Embodied Practice Workshop with Okwui Okpokwasili

As part of OnEdge - a live experimental performance series - Okwui Okpokwasili and collaborator Peter Born will host the FREE "Embodied Practice Workshop" at Gallery 400. 

How does a body make narrative? How does one build a movement vocabulary around the psychic condition of a character? This workshop for artists at all levels focuses on finding an embodied practice at the intersection of performance and dance. 
***RSVP is required for this free workshop by emailing departmentcase@gmail.com. In collaboration with the School of Art & Art History at UIC.***

Additionally, prior to the workshop and also as part of OnEdge, Okwui Okpokwasili performs "Bronx Gothic."

Bronx Gothic by Okwui Okpokwasili
February 19–20, 2016, at 7pm
Links Hall – 3111 N. Western Ave.

A solo creation at the intersection of theater, dance and visual art, Bronx Gothic gives palpable force to the charged relationship between two girls on the verge of adolescence in 1980s outer-borough New York City –where Newports are bought in singles at the corner bodega, sex saturated notes are passed in class and Orchard Beach erupts in flame. Okwui Okpokwasili’s acclaimed piece is a performance of psychic and physical collisions that threaten to break the body—an unflinching look into the exquisite turbulence of one woman’s memory. Created in collaboration with director and visual designer Peter Born, Bronx Gothic draws inspiration from Victorian-era novels and West African griot storytelling to reveal a dark and powerful tale of sexual awakening, the body in transformation and the accompanying humor, love, strangeness and terror. Okpokwasili is a recipient of the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project Touring Award, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts. Support to the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events also provided by New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project.