The 18th Annual New Original Works Festival concludes with a program of works by Jobel Medina, Jasmine Orpilla and Amy O’Neal. 

Jobel Medina: David, My Goliath

Combining finesse technique with amateurism and excess with minimalism, choreographer Jobel Medina’s trio queers the REDCAT stage in David, My Goliath, a highly physical and equivocally theatrical dance. Inspired by the melodramatic tendencies of soap operas and the theater, this dance is created as a loud expression of ROMANCE and QUEERNESS within its compacted and underproduced framework. Driven by humor combined with varying dance influences such as Tinikling (Filipino folk dance), hip-hop, and ballet, this work is stamped with each of the artist’s unique relationship to performance.

Jasmine Orpilla: TALGED, Her Body She Cares for, Her Soul/s (She) Guards.

Based on pre-colonial combat systems and Ilokano witchcraft practices of the Philippines, TALGED is a solo, multi-lingual, counter-operatic sound and art installation, composed, written, choreographed, and sung by Jasmine Orpilla. Dedicated in loving memory of Pilipino/x caretakers as well as fellow survivors of violent hate crimes throughout the diaspora, TALGED rebukes the unnecessary emotional and intellectual labor of decoding white supremacy, while rejecting the patterns of desensitization that quietly haunt the Fil-Am body today. 

Amy O’Neal: There is No Other (The Remix)

Through the merging of Black social dance practices from house and hip hop culture, contemporary dance, and experimental performance tropes, There is No Other (The Remix) reimagines and remixes concepts, choreography, and fashion from choreographer Amy O’Neal’s body of work exploring societal constructs of gender. In There is No Other (The Remix), O’Neal asks, are we hardwired to perceive gender from movement alone? When race is intrinsically connected to how we perceive gender, can we be a post-gender society when we are far from being a post-race society?

All three works will be presented each night.