Juliana F. May explores intergenerational trauma and more in new show at Abrons Arts Center (photo by Maria Baranova)
JULIANA F. MAY: FAMILY HAPPINESS
Playhouse at Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
May 3-13, $25 (benefit May 10)
www.abronsartscenter.org
chocolatefactorytheater.org
“This work examines Jewish violence, victimhood, and intergenerational trauma,” New York–based choreographer Juliana F. May says about her latest piece, Family Happiness, making its world premiere May 3–13 at the Playhouse at Abrons Arts Center. A co-commission with the Chocolate Factory, Family Happiness is part of the twentieth anniversary celebration of May’s company, MAYDANCE, and follows such powerful works as Folk Incest, Commentary=not thing, and Gutter Gate.
The new piece is written, directed, and choreographed by May and features a familiar roster of MAYDANCE favorites: Leslie Cuyjet, Tess Dworman, Lucy Kaminsky, Molly Poerstel, and Kayvon Pourazar, who all collaborated with May on the original songs. The music is by Tatyana Tenenbaum, with lighting by Chloe Z. Brown and costumes by Mariana Valencia. The narrative explores Zionism, the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Holocaust, individual and group communication, grief, and trauma through text, dance, and music.
Performer Tess Dworman created a pecial poster for new work by Juliana F. May
“I worked on the beginning ideas of the piece during the pandemic in Tel Aviv, where my partner has family,” Guggenheim Fellow May explained in a statement. “I am a choreographer, but there is a lot of text in my work. I wrote this project ‘treatment’ on the tails of a dream I had about my father committing suicide and Trump losing the election. There’s a figure of a boy who looks like a scarecrow next to a pitchfork, a bird, and a half moon. He passes by the dog beach, the separate beach, the smoking beach, and eventually arrives at the sex beach. There are hundreds of naked people sitting on top of each other with legs intertwined in a series of eights. The dogs migrate over to the sex beach. Peripheral backward strokes follow a lunging and spreading and in an instant, the animals start to bite and peel skin away from bone, prying the upper extremities down towards the sand while the genitals remain connected like a roundabout on a playground. There is a rising smoke from the skinning like Christ being prepped with a soldering iron. The bodies smell like cocaine, synthetic cotton, or some kind of polyblend as they thrash around in the sand trying to free themselves from each locked jaw. They get close to the water and almost break free but realize they don’t know how to surf.”
May promises that Family Happiness “will be a big dance performance.” With that kind of description, how could it be anything else?