Marissa Perel

(do not) despair solo

Co-Presented by Abrons Arts Center & Gibney Dance

WORLD PREMIERE

Saturday, January 13, 8:30pm
Sunday, January 14, 5:30pm
Monday, January 15, 10:00pm
Tuesday, January 16, 7:00pm

Run Time: 60 minutes
ASL interpretation and audio description provided for all performances

Abrons Arts Center, Underground Theater, 466 Grand Street, Manhattan
Single Tickets $25 / Abrons Festival Pass $20

Limited wheelchair accessible seating available.

A performance-lecture by Marissa Perel, (do not) despair solo traces choreography, disability, queerness and intimacy through language, power and consent. Exploring the politics of care and pity, Perel reconfigures the performer-audience relationship to create a space for a body in pain. Quoting texts by Gregg Bordowitz, Maggie Nelson, Corrine Fitzpatrick and others, Perel searches for a means of translation between the felt experience of pain and the way it can or cannot be communicated to the world. Futility, loss, and the incomprehensible are integral to the journey from one’s body to another.

(do not) despair solo was made in part during the BAX Artist-In-Residence program with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council for the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Jerome Robbins Foundation, and the Jerome Foundation. It was also developed at Konstfack, the College for Art and Design, Stockholm, Sweden, where Perel was invited as a guest artist by Emily Roysdon. Additional residency support and ASL interpretation provided by Gibney Dance

Marissa Perel from Gibney Dance on Vimeo.

Marissa/Perel is an artist and writer based in New York. Perel has received commissions for performances on disability and survivorship from the Department of Cultural Affairs of Chicago for “Site Unseen: Disabling Conditions” at the Chicago Cultural Center, and from the Americans with Disabilities Act in commemoration of its 25th Anniversary. Perel’s performance for the anniversary, “Bodies at the Center,” was a collaboration with artist and long term HIV survivor, Gregg Bordowitz. Perel has also received commissions from The Chocolate Factory Theater (NY) and FringeArts (Philadelphia) for evening length works “More Than Just a Piece of Sky” and “Torn Forest,” respectively. Their work has been presented at Danspace Project, Judson Memorial Church, Golden Gallery, Pseudo Empire Gallery, Dixon Place, and Center for Performance Research, the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church (NY), DIVO Institute (Prague, CR) and Medium Gallery (Slovakia) among others. Perel was an editor of Critical Correspondence, and created the column, “Gimme Shelter: Performance Now” for Art21 Magazine, and a co-curator of the Movement Research Spring Festival 2012: Push. It. Real. Good. Perel is a Lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago Low-Residency M.F.A, and has been a Visiting Artist at Wesleyan University, Bryn Mawr College, University of Michigan, and Barnard College.