NOW 2026
Chica Barbosa, Friidom, Tarren Johnson
World Premiere
- Price
- $25 + $2 Convenience Fee*
- Genres
- Theater, Film, Dance, Music
- DATE
- NOV 19-21
- TIME
- THU-SAT, 8 PM
- STREAM
- SAT, 8 PM (PT)
- RUNTIME
- Approx. 90 minutes, with one intermission
- COUNTRY
- USA
* Discounts available for REDCAT members, students & CalArts faculty and staff
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About
The 23rd annual New Original Works continues with a program of works by Chica Barbosa, Friidom and Tarren Johnson.
BUY A FESTIVAL PASS! SEE ALL 9 WORKS FOR $50!
Chica Barbosa
Marilyn Times
Chica Barbosa’s Marilyn Times revisits the legend of Marilyn Monroe through a Latin American lens to question what might be possible when an icon is liberated. The performance stages a dream-state encounter between three characters: Norma Jeane (the woman), Marilyn Monroe (the myth), and Bia Borinn (the performer). Inspired by Brazilian playwright Sergio Roveri’s play imagining Monroe’s final moments, director and filmmaker Chica Barbosa expands that text in a multidimensional piece layering film projection and solo performance. Created in Marilyn Monroe’s centenary year, Marilyn Times frames Monroe’s life as a site of rupture exceeding the illusions of Hollywood projected onto her.
Friidom
THE TETHER
THE TETHER is a deep dive into the ethos of street dance. The piece stems from a pivotal lesson Friidom’s parents taught him about support: when helping someone, you grab them by the wrist, not just the hand, to hold their full weight. In an increasingly divided world, Friidom (Dance and Choreography MFA 2026) sees the keys to survival in the ways dancers support each other. Bringing together dance forms including Krump, D-Boogie, Poppin, Waving, and Tutting, this dynamic piece explores the connections that tie community together,moving beyond one style, neighborhood, or generation. As live music builds and freestyling dancers gather in a propulsive cypher Friidom asks: how do we tether our ancestors’ wisdom and the needs of future generations to the decisions we make today?
Tarren Johnson
High Earners Not Rich Yet
In this dance theater piece, Tarren Johnson (Dance and Choreography BFA 2013) reflects on the physical and economic tensions of Los Angeles in a portrait of precarity. Collaging fragments of text, voice, movement, recorded piano, and image, High Earners Not Rich Yet references individuals who earn substantial incomes yet accumulate little net wealth despite outward signs of affluence. This duet follows a guard as she repeatedly assumes and relinquishes her post amid discarded tires and debris, tracing her inner monologue of observation and memory. Searching for the divine in disorientation, Johnson considers how care is negotiated and sustained through the rituals and contradictions of everyday life.
Please note: Marilyn Times contains flashing lights, nudity, loud sounds and mature content; THE TETHER contains loud sounds.
NOW 2026: Week Three will be presented as one shared program of all three works on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
about the artists
Chica Barbosa is a Mexican-Brazilian filmmaker based in Los Angeles whose work moves fluidly between narrative, documentary, and experimental forms. Her films explore identity, displacement, spirituality, and postcolonial experience, blending emotional realism with lyricism and symbolic imagery. Her work has screened at festivals including IDFA, Sheffield Doc/Fest, DOK Leipzig, Frameline, Outfest, DOC NYC, LALIFF, Festival Biarritz Amérique Latine, and FICG, and she is an alumna of Berlinale Talents and the Short Form Station with her narrative short The Light in the Moon. Barbosa co-directed the award-winning hybrid short La Flaca (The Bony Lady), which screened at over 100 festivals worldwide, as well as Ferroada and the feature documentary Madrigal for a Living Poet. With Fernanda Pessoa, she co-directed Same/Different/Both/Neither, which premiered at IDFA and was shortlisted for the IDA Awards, and Swing and Sway, a feature documentary that screened internationally and received a theatrical release in Brazil. Barbosa is an alumna of Talents Guadalajara, Points North Fellowship, Arché Doc Lisboa, NALIP’s Accelerator Program, and the Diverse Women in Media Forum Mentorship Program.
Darrel “Friidom” Dunn is a Black Indigenous ambassador for street dance, thespian, director, and movement composer based in Los Angeles. He created his first Epiic movement work in 2016, in an unlikely space at the Movement Lifestyle General Store, and everything since—including his 2026 MFA in Dance and Choreography at CalArts, and collaborations with NASA JPL, Disney, WACO Theater, and the Debbie Allen Dance Academy—has grown out of that room. Shaped by dollar theaters and Saturday morning cartoons, and raised by community, Friidom channels that foundation into Epiic, a movement language fusing Krump, street styles, and Movement Futurism into his movement philosophy: Extraordinary People, Ideas, Imagination and Creativity. He mentors the youth and creates film in front of and behind the camera, and he does not separate that work from the work he is known for. His work collapses the wall between audience and artist, bridging the idea of street and the stars. He holds a BA from UT Dallas and an MFA in Choreography from CalArts. His creed: “Live Frii, Be Epiic.”
Tarren Johnson is an American artist and choreographer from Southern California. Working across choreography, performance, and image-making, Johnson develops projects that explore fragmentation, cultural reproduction, and the peripheries of spectacle. Her practice incorporates systems and poetry to transpose contexts, allowing performance to exist in an incomplete and indeterminate state. Johnson is a graduate of the California Institute of the Arts (Dance and Choreography BFA 13). Since 2016, she has maintained an ongoing artistic collaboration with artist Joel Cocks. Their collaborative projects have been presented at institutions and festivals including New Theater Hollywood, Volksbühne, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Les Urbaines, Sophiensæle, Festspielhaus Hellerau, Systema, Julia Stoschek Foundation, Cabaret Voltaire, and the public programme of Paris Internationale. Johnson has also performed at venues and festivals such as Festival d’Avignon, Festival d’Automne à Paris, Faurschou New York, Romaeuropa, Manifesta 11, and Art Basel. Johnson and Cocks were laureates of La Becque’s 2021 residency program and an artist-in-residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris in 2024.
Photo: Eduardo Muniz; Aaron Pettigrew; courtesy of Tarren Johnson & JP Cocks.
