Honey Pot Performance (HPP) fondly returns to Links Hall to present their first-ever double-bill weekend! Featuring a premiere musical collaboration with acclaimed composer Renee Baker, HPP presents their 2015 work-in-progress, Ma(s)king Her-- a dance theater work of speculative fiction. Aligned with AfroSurrealism and black feminist thought, Ma(s)king Her is a moving modern folktale. The work emphasizes the urgency of creating alternative worlds/economies of value for women of color in a world that often subjugates their collective presence to silence and/or invisibility. This coming of age/evolution story centers on four women learning to adapt to environs and circumstances that often mute their experiences and who collide into each other’s worlds in order to survive and flourish.
HPP also welcomes guest choreographer Raissa Simpson and her PUSH Dance Company (San Francisco) to present two new original dance theater pieces during this thrilling double-bill weekend! For their Chicago debut, PUSH presents "Disequilibria" and "Whispering Tenderness". Seen here as a kinesthetic research project, "Disequilibria" questions the role of the media for minorities and marginalized people. Currently a work in progress, the final version of "Disequilibria" will be performed this fall in San Francisco at PUSHfest 2015. Raissa Simpson’s "Whispering Tenderness" (in collaboration with jazz composer Idris Ackamoor) is set in the historical landscape of San Francisco's turbulent '60s and ’70s, and explores the life and work of the legendary local African-American playwright Buriel Clay II (1943-1978). The work includes an original sound score and interviews of Clay's legacy as seen through the empirical stories of Fillmore district residents.
