The 18th Annual New Original Works Festival kicks off with a program of works by Melissa Cisneros, Pau S. Pescador and Marissa Brown.

Melissa Cisneros: Togetherness

The play between proximity and distance, silence and sound, what is opaque and what is visible coalesce in choreographer and performer Melissa Cisneros’ new dance duet Togetherness. Developed in close collaboration with dancer Eric Geiger and designer Harry Foster, Togetherness proposes a series of movement constellations and deeply intimate harmonies relying on feeling and sensing otherness through the tension of distance. After more than a year of experiencing the pandemic and witnessing its effect in the (collective) body, this dance approaches and yearns for more togetherness.

Pau S. Pescador: Sex Lives of Dates 

Told through animated found objects, props, and a slide show of imagery, trans-nonbinary artist, filmmaker, performer, and writer Pau S. Pescador’s Sex Lives of Dates performance physicalizes the work from what was initially imagined as an audio work. Discussing social interactions and intimacy as they pertain to Pescador’s own personal family history, Sex Lives of Dates follows young Mara, a Latina Texan who moves West to pick agriculture and young hippy Robert as they find their way into a relationship, marriage, and adulthood.

Marissa Brown: The ocean is six miles deep

Visceral and highly physical movement approached with unclenched hearts drives the personal expression in choreographer Marissa Brown’s new Lone King Projects group work, The ocean is six miles deep. The work challenges the seemingly normal and pleasurable expectations of how we perceive one another and engages in creating a new language of desire. Posing the question, “How do you open deeper?,” the work invites an expansion in the vocabulary of beauty, desire, and the attraction of full and free expression.