We can dance for dignified working conditions, for the right to rest, for the engagement of artistic organizations in global issues. We are broken and wounded, yet we ceaselessly seek playfulness, sensuality, and bliss.
In the dance performance "weak women," we emancipate weakness, fatigue, pain, and exhaustion. We try to view these states as sources that help us shape the work. To embody our idea of a contemporary woman who tries not to pretend and calm the situation. On the contrary, she seeks excitement in moments of distress and exhaustion.
Eva Priečková and Zuzana Žabková are friends, collaborators and artistic mischiefs since 2011. They met in an academic environment where they challenged obedience, control and discipline over bodies and mind. They are curious in various forms of dance explorations and deviations through somatic practices, critical theories, poetry, Eastern European backgrounds, experiential anatomy, consensual touch work and long durational, non hierarchical working methods. Through the support of experimental female musicians from unnoticed artistic peripheries. They like to see and feel dance art and dance practices weaved into a daily network of connection, within communities and world in its horror and ongoing struggle. In their practice, this hard-core reality is in the conversation with human right of pleasure, joy, imagination, awe and softness. Currently based on lived experiences, they are turning their curiosity toward practices connected to collective mourning and death, decay and degeneration. To create a safe net or nest for people to come and feel embraced and welcomed with their embodied sorrow, pain and heaviness to propose connection and regeneration.
Emma Quan Dewey (any pronouns) is a Bay Area-raised dancer, choreographer, and educator putting down roots in Huichiun (Oakland). Emma’s work grounds itself in dance as an imaginative, world-building act / as a ritual to move through the intimate ways identity, power structures, and history play out at the level of the body / as an offering to be in relationship with land, ancestors, and spirits. Right now, Emma's work is most curious about moving with the energetics of the Chinese zodiac and ancestral rage.
YolkwalliCass is a multidimensional artist, designer, and performer raised and based in Irgin, Confederate Villages of Lisjan. Born on the land of the turtle~shaped pot, Tzacuatl Ayotl Michoacán, Mexico, pre-colonially P'urhepecha Nation, their practice focuses on highlighting their interweaving identities and elevating universal truths. Cass is in constant exploration of space, form, and movement in relationship with the human body, the energetic and spiritual bodies, the natural environment, and the built environment. Their work aims to re~Member the Architecture of Spirit ~ mend and re~Design the gaps constructed by a fragmented colonial cosmology.
Nkechi Deanna Njaka (she/her) is a neuroscientist, choreography artist, leading mindfulness expert and meditation guide. She is the founder of The Compass, NDN lifestyle studio and co-founder of the sleep app DreamWell. She was a 2017 YBCA Truth Fellow and a 2021 Kennedy Center Artist in Residence. She is currently Esalen Faculty, an Advisor of Chorus Meditation, and a lululemon ambassador for her work in mindfulness. Nkechi has spent the majority of her life investigating the relationship between the brain and the body and has always felt the significance of their integration. She attended Scripps College in Claremont, CA where she majored in neuroscience and dance and went on to complete an MSc. in Neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh. She is currently a PhD candidate in Creative Research at The TransArt Institute.
Kevin CK Lo is a composer, choreographer, writer and artist living in Oakland. His work utilizes instruments, digital sound processing and generative programming environments to examine spatial and auditory sensitivities, topological structure and audience kinesthetic response while seeking to corrupt conventional compositional/performative/installative rationale. He is currently completing a PhD in Music Composition at UC Berkeley. He also organizes in the arts around the Bay, and teaches at San Jose State University.
ROT is an artist-run, independent festival of experimental dance and performance. Now curated and run collectively, the ROT festival conjures the unparalleled power of the arts as a tool of resistance to subvert and heal from ancestral and ongoing violence. freshfestival.org