Shared Evening: Pele Bauch + Marina Celander
Pele Bauch + Marina Celander
Pele Bauch’s A.K.A. Ka Inoa (also known as the name) weaves supple movement, vivid characters, and personal story together with rope and name tags. It explores the messy gray areas in ethnic identity through visual metaphor. Taking place on a floor carpeted by a sea of discarded name tags, Bauch sifts through these papers. What does it mean to wear a label, to wear a name? This interdisciplinary solo mines Bauch’s experience as a multiracial New Yorker and Native Hawaiian who carries the weight of being named after one of Hawaii’s most significant and beloved deities, Pele, the goddess of volcanoes. Naming someone after her is generally not done. And on top of that, Bauch doesn’t pronounce her name correctly. A.K.A. Ka Inoa uses this name conundrum to unpack our expectations around racial identity and push them against the realities of personal identity. It asks: What does it mean to “represent” one’s race?
A.K.A. Ka Inoa is made possible in part with public funds from Creative Engagement, supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and administered by LMCC.
Marina Celander’s Stone She: Space Edition explores our inside/outside worlds and humanity’s disconnect to nature. Stone She finds an ancient millstone in a forest while meeting with some fellow nature creatures, causing current undesirable human events to be catapulted, together with the millstone, into outer space. The millstone returns back to earth with a precious gift for Stone She and her friends. Created in collaboration with composer and video editor/projection designer Fredrik Soderberg.
Photo of Pele Bauch by Danny Boyd
Photo of Marina Celander courtesy of the artist
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Performed by Marina Celander, Asma Feyijinmi, Michaela Lind, and Katja Otero
Millstone design by Emma Oppenheimer
Lighting by Federico Restrepo
Marina Celander’s Stone She: Space Edition, part of Celander and collaborator Fredrik Söderberg’s pandemic Hallway Jam series, premiered at Estrogenius Festival 2020. She was part of Brooklyn Arts Council and Art in DUMBO’s inaugural Six Foot Platform project in 2021. Celander received the Pan Asian Repertory Theatre’s Red Socks Award in 2014 for her contribution to Asian American theater. In 2016 she was nominated for the Innovation In Performance Award at the Stockholm Fringe Festival.
Pele Bauch is an interdisciplinary choreographer who combines dance with theater and weaves mixed media and set design into unique performances. Her recent work focuses on her journey as a “Hapa Haole” Kanaka Maoli (multiracial Native Hawaiian) navigating her lack of knowledge from her birthright culture. Her next work, The Distance Process/ Dear Kanaloa, is commissioned by Women in Motion. Bauch’s choreography has been selected for presentation at many venues including the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Chocolate Factory Theater, Danspace Project, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Joyce SoHo, HERE's TALR, Dixon Place, and BAX. She has received residencies from The Joyce Theater, Dance Theater Workshop, the Chocolate Factory, and 92Y Harkness Dance Center. She has received funding from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Brooklyn Arts Council, and Harkness Foundation for Dance. Bauch resides in her hometown, New York City, in the land of the Lenape people. She supports fellow choreographers and artists as a dance dramaturg and Fieldwork facilitator; she has taught dance dramaturgy at Mount Holyoke College and choreography at Movement Research.
La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival
La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival continues to support La MaMa’s commitment to presenting diverse performance styles that challenge audience’s perception of dance by featuring performance/installations, experimental film screenings & public symposiums which address dance artists’ engagement with the current political climate, as well as honoring diasporic histories and legacy, ancestral inspirations and inter-generational dialogue.