POWER OUCH! is a four-night festival of body-based performance examining the ways violence shapes our lives and our experiences. The program features dance, installation, and performance art: work that looks like self-defense and like battle, that grapples with complex forces—resisting, yielding, mobilizing—to offer a solid blow against oppression. The festival is co-curated by Aurora Tabar and Carole McCurdy.

$15 general admission/$12 students and seniors
Visit https://www.eventbrite.com/o/links-hall-2566238800 to buy tickets!
Links Hall is wheelchair accessible.

FESTIVAL SCHEDULE:

Thursday, February 14:
>Cat Mahari with Rachel ‘Prysm’ Johnson, Eddie ‘BlaxDreamz’ Skooly, Dion ‘iCrisis’ Randle
>Eryka Dellenbach, Hanna Elliot, and Nola Sporn Smith

Friday, February 15:
>Cat Mahari with Rachel ‘Prysm’ Johnson, Eddie ‘BlaxDreamz’ Skooly, Dion ‘iCrisis’ Randle
>Carly Broutman
>Eryka Dellenbach, Hanna Elliot, and Nola Sporn Smith

Saturday, February 16:
>Jeff Hancock, Joseph Hutto, and Rob Welcher
>Marcela Torres

Sunday, February 17:
>Jeff Hancock, Joseph Hutto, and Rob Welcher
>Carly Broutman
>Holly Arsenault
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Holly Arsenault: Punch Piece 11

Holly Arsenault’s installation, Punch Piece 11, uses modeling clay and mixed-media sculptures to explore the vulnerability of human flesh as it is punched, torn, or otherwise mutilated.
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Carly Broutman: Rotten Tomatoes

In Rotten Tomatoes Carly Broutman asks how far can the body be pushed? In her piece, Carly repetitively slams her body on the ground, teetering between self-abuse and a sense of continued perseverance over obstacles.
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Eryka Dellenbach, Hanna Elliot, and Nola Sporn Smith: Make the Brutal Tender

Make the Brutal Tender was created to hold space for the exploration of thresholds of tenderness, aggression and the feminine ‘brute’. Born out of experience and research of interpersonal trauma, the continuously evolving MTBT project is aimed towards challenging the makeup of acts, impulses and orientations around these poles in the context of femme-femme relationships via the creation of performances for film and live environments.
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Jeff Hancock, Joseph Hutto, and Rob Welcher: Sword Fights and Other Things to Do with Your Manhood

Sword Fights and Other Things to Do with Your Manhood explores the themes of touch between men within the prevailing cultural norms in the United States – what is expected of men, what is allowed, and how that affects gay men in particular – and how that touch is perceived by others, especially when that touch is intimate or gentle vs aggressive or violent.
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Cat Mahari: The solo mixtape series Violent/Break: Vol II
Performed by Rachel ‘Prysm’ Johnson, Eddie ‘BlaxDreamz’ Skooly, Dion ‘iCrisis’ Randle, and Cat Mahari. Sound, set, and media design by Cat Mahari

The solo mixtape series Violent/Break: Vol II is an interdisciplinary solo performance. Vol II explores violence as a relational process whilst centralizing African diaspora cultural technology of krump and Chinese martial art of chen taiji, to develop strategies for its spiritual, martial, and transcendental apprehension.
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Marcela Torres: Agentic Mode: Abbreviated History
Performed by Marcela Torres, with choreographic assistance by Shay Bears

The combatant was not an isolated individual: his actions were taken on behalf of the nation, a hierarchical military establishment, and an intimate, interdependent platoon – this was what distinguished martial combat from murder. In civilian as well as in martial contexts, the power of such institutions was frequently used to legitimate brutal behavior; people slipped into an agentic mode and acted in ways they would otherwise find unacceptable.

Official Website

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Tags: Aurora Tabar, Carly Broutman, Carole McCurdy, Cat Mahari, Chicago, Eryka Dellenbach, Hanna Elliott, Holly Arsenault, Jeff Hancock, Joseph Hutto, Links Hall, Marcela Torres, Nola Sporn Smith, Power Ouch!, Rob Welcher