Work Up 4.2

Babay L. Angles
J. Bouey
Rourou Ye

March 9 – 10 at 8:00 pm
The White Box
Gibney 280 Broadway

Babay L. Angles:
May Malas Sa Loob Pero May Datating Pa (There’s been wickedness within but something else is coming).: An exploration of the Pinay Psyche in process of Decolonization
A performance/ritual which excavates the horrors and pains of a specific fragmented and maladaptive Pinay psyche in its process of decolonization. Movements carry ancestral memory of the heavily militarized spaces where the Pilipinx body was/is maimed, manipulated, policed and sexualized. Pilipinx continue to battle our colonial mentality and historical amnesia as reflected in the hours of horror-filled TV streamed in our homes displaying game shows with oversexed women shaking their hips as the poor are put on stage to dance/sing to American pop songs. Where do we draw strength within this chaos? We resist. Through malas, fighting spirit, legend, myth, horror and remix.

J. Bouey: The Space Between Words
The Space Between Words performs healing practices used to cope with depression, anxiety and childhood trauma. Through storytelling and virtuosic contemporary movement, The Space Between Words uses the lived experiences of the performers to bring attention to larger contexts around mental health for Black men in America.

Rourou Ye: Phantom Duet
A work for solo performer and darkness, Phantom Duet is a confrontation, confession and reconciliation of loss, confusion, and surrender as an act of self-empowerment. The counterpoint between projected video, shadow, and Ye’s onstage body reveal an uncovered, uncompromising, and audacious view of sexuality and the female body.

about the artists

Babay L. Angles (Angelica Janabajal Tolentino) is a Brooklyn, NY-based, interdisciplinary performance artist, educator, and activist of Filipino descent. She was raised in San Diego, CA. She holds a B.A. in Ethnic Studies from UCSD and a MA in Education and Social Justice. She has also cyphered/battled for over ten years throughout the West Coast in the styles of Breaking and Rocking with Time II Rock Crew and Soul Heavy Crew. She dances and holds ritual to build community and express the violence of our lives while still celebrating our resilience in the language of funk and soul.

J. Bouey here! I’m a Dance Artist. I received my BFA in Dance from Arizona State University, and I am a current performer and collaborator with Christal Brown’s INSPIRIT Dance Company. I am currently a Movement Research Van Lier Emerging Artist of Color Fellow for 2018, Dancing While Black Fellow for 2017-2018, and performed with Elisa Monte Dance as an apprentice from 2015 to 2017. I have shown my original work at Movement Research at Judson Church, Gibney Dance, BAAD!, Center for Performance Research as a 2017 Chez Bushwick Artist in Residence, and South Mountain Center for Performing Arts.

Rourou Ye is a NYC based female choreographer, performing artist and filmmaker from Shanghai. She completed her MFA in Dance at Sarah Lawrence College. Her mentor, Kathy Westwater, remarked “the scale of her project, and her unwavering rigor toward honing the voice of the individual artist, the individual woman, is almost without parallel in the recent history of the dance program.” Rourou is strongly inspired by visual images, and her filmic sensibility is highlighted in her choreography. Her work focuses on feminism and seeks to deeply examine her somatic, psychological and emotional experiences in response to the content of her dance.

Photo: Babay L. Angles by Angela C. Bajet.