Project Description

“She walks the air” is a line cut out from a Japanese Avant Garde theater artist’s minimalist depiction of war, life, death, and sex: Ota Shogo’s The Water Station. Incredibly humbled by the breathtaking beauty of this non-western canon, and equally dissatisfied by its hyper-eroticization of the female body, and failure to acknowledge colonization, She Walks the Air has been refusing to land since 2017, incessantly morphing in its shape. With more than 40 cumulative international collaborators, She Walks the Air has been a site-specific performance installation, multi-media performance, fabric art, interactive performance, multidisciplinary experiment, animation, and an ensemble ritual at Seoul Dance Center and EstroGenius Festival to name a few. In 2024, She is remorphing with the support of LMCC’s Creative Engagement Grant.

In the ten iterations it has had, She Walks the Air has been circling around, and honing in on the intersectionalities of traveling femme bodies, lasting intergenerational impact of colonization, and embedded somatic memories of war. Its eleventh iteration will be held at Tompkins Square Park as a site-specific performance of an excerpt of the source material overlaid with performers’ differing but common stories of refuge, immigration, war and colonization. In the context of the global refugee crisis due to settler colonialism, She Walks the Air XI aims to make connections through history and examine land stewardship, immigration, and togethering.

 

Casting Details

3 Co-director / Performers of Age 25-35

- 1 Korean-American, 1 Japanese-American, and 1 Chinese-American*

*self-identified; citizenship not required; first/second/third generation immigrants

- Ability to read and speak Chinese, Korean or Japanese is preferred, but not required

- Experience or curiosity of interview-based, site-specific, movement-based, community engaged, devised, ritualistic, dance-theater, performance art work encouraged

 

3 Performers of Age 30-60

- 1 Korean/American, 1 Japanese/American, and 1 Chinese/American*

*self-identified; citizenship not required; legal aliens / expats / first generation immigrants

- Ability to read and speak Chinese, Korean or Japanese is preferred, but not required

- Experience or curiosity of interview-based, site-specific, movement-based, community engaged, devised, ritualistic, dance-theater, performance art, somatics, butoh, view points, personal narrative work encouraged

 

She Walks the Air XI is self produced with the support of LMCC Creative Engagement Grant. All performers will receive an honorarium of $200 at the end of the performance.
 

Project Timeline

April - September, 2024: Research and Development

October 2 - 6, 2024: Audition & Callbacks

October 7 - November 1, 2024: Rehearsals (30-50 hours depending on availability)

November 2, 2024: Invited Dress at Tompkins Square Park

November 3, 2024: Performance at Tompkins Square Park

 

Audition

Please sign up for auditions through the google forms link below by 1pm Friday, October 4. You will be prompted to provide your name, contact, availability, resumé and headshot. Zoom auditions will be held on a rolling basis. We will reach out to you within a couple days through shewalkstheair@gmail.com. We may hold callbacks if necessary. If you have any questions, please email us through the same email address.

https://forms.gle/Kpmrtjk7iRNJUpp86