UPDATE: Due to COVID-19, the premiere of “Martyr’s Fiction” is postponed indefinitely
Note from Kayla on Thursday, March 26th, 2020:
Today would have been the opening of Martyr’s Fiction @gibneydance .
This show was among the cancellations. However, I wanted to talk about the amazing process that’s been budding, and the influential visceral brilliant collaborators I am fortunate to be working with daily. Martyr’s Fiction questions what are our dreams and what influences that perspective. The same way surrealist art or abstract art can have the privilege of dreaming far beyond ones circumstance. Who can afford that? Where do we allow fantasy and what could we confront in ourselves? At the same time life becomes so violent, so overwhelming, and unequal it becomes surreal itself. Yet we receive wake up calls, moments that feeling burst upwards, deep cravings of both darkness and light....I wish I could capture the swirling beating life of this process. I’ll be sharing what I can.
I wish I could share the obscure potency of Rebecca (@margolick ). Her extreme understanding and knowledge in her nature to her incredible shifting of embodied feeling. She’s a serial killer, an animal, an advocate and I swear the room changes and you fall into the dream with her.
I wish I had every video I never took of the group’s storytelling and improvisations together. And I wish I had every video I never took of the unforgettable Jamal (@trulifetaray ). “Kayla, the first take is the best one..” He is such a vision- a culmination of recognizable human feeling, earnestness, and fleeting. He is heart and reality.
I wish I had every crazy thing Dare Ayorinde (@oluwadamilareayorinde ) has ever said and done in rehearsal. Last time he gave a sermon entitled “I’m gonna f**k you up”- riveting, hysterical, and committed. I wish you could hear us talking to the earth and screaming to it. Dare gives our black bodies wings. Things aren’t what they seem.
And Nik, @nikdas753 ....we were meant to fly together I think- made of engines, analyzing, impossible animated imagination, and resilient defeat. Nik is logic, layers, the host, and also contradiction in this work.
And I am...completely mad. I combine life and dreams and dream mostly when im awake but am completely weighted by reality. Blown away by possibily
Martyr’s Fiction is an exploration of dreams, fantasy, and visions amidst a reality we cannot escape. Dreams are for those who can afford them. Rooted in what we know, we can only stretch our conscious imagination as far as we understand. Yet, sometimes, we experience sudden wake-up calls when we are fully conscious. What are the night terrors and dreams of an African American? Who are the stars of these dreams? In uprisings, lucid dreaming, and endless loops, we unveil the possibility of imagination and the individual—through movement, script, and sound score. What parts of reality do we succumb to or finally confront?
This work will premiere March 26-28 at the Theater at Gibney 280 Broadway (entrance at 53A Chambers St.). The show runs from 8:00-9:30pm. There will be a reception following the opening night (Thursday the 26th) and a talkback after the Friday evening performance.
Kayla Farrish/Decent Structure Arts is an emerging company combining filmmaking, photography, and dance. Farrish has received three choreographic commissions: Of Bones Dance (2014) and Houses on the Moon Theater Company (2016), and Danspace (2019). She co-choreographed Gods and Accepting Darkness with Nik Owens (2015). She has studied photography and film with Yara Travesio, Benjamin Heller, and Brooklyn Central; and created Beloved Loveless portraits, premiered the interdisciplinary solo With Delicacy and Permanence, and created 5 short films during a 2017 Chez Bushwick Residency in 2017. In 2018, she developed live works: Wager/With grit From, Grace, Black Bodies Sonata, and Why I Can’t Hold Strangers performing at Judson Church, Danspace, BAAD!, and other spaces. She produced Spectacle Film and Live Performance evening length work through Pepatian DYF Residency. In 2019, she created The New Frontier Film and (My Dear America) pt.1 live work through Keshet MSE program, BAX Summer Space Grant, Petronio Residency Center, and Danspace Fall Commision. She has also shared excerpts at BAX Fall Space Grant Showcase in December 2019 and Belinda McGuire’s OFFSET Dance Festival.