Chicago Performs | Lykanthea: Some Viscera
@ Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
220 E Chicago Ave, Chicago, IL 60611
Opening Friday, September 27th, at 7:30PM
Lykanthea is a multidisciplinary collective led by artist Lakshmi Ramgopal, whose performances and installations use pop idioms to experiment with traditional South Asian art forms. Her latest work, Some Viscera, is a collection of song and movement that revolves around the death of her maternal grandmother, the births of her nieces, and her own ambivalent relationship with motherhood to explore childhood, kinship, and memory in the contemporary Indian American diaspora after Indian independence. Presented through an immersive stage design, the project features a multidisciplinary ensemble starring Asha Rowland, Erica Miller, Johanna Brock, Ben Zucker, Lucy Little, Kinnari Vora, Shalaka Kulkarni, and Tuli Bera. Together, they integrate elements of Carnatic music, Bharatanatyam, ballet, medieval Sanskrit and modern Tamil poetry, Baroque chamber music, and free improvisation to perform rich, intimate dance theater.
Some Viscera occurs within the frame of the arangetram, a Tamil word meaning “ascending the stage.” It describes the arduous, long-form, solo performance through which students of classical Indian dance and music debut as mature artists. A celebrated yet fraught rite of passage, it is a profound, complex feature of life in the Indian American diaspora. The arangetram of Some Viscera consists of four principal movements that invoke South Asian avian and floral motifs from a range of influences. Creating a fanciful, dreamy world, Some Viscera reflects on cultural knowledge and breakdown.
Lykanthea presented an early iteration of Some Viscera in 2019 as a part of the MCA’s In Progress series.
Masks must be worn during the performance per the artist’s request.
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