Meena Murugesan and I will present a shared show, more than, less than at Highways Performance Space.

How do we decide who has the right to be a full citizen, and by extension, to be treated as fully human?  In this shared evening of interdisciplinary multimedia dance-work, we speak to lost indigenous ancestors, poetically re-purpose colonial archives, and imagine what allyship might look like in a continuing struggle against anti-Blackness.  The phrase more than, less than is inspired by Fred Moten’s theoretical ideas.

Cynthia Ling Lee investigates her Taiwanese indigenous and Han Chinese colonizer heritages within the context of larger political histories.  Part ritual, part performance art, part colonial history inscribed on the body, ​her work asks: “What is the difference between an immigrant and a colonizer?” “How do the colonizer and colonized live inside the same body?” “When does survival require disappearance?”  blood run asks what hidden histories are contained in the body, while acknowledging the impossibility of fully reclaiming what has been lost.

Meena Murugesan attempts to be in conversation with issues of anti-Blackness, police brutality towards Black communities in the US, and questions of allyship for non-Black bodies. In collaboration with d. Sabela Grimes, Carole Kim, and the Post Natyam Collective, Meena creates a poetic multi-media performance that is part obsession, part failure, and part hope.

The work in more than, less than is being developed through Reimagining Citizenship, an online exchange between members of the Post Natyam Collective on citizenship and its exclusions.

June 17-18, 2016, 8:30 pm

highwaysperformance.org