American Realness

Ligia Lewis

minor matter

Friday June 9, 9:30pm
Saturday June 10, 9:30pm  

Run Time: 65 minutes

Hollins University, Theater 
Roanoke, Virginia 

The second in a trilogy of choreographed works, minor matter draws upon visual and conceptual metaphors of and relating to blackness. Continuing Lewis’s ongoing engagement with affect and embodiment while interrogating the social inscriptions of the body, minor matter poses questions about the black body within the frame of the black box. Built on the logic of interdependence, the theater’s parts—light, sound, image, and architecture—become entangled with the three dancers, giving life to a vibrant social and poetic space. In this work, Lewis turns to the color red to materialize thoughts between love and rage.

minor matter is a production by Ligia Lewis in coproduction with HAU Hebbel am Ufer. Funded by the Governing Mayor of Berlin – Senate Chancellery – Cultural Affairs and Fonds Darstellende Künste e.V. Performances of minor matter for American Realness 2017 are made possible with support the Senate Department for Cultural and Europe and Lumberyard, formerly American Dance Institut/ADI.
Photo by Dorothea Tuch

Concept & Choreography: Ligia Lewis
Performers: Jonathan Gonzalez, Ligia Lewis, Tiran Willemse
Musical Dramaturgy: Michal Libera Styling: Alona Rodeh Lights: Andreas Harder
Dramaturgy: Ariel Efraim Ashbel Assistance: Martha Glenn
Production & Distribution: Nicole Schuchardt / HAU Hebbel am Ufer

minor matter is a production by Ligia Lewis in co-production with HAU Hebbel am Ufer. Funded by the Governing Mayor of Berlin – Senate Chancellery – Cultural Affairs and Fonds Darstellende Künste e.V. Additional support provided by residencies at FD-13, PACT Zollverein, 8:tension/Life Long Burning and collective address.

Ligia Lewis is a dancer and choreographer. She creates affective choreographies while interrogating the metaphors and social inscriptions of the body. Lewis’s work continues to provoke the nuances of embodiment. Her work has been shown at various venues and festivals, such as Abrons Arts Center/American Realness (New York), Flax/Fahrenheit (Los Angeles), Palais de Tokyo (Paris) and Tanz im August (Berlin). Lewis was awarded the Prix Jardin d’Europe for her work “Sorrow Swag.” As a dancer, Lewis has performed and toured extensively with and alongside the following: Eszter Salamon, Mette Ingvartsen, Ariel Efraim Ashbel, Jeremy Wade, Wu Tsang, and Les Bal- letsCdelaB.

Jonathan Gonzalez is an artist working through performance, sound design/composition, writing and visual practices. He has been a Posse and Bessie Schönberg Scholar, Diebold Award recipient for Distinction in Choreography & Performance, Brooklyn Arts Exchange Fellow and New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks Artist. He has collaborated in the works of Patricia Hoffbauer, Cynthia Oliver, Jaamil Kosoko, Isabel Lewis, Jomama Jones, Philip Howze and Grisha Coleman, among others.

Tiran Willemse is a contemporary dancer, born in Western Cape, South-Africa. He studied at English National Ballet school and attend P.A.R.T.S research cycle in Belgium. He performed with Jerome Bel, Eszter Salamon, Andros Zins-Browne, Daniel Linehan and Susane Linke and Deborah Hay.

“The work is elusive, yet poetic,” – Allen Smith, LOST WKND, Published April 2016

“For me, this constraint is a kind of freedom, perhaps the best kind. The intra-action of this inside/outside is what drives my creative engagements. The endless negotiation between those two sites, between thought and flesh, enables a becoming, a liveness captured by embodiment, beyond reason and beyond the limits of representational orders like identity.”
- Ligia Lewis, The Brooklyn Rail, Published July 11th, 2016

“When I first saw Ligia Lewis’s Sorrow Swag at the American Realness festival in New York City in January 2016, I could tell there were deep and complex layers of significance informing the work, a developed vocabulary and particular inner logic. I knew I was not yet fluent in this language, so I went back to see the show a second time. I processed this experience in writing, and was left with many potent questions on expressions of power through the body, language, and theatrical convention.”
– Emily Gastineau, Temporary, Published June 22nd, 2016