Choreographer Drew Dollaz is a pioneer of flexing — a Brooklyn-based genre of street dance also referred to as bone breaking, which is characterized by rhythmic contortionist movements. A self-taught dancer, Dollaz’ signature work blends flexing with other genres of movement, including ballet, to create a transcendent hybrid of movement artistry.

During an encore digital performance, Drew Dollaz introduces viewers to his style and creative process; and presents a program of repertoire, including new collaborations created during the pandemic. The evening will feature excerpts from #IMPERFECT, a new work currently in development, and will be followed by a conversation with the artists.

#IMPERFECT — a double entendre of “I’m perfect” and “imperfect” — is a multidisciplinary performance for the stage that digs into the parallels between the history of inherited traumas carried down through our lineages and how they manifest in our personal journeys. This work considers how these cumulative scars can allow deep divisions and all-consuming isolation to pervade, and how the digital landscape warrants expressions of racism, sexism, and homophobia to manifest. But just as trauma can be biologically inherited, so too can resilience.

ABOUT #IMPERFECT

#IMPERFECT, was inspired by a social media campaign as an active step in a long line of next right things to eradicate bullying. Through his photography, Drew Dollaz built a digital, brave space to offer friends and collaborators the safety to share intimate, vulnerable and truthful versions of themselves, quickly becoming the inspiration for the live work. Bullying is omnipresent in our society, inevitably shaping the psyche of our youth and society as a whole — contributing to the bedrock of our future. The protective, anonymous veil afforded via social media for bullying’s perpetrators has compounded the phenomenon, causing many of us to ask: what is the collective antidote? Where is humanity headed?

#IMPERFECT strives to take audiences on a journey to unpack how social media’s web of influence plays a central role in today’s ideals of perfection, but also how the ancestral technologies of movement and community cultivation are acts of disruption and resistance. Ultimately #IMPERFECT is not a work of resolutions but of reclamation, driven by a profound hope to empower aliveness and truth in our bodies and our histories, while challenging the digital landscape to become a space for restoration and renewal.

WATCH PREVIEW

FEATURED REPERTORY

Divergence
En Pointe
Can You Hear Me?
Words Do Hurt | Sziget Festival
Our Country (originally commissioned and filmed by FirstWorks, Providence, RI)
Excerpts from #IMPERFECT

Worldwide Representation

Sozo Artists, Inc. Info@sozomedia.com
+1 (917) 791-3680
www.sozoartists.com

This special encore digital performance is made possible by a gift from the Marion Park Lewis Foundation.