DELIRIOUS Dances Announces Mural Honorees & Green Award Recipients at World Premiere of WASTELANDIA
Company:
DELIRIOUS Dances
DELIRIOUS Dances, The Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art at Snug Harbor, and Creative Producer Lai-Lin Robinson announce Mural Honorees and Green Award Recipients to be honored at the World Premiere of WASTELANDIA on Friday and Saturday, September 19, 20, 26 and 27 with Creative Reuse Workshop at 6pm, and performance at 7pm; and Sunday, September 21 and 28 at Creative Reuse Workshop at 2pm and performance at 3pm, in four gallery spaces at the Newhouse Center located in Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden on Staten Island, NY at 1000 Richmond Terrace, Staten Island, NY 10301. Tickets: $20 students/seniors, $30 general, $50 supporters, $75 rockstars. Each ticket supports the work and the community and can be purchased online at https://snug-harbor.org/event/wastelandia-by-edisa-weeks-delirious-dances/.
Mural Honorees and Green Award Recipients include Debbie-Ann Paige, Dorcas Meyers, Heather Butts, Jasi (Jasmine) Robinson, Kelly Vilar, Lori Love, and Petula Gay. As part of the experience, audience members will be invited to color in chalk murals featuring images and quotes from these seven remarkable Black and Women of Color leaders whose environmental justice work has made a lasting impact in the Staten Island community.
About the Mural Honorees & Green Award Recipients
DEBBIE-ANN PAIGE
Co-founder of the Staten Island Chapter of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society (AAHGS)
https://www.witf.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Debbie-Ann-Paige-bio.pdf
DORCAS MEYERS
Founder and C.E.O of Roc-A-Natural Cultural Foundation Inc (RANCF)
https://www.rocanatural.com/bio-page
HEATHER BUTTS
Co-founder of H.E.A.L.T.H for Youths, Inc.
https://www.nyrp.org/en/blog/heather-butts-staten-island-queens/
LORI LOVE
Co-Founder of 5 Borough Clean Up
https://5boroughcleanup.com/#about
JASI (JASMINE) ROBINSON
The first Afro-latina District Leader in Staten Island, District 61
https://www.instagram.com/jasi4ny/?hl=en
PETULA GAY
Community Leader and Environmental Advocate, Farmer at Snug Harbor Botanical Gardens
https://snug-harbor.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Farm-Stand-July-12.pdf
KELLY VILAR
Founder & CEO of the Staten Island Urban Center
https://www.siurbancenter.org/we-are-innovators--activists.html
Photos are available to download at: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmc62Skn.
WASTELANDIA is a performance ritual constructed from recycled plastic that invites the audience to engage in a multi-layered visual and immersive experience. Through theater, dance, discussions, craft-making, and visual art, the audience is taken on an interactive journey that examines our dependency on fossil fuels and asks how we can be better stewards of the earth.
WASTELANDIA is a mash-up between a DIY Haunted house, Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, and a dance performance. The experience begins in The Greenroom, which is an interactive educational space where the audience can:
Participate in creative reuse workshops such as making beads out of plastic straws or musical instruments out of discarded objects in collaboration with Materials for the Arts.
Color in a chalk mural depicting Debbie-Ann Paige, Dorcas Meyers, Heather Butts, Jasi (Jasmine) Robinson, Kelly Vilar, Lori Love, Petula Gay.
Listen and/or participate in a discussion on how we can responsibly divest from fossil fuels, viable alternatives to fossil fuel-based plastics, as well as the health implications of microplastics accumulating in our brains and internal organs.
From The Greenroom, the audience traverses through an interactive tunnel of plastic (The Birth Canal); meets the spirit guardians and the trash behemoth (Spirit Room); and helps construct an installation (The Wasteland) out of plastic trash. The inhabitants of The Wasteland come together through Afro-Brazilian and Contemporary dance to forge a sense of community and empowerment; and to build The Wastelandia Gameshow, where two audience contestants are invited to answer multiple-choice questions about plastic consumption, recycling and alternatives. The Gameshow includes the presentation of a Green Award to the mural honorees.
WASTELANDIA began in 2015 during creative residencies at the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art and Materials for the Arts. The premier in September 2025, will be the completion of a ten year journey. The project was initially titled 3 RITES Life and in 2024 the title was changed to WASTELANDIA to better reflect the intention of the rite. WASTELANDIA was also developed through creative residences at Chashama Space to Create; ChoreoQuest at RestorationART/The Billie Holiday Theatre; a remote pandemic residency with the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; as well as New York State Dance Force residencies at Topaz Arts and Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Additional residency support for 3 RITES Liberty and 3 RITES Happiness was provided by BRICLab; Dance in Process at Gibney Dance with funds provided by the Andrew Mellon Foundation; Mabou Mines SUITE/Space program; Maggie Allessee National Center for Choreography; Norte Maar @ Socrates Sculpture Park; and Performance Spaces for the 21st Century.
The 3 RITES Trilogy (Life, Liberty, Happiness) humorously and poignantly interrogates why life, liberty and happiness were included as unalienable rights in the United States Declaration of Independence. The trilogy explores what the right to life, liberty, and happiness means today, who has access to these rights, and how they manifest in the body. 3 RITES is a National Performance Network/Visual Artists Network (NPN/VAN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by 651 ARTS, Mount Tremper Arts, RestorationART, Kelly Strayhorn Theater, DancePlace and NPN/VAN. 3 RITES is made possible in part through funding from the Brooklyn Arts Council; Creative Capital; Durst Organization; The Harkness Foundation for Dance; MAP Fund; New Music USA; The New England Foundation for the Arts, National Dance Project which is generously supported with lead funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and the Mellon Foundation; New Music USA; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; a PSC-CUNY Award, jointly funded by The Professional Staff Congress and The City University of New York; The Puffin Foundation; as well as through the sponsorship of The Field; and the generosity of individuals.
WASTELANDIA
Part one of the 3 RITES Trilogy on Life, Liberty & the pursuit of Happiness
Concept & Direction: Edisa Weeks
Choreography: Edisa Weeks in collaboration with the performers
Performers: EmmaGrace Skove-Epes, Ja’Moon Jones, J’nae Simmons, Mars Garcia, Uilalani Marx
Guest Performers: Emil Troy, Idea Viola Reid, Keb Barshack
Costume Design: Sarita Fellows
Costume Associate: Brittani Beresford
Lighting Design: Tim Cryan
Scenic Design: You-Shin Chen
Spirit Room Sound Environment: LaFrae Sci
Interactive Trash Canopy: Enddle & Lin Feng
Mural Honorees and Green Award Recipients: Debbie-Ann Paige, Dorcas Meyers,
Heather Butts, Jasi (Jasmine) Robinson, Kelly Vilar, Lori Love, Petula Gay
Creative Reuse Workshops: Lexy Cortado, Pamela Issac, Skip La Plante, Louie Miranda,
Louie Miranda, Joy Suarez
Music: Muim, Murcof; VhaVhenda (Agenda Mix), AfroDrum; Ndere Ye Kiro, Samite;
Game Show Theme, Topher Stott; Plastic Jungle, Duncan; Lalo Bossa Nova, Quincy
Jones; The Graduate, 1967 the movie
Production Team
Creative Producer: Lai-Lin Robinson
Community Engagement Coordinator: Maya Smith-Gilbert aka Maya Da Poet
Production Manager: Violet Asmara Tafari
Stage Manager: Emily Rondon
Technical Director: Dominic Inferrera
Installation Crew: David Orenge, Raymond A. Herrera, Zee Hanna
Music Editing: Ben Vigus, Darryl Hell, Edisa Weeks
Game Show Construction: Madeleine Goddard
Green Award Artist: Gocha Chkadua
Production Crew: Cat Dawes, Raymond A. Herrera
Creative Advisor: James Scruggs
Grant Writing Support: Lila Hurwitz
WASTELANDIA Illustration: Leo Jimenez
Graphic Design: Alexandra Alvarez
About DELIRIOUS Dances / Edisa Weeks
Founded by multi-disciplinary artist Edisa Weeks, DELIRIOUS Dances seeks to erase the barriers between art and life, between performance space and audience space, and between mediums. We are interested in finding ways for the audience to interact with and influence the experience of a work. We believe that art revitalizes the everyday to reveal something new about ourselves, and the revelation is an energy, a spark that has the power to change the world. www.deliriousdances.com
Edisa Weeks creates multimedia interactive work that merges theater with dance to explore our deepest desires, darkest fears and sweetest dreams. She grew up in Uganda, Papua New Guinea and Brooklyn, NY; teaches choreography, improvisation, modern technique, and mentors emerging artists at Queens College, CUNY; and is a Scholar-in-Residence at The New School.
About the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art at Snug Harbor
The Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art is Staten Island’s leading incubator for bold and innovative art. Through exhibitions, residencies, performances, public art, and related public programming, we activate historical, architectural, and environmental connections throughout Snug Harbor’s 83-acre cultural campus in conversation with our contemporary culture. The Newhouse Center encompasses 15,000 square feet of space including the Main Hall Gallery, the oldest landmarked building on campus. The Newhouse Center promotes inquiry and advances scholarship through contemporary art subjects. The Newhouse Center was the flagship program when Snug Harbor opened as a cultural institution in 1977, and has served as a vibrant space for creativity, connection, and community for over 45 years. https://www.instagram.com/thenewhousecenter/
About Snug Harbor
Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden is where art, history and nature converge. We offer dynamic programming in the arts, horticulture and agriculture for diverse communities and all ages, on our historic 83-acre campus. We envision being a locally impactful, globally renowned destination, true to our values of artistic vibrancy and community, inclusion and discovery, stewardship and conservation.
Snug Harbor is the result of more than four decades of restoration and development to convert a 19th-century charitable rest home for sailors into a regional arts center, botanical gardens and public park. One of the largest ongoing adaptive reuse projects in America, Snug Harbor encompasses 26 historic structures, 14 botanical gardens, a 2.5-acre urban farm, wetlands, forests and park land on a free, open campus. Snug Harbor is a proud Smithsonian Affiliate organization. Learn more at snug-harbor.org.
About Creative Producer Lai-Lin Robinson
Lai-Lin Robinson is a Producer and Artist based in New York City. She champions the creations of Black and Women+ of Color, nurtures conceptual ideas from inception to fruition and invests in anti-racist work that challenges assumptions and reimagines our existence. Her collaborators include Blood Orange (Dev Hynes), Paloma McGregor, Misty Copeland, Pyeng Threadgill, Cécile McLorin Salvant, and DELIRIOUS Dances/Edisa Weeks. She has worked with Urban Bush Women, Angela’s Pulse, American Modern Opera Company, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and Théâtre XIV. Most recently, she co-produced When Black Women+ Speak for Urban Bush Women’s 40th Anniversary. Lai-Lin holds a BA in Communications from Fordham University, and is an alum of The Alvin Ailey School, Broadway Dance Center’s professional program, and a 2016 NY Community Trust Fellow. www.lai-linrobinson.com
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