Photo: Culture Lab LIC
Nov. 4, 2024 By Shane O’Brien
Culture Lab in Long Island City has announced the premiere of its New Works Festival, which showcases the year-long, original work of four Emergence Artists in Residence at the art gallery and cultural space.
The festival will run from Thursday, Nov. 7 until Sunday, Dec. 8 at Culture Lab, located at 5-25 46th Ave., and features four separate works by artists Danie Kohn, Helixx C. Armageddon, Yvonne Huatin Chow, and Gaby FeBland.
The festival features a mix of cultural works and performances, including circus-inspired pieces, theater-based works and dance-based pieces.
Danie Kohn @danieacro on Instagram
Danie Kohn’s “People in Public: A Contemporary Circus Space” will run at Culture Lab from Nov. 7-10 and provides a contemporary circus show focused on spontaneous and brief moments of connection.
People in Public’s cast explores how people interact and find moments of humanity with complete strangers in an urban environment, exploring how people can lock eyes with a stranger and “share a brief smile or understanding before they disappear back into the crowd.”
The piece heavily revolves around the circus, with aerial hoops becoming washing machines in a laundromat and acrobatic movement used to showcase rush hour subway bustle. A love letter to cities and spontaneous connection, People in Public makes use of both ground and aerial movement and also features a large ensemble cast.
Helixx C. Armageddon’s “The Museum of My Heart,” which will run from Nov. 14-17, is an intimate, transformative avant-garde art dinner. Guests participate in creating a collaborative, non-edible art feast that explores love, heartbreak, and healing.
The third work to be presented as part of the festival—Yvonne Huatin Chow’s “The Women in Red, The Children in Blue”—will run from Nov. 21-24. It is a dance theater piece dedicated to daughters who are cycle-breakers. The piece, which includes Hip-Hop Dance, Chinese Kung-Fu Wu-Su, and Asian folk dances, follows a mother and daughter as their healing and freedom become intimately intertwined.
Gaby LeBland’s “The Undercity,” the final piece of the festival, will run from Dec. 5-8. It follows “Rat Girl” as she uncovers a vast conspiracy that threatens the fate of the entire rat metropolis after she comes into possession of an otherworldly artifact. The piece blends puppetry, toy theater, and an original score to explore themes of unchecked greed, climate catastrophe, and the engineered hopelessness of industrial life.
For more information on show times for the upcoming festival or to buy tickets, click here.
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