Sarah East Johnson, founder and artistic director of LAVA, a Brooklyn-based feminist acrobatic dance, brings a new movement investigation to CAS Pride a celebration of the talent of LGBTQIA+ identifying artists local to the Catskills region. Intimacy Creates is a set of movement experiments that explore improvisational duet scores embodying trust, closeness, vulnerability and strength. By honoring the complexities, challenges, and beauty of physical and emotional connection, the work will bring the audience members and performers into a weaving meditation and celebration of women seeking depth and aliveness in their connections to each other and their environment. The music for the duets will be composed and performed by Barbara Gogan and Terry Dame, both of whom reside in the Catskills region and have long and storied careers of experimental and pop music. The duet material between Gogan and Dame reflects their deep listening and collaborative practices that create sonic landscapes for the dancers’ duets to inhabit and populate. The duets between women who have long term real life relationships act as tributaries to a pond of movement that then comes into an accelerating finale of unison movement gathered and foraged from the wider community and set to beats by DJ Tikka Masala, who is also local to the area. The dance performance will be followed by an all access pass to a dance party across the street from CAS at Sunshine Colony, also DJ’ed by Tikka.
About the Artist
Sarah East Johnson, who worked in Brooklyn and NYC for 35 years, has been putting down roots in the Catskills region since 2017. Her work with LAVA Brooklyn explored the intersections of feminism and geology using acrobatics and experimental dance for 20 years. Her work with LAVA Callicoon is an exploration of our deeply personal community connections and how we can peacefully inhabit our bodies and our connections across differences, while still celebrating the courage, strength, and expressiveness in acrobatic movements combined with the tenderness and subtleties of contemporary dance. Intimacy Creates is created with a commitment to the value of relating and gathering in peaceful and mutually respectful ways, which we need now as much as ever.
About CAS Pride
For its fifth year, CAS Pride will feature the artistry and talent of queer identifying people local to the region. Coordinated with Pride month celebration of LGBTQIA