Artist Okwui Okpokwasili Weaves Narrative from Nigeria in Performing Arts Series
Following the February performances by National Medal of Arts winner Ralph Lemon, the Bryn Mawr College Performing Arts Series presents Bessie award-winner Okwui Okpokwasili, who has been a principal performer in many of Lemon’s most celebrated works.
Okpokwasili's Poor People’s TV Room will be presented Friday-Saturday, February 23-24, at 8 p.m. in Hepburn Teaching Theater, Goodhart Hall. A multi-generational ensemble of women performs movement, song, and text influenced by dystopian folklore, speculative fiction, Igbo cosmology, and the futures and commodities markets. Okpokwasili created Poor People’s TV Room with director/visual designer Peter Born, inspired by two historical events in Nigeria: The Women’s War of 1929, a resistance movement against British colonial power, and the Boko Haram kidnappings of more than 300 girls that launched the “Bring Back Our Girls” movement. This performance contains nudity.
The presentation of Poor People's TV Room by Okwui Okpokwasali was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
EVENT SCHEDULE AND TICKET INFORMATION
Poor People’s TV Room
by Okwui Okpokwasili
Friday-Saturday, February 23-24, 8 p.m.
The performances will take place in Goodhart Hall, Bryn Mawr College, located at 150 N. Merion Avenue in Bryn Mawr, PA. Flex subscriptions of five tickets to remaining series events are $90 each, $75 for seniors. Tickets to individual events are $20, $18 for seniors, $10 for students and Dance Pass holders or members of dancephiladelphia.org, and $5 for children under 12. Tickets, subscriptions, group sales and more information are available online through Brown Paper Tickets, at https://www.brynmawr.edu/performing-arts-series or by calling 610-526-5210.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Okwui Okpokwasili is a New York-based writer, performer and choreographer. In partnership with collaborator Peter Born, Okpokwasili creates multidisciplinary projects that are raw, intimate experiences. Their first New York production, Pent-Up: A Revenge Dance premiered at Performance Space 122 and received a 2010 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Production; an immersive installation version was featured in the 2008 Prelude Festival. Their second collaboration, Bronx Gothic, won a 2014 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Production and continues to tour nationally and internationally. In June of 2014, they presented an installation version entitled Bronx Gothic: The Oval as part of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s River to River Festival. Their latest project is Poor People’s TV Room, an early iteration of which was presented by Lincoln Center in the David Rubinstein Atrium in June 2014.
As a performer, Okpokwasili frequently collaborates with award-winning director Ralph Lemon, including How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere?; Come home Charley Patton (for which she also won a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award); a duet performed at The Museum of Modern Art as part of On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century; and, most recently, Lemon’s Scaffold Room. She has appeared as an actor in many productions, including Nora Chipaumire’s Miriam; Julie Taymor’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Kristin Marting’s Sounding; Young Jean Lee’s LEAR; Richard Foreman’s Maria del Bosco; Richard Maxwell’s Cowboys and Indians; and Joan Dark (The Goodman Theater/The Linz European Capital of Culture). Film credits include Malorie’s Final Score, Knut Åsdam’s Abyss, The Interpreter, The Hoax, and I Am Legend.
Okpokwasili’s residencies and awards include The French American Cultural Exchange (2006-2007); Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography Choreographic Fellowship (2012); Baryshnikov Arts Center Artist-in-Residence (2013), NewYork Live Arts Studio Series (2013); Under Construction at the Park Avenue Armory (2013); New York Foundation for the Arts’ Fellowship in Choreography (2013); Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Extended Life Program (2014-15); The Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ artist grant in dance (2014), BRIClab (2015), Columbia University (2015) and the Rauschenberg Residency (2015).
Peter Born is a director, designer and filmmaker. In addition to his work with Okpokwasili, he collaborated with David Thomson on a cycle of installation/performances revolving around a post-sexual incarnation of Venus throughout 2015-16. He designed and created the set for Nora Chipaumire’s rite/riot and has created performance videos with Chipaumire, Thomson and Daria Fain, among others. He works as an art director and prop stylist for video and photo projects with clients such as Vogue, Estee Lauder, Barney’s Co-op, Bloomingdales, Old Navy, “25” magazine, Northrup Grumman and The Wall Street Journal, with collaborators including Kanye West, Barnaby Roper, Santiago and Mauricio Sierra, Quentin Jones and NoStringsUS Puppet Productions. He is a former New York public high school teacher, an itinerant floral designer, corporate actor-facilitator and furniture designer. His collaborations with Okwui Okpokwasili have garnered two New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards.
The 2017-2018 Bryn Mawr College Performing Arts Series receives state arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.
The presentation of Okwui Okpokwasili: Poor People's TV Room was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.The 2017-2018 Bryn Mawr College Performing Arts Series receives state arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.
PRESS NOTE
For further event coverage coordination, please contact Phil Sumpter, Freelance Publicist, at psumpter.studios@gmail.com or 215.287.1179. For further institutional information, please contact the Office for the Arts at reservations@brynmawr.edu or 610-526-5210, or visit www.brynmawr.edu/arts.
MEDIA KIT
Okwui Okpokwasili
