Pioneers Go East collective announces the 2024 Out-FRONT! Festival

November 18, 2023 Queer Forty Staff 8 min read

Save the date, January 10-20, 2024, for an extraordinary multigenerational festival by artistic pioneers.

Pioneers Go East Collective announces the lineup for the second edition of the Out-FRONT! Festival. Centering LGBTQ and feminist voices, the festival features the work of artists exploring bold new performance modes for a lively exchange of art and culture.

The 2024 festival features performances by Arthur Aviles and Collaborators, Joey Kipp with Pioneers Go East Collective, Christopher Unpezverde Núñez, Jason Anthony Rodriguez, Paz Tanjuaquio, Ogemdi Ude, and Annie MingHao Wang,as well as films by Fana Fraser, Omega X, and Tourmaline.The festival will also include two workshops: a teen voguing workshop with Jason Anthony Rodriguez, and a storytelling through dance workshop for older adults taught by Magda Kaczmarska.

“This year’s festival brings together 10 extraordinary multigenerational artists whose socially engaged practices explore issues of race, gender, disability, grief, migration, and our collective humanity in ways that continue to inspire us,” said Gian Marco Riccardo Lo Forte, Artistic Director, Pioneers Go East Collective. “We created Out-FRONT! to both celebrate artists with community-driven approaches to art- making and to offer them a platform to share their work with audiences during the Association of Performing Arts Professionals conference, an opportunity we hope provides new connections and sparks a positive dialogue about creative participation in shared spaces.”

The 2024 Out-FRONT! Festivalwill take place January 10-20, 2024, in partnership with The LGBT Community Center (208 West 13th Street, between 7th and Greenwich Avenues) and Abrons Arts Center as part of its @Abrons Series (466 Grand Street, corner of Pitt Street).

All festival events are free with a suggested donation of $25. Reservations are required. Reservations for events at The LGBT Community Center can be made here. Reservations for events at Abrons Arts Center can be made at https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/dept/2214.

2024 Out-FRONT! Festival Schedule

Jason Anthony Rodriguez – Take a Good Look (World Premiere)

Wednesday, January 10, at 8pm, and Thursday, January 11, at 7pm at The LGBT Community Center, Theatre 301

Vogue artist and Pose star Jason Anthony Rodriguez’s work Take a Good Luck takes a direct look into one’s queerness through the perspective of a Dominican, dancer, actor, Gaymer. The work looks closely at the layers that make us, build us, and rip us apart, exploring tools that allow us to regroup in a healthy manner. Meet Me in the Moon is a piece set by choreographer/teacher Kevin Wynn on the Joffrey Ballet School Summer Intensive in 2013. It will be reset as a solo for these performances.

Joey Kipp with Pioneers Go East Collective – Tracing Lorraine (World Premiere)

Thursday and Friday, January 11-12, at 8pm, The LGBT Community Center, Theatre 301

Joey Kipp’s Tracing Lorraine is a theatrical performance and sharing of Kipp’s connection with the Black queer playwright Lorraine Hansberry and her ghost, pulling forth the common thread of personal memory and erasure. Through a trilogy of works by Hansberry, Kipp imagines her humanistic vision for a contemporary audience. Rooted in an early pandemic video work by Kipp based on Hansberry’s play What Use Are Flowers?, Tracing Lorraine deepens his research into the author’s life and work with the addition of two more plays, The Drinking Gourd and Les Blancs. The theme of erasure to rebuilding prevails not only in the plays’ narratives, but also in Hansberry’s and Kipp’s personal histories, separated by over 60 years, in confronting the loss of their identities within normative society and their respective creative/cultural communities.

Conceived, choreographed, and performed by Joey Kipp. Co-choreographed by Symara Johnson. Dramaturgy by Chloe O. Davis. The project was developed in collaboration with Pioneers Go East Collective’s artists Gian Marco Riccardo Lo Forte (creative director), Jo Wiegandt (assistant director/producer), and Philip Treviño (production designer).

Ogemdi Uden – Hear

Saturday and Sunday, January 13–14, at 7pm, The LGBT Community Center, Theatre 301

In Hear, choreographer Ogemdi Ude pulls from a bereft archive of video and sound bites in an attempt to materialize and present the profile of someone lost. The solo, originally a part of a trilogy, is of Ude’s ongoing practice in deriving coping rituals in the aftermath of loss. Her work is built by grieving the loss of loved ones, and preserving the language, movements, and creative actions that emerge from that grief. She opens portals to the dead to communicate with them, retell their stories, and preserve their memory. Can we connect to people who aren’t here anymore by making something out of all the bits that are? Featuring sound by slowdanger. Hear premiered in 2022.

Christopher Unpezverde Núñez – BROOKLYN Papi (World Premiere)

Sunday and Monday, January 14-15, at 8pm, The LGBT Community Center, Theatre 301

Created by Christopher Unpezverde Núñez and performed byNúñez, Mãr Galeano, and Alfonso “Poncho” Castro, BROOKLYN Papi is an ethnography on performative masculinity or “doing gender.” It is an embodied lecture of male iconography and discursive understandings of disability, violence, and trauma. Music is by Alfonso “Poncho” Castro. Design elements by Branden Charles Wallace.

Arthur Aviles and Collaborators – Naked Vanguard

Wednesday, January 17, and Friday, January 19, at 8pm, Abrons Arts Center Playhouse

Arthur Aviles continues his Naked Vanguard series, which reimagines several of his classic nude solo dance works. In addition to revealing the body, the works peel back the conventions of Latinx and Black cultures. The works use Aviles’s Swift/Flow dance technique and will be performed by Nikolai McKenzie Ben Rema, Hunter Sturgis, and Aviles. The program includes Morning Dance (2021), In the End, Let’s Begin (2021), Untitled #5A After Ted Shawn AKA Dansé Mexicaine & Jamaïquaine Américaine (World Premiere), and the Bessie Award-winning A Jamaican BattyBwoy in America (2021).

Annie MingHao Wang – had my mouth (World Premiere)

Thursday, January 18, at 8pm and Saturday, January 20, at 5pm, Abrons Arts Center Playhouse

Constantly shifting between renewing dualities of being and place, had my mouth is a performance that asks: How do we use dance to speak and to build protected spaces? Derived from choreographer Annie MingHao Wang’s personal and physical inquiries into the human invocations of animal energies within Chinese culture, the work pulls specific inspiration from the lion dance and martial arts. Beyond their role as entertainment, these movement forms were historically practiced as covert training in self-defense as protection against oppressive governmental systems. had my mouth furthers this stance by referencing the diverse influences of martial arts in the US to convey the timeless search for protection through self-expression. Performed by Catherine Chen, Ching-I Chang, and Annie MingHao Wang. Music by Eldar Baruch.

Paz Tanjuaquio / TOPAZ ARTS Dance Productions – Silweta (World Premiere)

Friday, January 19, at 7pm, and Saturday, January 20, at 6pm, Abrons Arts Center Playhouse

TOPAZ ARTS Dance Productions will premiere an evening-length dance, Silweta, choreographed and performed by Paz Tanjuaquio with a trio of guest performers, and created in collaboration with sound and visual artist Todd B. Richmond. With Silweta, based on silhouette images of traditional dance forms of the Philippines, Tanjuaquio traces a distant dance in her ongoing process of creating new movement. Behind the silhouettes, Tanjuaquio explores cultural connections, migration, and displacement. Inspired by various texts, including Dead Stars, a short story by her namesake Paz Márquez-Benítez, in which the idea that light from dead stars still shine can be a metaphor for lives lost and a presence of culture that resonates within our bodies. Silweta brings to light edges of a distant dance, tracing the outer limits of our connected lives. The work includes Petroglyph by Indigenous composer Brent Michael Davids, a digital dance of silhouettes made with Onome Ekeh will also be incorporated within the performance.

Film Screenings

Saturday, January 13, 5pm-6:30pm

The LGBT Community Center, Gallery 101

Interdisciplinary artist Fana Fraser will present a new short film, originally commissioned by TBA21-Academy (Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary) for TBA21 on st_age.

A new film by Omega X & Danni. Omega and Danni are trans and nonbinary artists and parents of two kids. As queer parents, their vision is to create visibility and possibility for people who look like them. This new work is an abstract portrait film exploring the experience of queer parenthood.

The Personal Things (2016) is an animated film by writer, filmmaker, and activist Tourmaline,whose practice highlights the experiences of Black, queer, and trans communities and their capacity to impact the world. Tourmaline writes, “You have to find your own way to strike back. Black trans elder and legendary activist Miss Major Griffin-Gracy describes how everyday personal acts fuel her political activism.”