WILDCAT! ASSEMBLy: "I DO MIND DYING: danse précarité" and "3 Meaningful Meditations"

June 11 - 14, 2015

Wildcat!, an interdisciplinary performance collective formed in 2013 by choreographer/performers Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste, Eleni Zaharopoulos and André M. Zachery, will hold an “assembly” with two programs featured: I DO MIND DYING: danse précarité and 3 Meaningful Meditations. These two evening-length performances address social justice issues of racism, gender inequality, and economic oppression through the lens of three artists from unique artistic mediums: dance, physical performance, and sound.

Featuring two programs:
I DO MIND DYING: danse précarité (Thursday and Saturday)
and
3 Meaningful Meditations (Friday and Sunday)

Part of JACK's season-long series Forward Ferguson.

THE TWO PROGRAMS

“...I said, no - don’t mind working, but Lord, I do mind dying.”
---Joe L. Carter

I DO MIND DYING: Danse Précarité (Thursday and Saturday) – defined internally as an experimental labor ballet – is Wildcat!’s response to precarity as a constant condition for the majority of people in society. The name of the performance – I Do Mind Dying – is the title of a blues ballad by Detroit musician, Joe L. Carter. It is a working class anthem about the toils of trying to “make it”.

In 3 Meaningful Meditations (Friday and Sunday), each of the three members of Wildcat! presents a solo-work reflecting on and confronting his and her own personal struggle against systems of oppression. Drawing from radical theorist and educator Paulo Freire’s activist primer, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the piece investigates intersections and relationships between unseen, or unacknowledged labor/work and The Other in contemporary Western culture.

Wildcat! was formed in September 2013 by interdisciplinary artists Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste, Eleni Zaharopoulos, and André M. Zachery. The collective formed out of a mutual interest in exploring how people organize and support each other in an unstable and imbalanced world. Thus far, the scope of their collaboration has included performances, community gatherings, youth workshops, silent boycotts, and one manual on tactical self-enfranchisement. The collective’s name is taken from the “wildcat strikes” that occurred in the auto plants of Detroit throughout the 1960's and 70's.

BIOS

André M. Zachery is a Chicago-born, Brooklyn-based artist. He received his BFA from the Ailey/Fordham BFA program in 2005 and has performed with Elisa Monte Dance Company, MIRO (Philadelphia), CeDeCe (Portugal), Nathan Trice/RITUALS, Compagnie THOR (Belgium). He is the co-founder/Artistic Director of Renegade Performance Group and has presented works throughout New York City, nationally in Chicago, and internationally in Mexico and Portugal.

Eleni Zaharopoulos is originally from Queens, NY. She holds a BA in creative writing and film from Sarah Lawrence College and trained in physical theatre at the Dell'Arte International School. Her work has been experienced at citydrift/Detroit, the Shanghai Biennale, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, the Brooklyn Museum, the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit, the Detroit Public Library, the Riverside Public Library, and within the depths of the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel. She currently spends her time between New York City and Detroit, working on collaborative and solo projects that range in shape and size.

Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste is a multidisciplinary performer, conceptualizer, and laborer, working in Brooklyn, New York and Toronto, Ontario. His work is a constant re-evaluation and complication of the Black body’s relationship to environments and the various agencies that inhabit them. He frequently collaborates with musicians, designers, videographer, and choreographer, under the name CROWNS. His works have been featured by Arts East New York (with choreographer André M. Zachary), Assembly New York (with videographer Nicole Van Straatum), at Toronto’s HarbourFront Festival (with musician Brendan Philip), and on Dazed Digital. Most recently, he has focused on investigating precarity in labor and its social implications, as an independent corporate art department laborer.

Website: www.solidarityinprecarity.com

Photo by Eleni Zaharopoulos.