photo by Ian Douglas
photo by Ian Douglas
photo by Ian Douglas
photo by Ian Douglas
photo by Ian Douglas
Bronx Gothic
2014
Bronx Gothic is a fictive autobiographical invocation of the minds and bodies of two 6th-grade girls on the verge of adolescence in the mid-1980s. Drawing inspiration from Victorian-era novels and West African griot storytellers, Okpokwasili gives vivid physical force to the girls’ charged relationship, revealed with unflinching honesty through their sex-saturated hand-passed notes. As memories surge with a potency that threatens to break the body, Bronx Gothic conjures a darkly powerful tale of sexual discovery and intimate entwinings in the outer boroughs of New York City. Through a combination of movement, songs and written correspondence, Bronx Gothic deals with the universal experience of a body in transformation. How do any of us contend with the multiple conditions that are always present in one body?
Bronx Gothic plays out in the rough terrain of memory.
It is not an autobiography. But it is my story.
It is an homage and a cry.
– Okwui Okpokwasili
And when we speak we are afraid
Our words will not be heard
Nor welcomed
But when we are silent we are still afraid
So it is better to speak
Remembering
We were never meant to survive
– Litany for Survival, Audre Lorde
2014–2019
written and performed by Okwui Okpokwasili
directed, with scenic and lighting design by Peter Born
original songs by Okwui Okpokwasili
with music by Peter Born and okwui Okpokwasili
special thanks to Veronica Okeke
sound design consultant Philip White
Bronx Gothic was co-commissioned by Performance Space 122, Danspace Project, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and a 50th Anniversary Grant from the Jerome Foundation. Residency support was provided by Under Construction at the Park Avenue Armory; New York Live Arts; Baryshnikov Arts Center; and LMCC’s Extended Life Dance Development program. Additional commissioning support was provided by Le Mallion in Strasbourg; Théâtre de Gennevilliers in Paris; Theatre Garonne in Toulouse; and Zagrebačko Kazalište Mladih (ZKM), the Zagreb Youth Theatre in Zagreb, Croatia. An early iteration was shown in the Platform Series: Parallels 2012 curated by Ishmael Houston-Jones at Danspace Project. The full version of Bronx Gothic premiered at PS 122's 2014 COIL Festival, where it enjoyed a sold-out two week run. The piece was later presented by ShowBox in Los Angeles; it also toured to Zagreb, Croatia, and throughout France. Another iteration, Bronx Gothic: the oval, was a featured installation and performance at the 2014 River-to-River Festival in New York.
The 2015-16 tour of Bronx Gothic was produced by MAPP International Productions. Bronx Gothic is a recipient of the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project Touring Award, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts.
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Danspace Project, part of PS122’s COIL Festival, January-February, 2014
ShowBox LA, July 17-19, 2014
Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, part of On the Boards, September 11-13, 2015
Arts House, Melbourne Festival, Melbourne, October 8-12, 2015
OnEdge Festival, Chicago, February 19-20, 2016
Ferst Center for the Arts, Georgia Tech, February 25-26, 2016
Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, March 2-4, 2016
FringeArts, Philadelphia, March 11-12, 2016
Keteltheater, Festival de Keuze, Rotterdam, March 18-19, 2016
Théâtre Garonne, Toulouse, March 28-29, 2016
T2G Théâtre de Genevilliers, Paris, April 3-5, 2016
Le Maillon, Strasbourg, April 10-11, 2016
American Theater Festival, Zagreb, April 15-16, 2016
The Young Vic, June 1-29, 2019