A New Decade of Dance Films: Screening and Performances by Kierah “Kiki” King & Patricia Nguyen
presented in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Photography and moderated by Jenn Po’Chop Freeman
Thursday, October 19, 2023 from 6 – 7:30 p.m.
at the Dance Center Theater
Tickets: FREE, but make a reservation to guarantee a seat
In Fruitful Devotion (2023), dance choreographer and Columbia College alum Kierah KIKI King (b. 1998 Hartford, CT) explores ideas of body and self-intimacy through a lens of Black Queerness, observing and understanding how to authentically love. Patricia Nguyen’s (b. 1987, Chicago, IL) newest sensorial experimentation and haptic performance work Creating Worlds with My Mother (2023) features the artist and her mother, Thuy Ta, exploring the aftermath of war, inherited trauma, intergenerational healing, refugee resettlement, and queer worldmaking.
A New Decade of Dance Films is part of the Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP)'s current exhibition: LOVE: Still Not the Lesser led by MoCP Associate Curator Asha Iman Veal. Twelve international artists, uniting across communities to share the ways they encounter and understand love, explore dynamics within romantic partnership, sensual eroticism, family structures, social utopia, and life and death. They observe and declare circumstances of love that serve various intentions.
The projects on view in LOVE range from an expressive courtship dance enacted by two people learning how to meaningfully connect despite barriers of distance, to an embodied portrayal of feeling one’s own sensuality and pleasure and from an adult son’s photo collaboration with his nonagenarian father during his artist mother’s last weeks of life, to the love and pride held within queer parenting.
The evening will be moderated by Jenn Po'Chop Freeman, a 2022 United States Artist Fellow, a 2021 Foundation of Contemporary Art Grant for Artists Awardee, a 2019-2020 Urban Bush Women Choreographic Fellow, and a 2018 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist.
Kierah KIKI King’s Forbidden Fruit, image courtesy of the artist.
Kierah {KIKI} King received their BFA in Dance with a minor in Black World Studies from Columbia College Chicago with the class of 2020. A native of Hartford, Connecticut, KIKI was homeschooled in their family’s café where they learned the power of service, education and creativity as central to life. KIKI’s work in Chicago comes from their passion and commitment for social justice, activism, and community building that present themselves through forms of media, performance, choreographic work and different forms of workshops and events throughout the city of Chicago.
Patricia Nguyen is an artist, scholar, and educator based in Chicago and Charlottesville. She earned her Ph.D. in Performance Studies at Northwestern University. She has performed and exhibited at the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Chile, Prague Quadrennial, Mission Cultural Center in San Francisco, Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Milwaukee Art Museum, Contemporary Arts Network, and Nha San Collective in Vietnam. She is an award-winning memorial designer for the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial Project, the first monument in the United States to honor survivors of police violence.
Chicago-based burlesque artist Jenn Freeman also known as Po’Chop uses elements of dance, storytelling, and striptease to create performances and inspire students and collaborators across the country. Po’Chop is the creator and author of the blogzine, The Brown Pages and has performed at the Brooklyn Museum in Brown Girls Burlesque’s Bodyspeak, and headlined shows in New Orleans, Minneapolis, St. Louis and New York. Po’Chop is a Board Member and Cast Member, for Jeezy’s Juke Joint, an all-black burlesque revue. Po’Chop performs on Netflix’s Easy (Season 2), appears in music videos for songs by Jamila Woods and Mykele Deville, and creates and performs experimental dance films such as LITANY.
The MoCP is a world premier college art museum dedicated to photography. As an international hub, we generate ideas and provoke dialogue among students, artists and diverse communities through groundbreaking exhibitions and programming. Our mission is to cultivate a deeper understanding of the artistic, cultural and political roles of photography in our world today. Founded in 1976 by Columbia College Chicago as the successor to the Chicago Center for Contemporary Photography, the Museum of Contemporary Photography began collecting in the early 1980s and has since grown its collection to include over 16,800 objects by over 1,800 artists. The MoCP is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.
Support
The American Dancing Body Symposium is made possible in part by Alphawood Foundation, the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, Illinois Arts Council Agency, and is partially supported by a Chicago Arts Recovery Program grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events.
