Birds of Paradise (MAP 2019)

ABOUT THE GRANT

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Birds of Paradise is a new ensemble-driven performance work by Pioneer Winter Collective, enacted in the form of a tropical militia.

Directed by choreographer Pioneer Winter, the Collective is a group of allied bodies, who democratize performance through the unexpected – freed through an ethos that is tied to sharing human experience as wholly as possible.

Birds of Paradise will interrogate agency, power, celebration, and rage through a lens that draws imagery from military and pride marches, drag pageantry, and radical forms of assemblage. Its development stretches across the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots and the 50th anniversary of the first pride parade to force a platform for typically unheard voices and experiences to be witnessed. Subsequently, this resists an abridged narrative, which memorializes efforts of young white men above all others. Birds of Paradise uses the memory of these events as embodied landmarks and impetus for a dance-theater work aiming to gain control over both the story and rhythm by which we march – or fly.


ARTISTIC TEAM

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