Reconstructions: a site specific performance ritual in three parts

March 23, 24, 30, and 31, 2019; 6-9PM

Resistance Reconstructed, Unravelled through Duration, Dance, and Dinner

What is the liberatory potential of rage? How do we sow weeds of resistance? How do we weave our own stories from the narrative yarns wrapped around us from birth?

A new collaboration is being launched by some of the same artists responsible for Art Complex-the epic and hugely successful community arts happening installed in a defunct dentist office on 29th Street in Oakland in 2014. Oakland-based interdisciplinary artist and dancer Chris Evans and collaborators unravel questions of rage and resistance in Reconstructions-a site specific performance ritual in three parts: durational gallery installation, staged performance, procession, and meal. Directed by Chris Evans with collaborators Byb Chanel Bibene, David Boyce, Regina Evans, Stephanie Johnson, Ernest Jolly, Rhiannon Evans MacFadyen, and Latanya Tigner, Reconstructions is the culmination of 3 years of work on the Reconstruction Study Project.

Do the antidotes to the violent realities we now live lie in the denied, disappeared, invisibilized, blind spots in our bodies, minds and communities?

Through a day-long, site-specific (North Oakland) performance ritual, the artists/dancers explore this question in three parts, beginning with "Excavation," a 3 hour durational installation performance. Excavation is free and open to the public, after which the ritual will transition to "Reconstruction," a 45-minute staged performance (tickets available online or at the door), and then "Practice," a procession through the Idora Park and Temescal neighborhoods that ends with a shared meal. There will be four opportunities to engage with the piece: March 23, 24, 30, and 31, 2019 at Idora Park Project Space, 5600 Shattuck Ave, Oakland.

$20-200.