Performing Arts: 2021-22 Virtual Residencies

James Dennen has adapted his highly physical practice for COVID-19 by creating work for a new “location”: virtual reality.  Three virtual residencies with the improvisational theater artist are tentatively planned between summer 2021 and spring 2022, yielding material that will be shared with audiences online.

Jennifer Harge will begin production on Steal. Still. from her home base in Detroit. The experimental film will depict a gathering of real and imagined Black ancestries—positioning itself as another kind of physicality to history, spirit, and Black life. The movement artist will complete her work this fall, in collaboration with filmmaker Devin Drake.

Awilda Rodríguez Lora (pictured above at the Wex in 2019) will work with filmmaker Gisela Rosario and Ohio State’s Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD) to create a digital version of her performative work SUSTENTO, which will premiere online in early 2022. The project attempts to evaluate and document the sustainability of the Puerto Rico-based artist’s practice as a choreographer and cultural entrepreneur.

Norah Zuniga Shaw, a choreographer, vocalist, writer, and OSU Dance professor, will continue her ongoing project Climate Gathering with a series of experiments in digital performance that respond directly to planetary conditions of crisis and uncertainty. Related performance lectures and discussions currently scheduled for this October will be followed by a three-episode podcast series, Livable Futures, in February 2022.