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New Love: 1910: World Out of Kilter
“New Love: 1910: World Out of Kilter” was produced as part a ten part cycle of multidisciplinary works by Tony Whitfield entitled This Dancerie and explores critical moments in queer life when one realizes that one’s desire is different from other’s and the first time one acts upon that desire.
New Love: 1910: World Out of Kilter is a performance event of roughly 50 minutes, for presentation in Paris and New York. New Love: 1910: World Out of Kilter debuted at LaMaMa ETC, New York's landmark avant-garde theater venue on May 11,12 and 13, 2018 as a featured work in LaMaMa Moves, an annual festival of post-modern movement based performances.
New Love: 1910: World Out of Kilter is a collaboratively developed work written, produced and under the artistic direction of Tony Whitfield, directed by Oisin Stack and under the technical and musical direction of composer and video editor Andrew Alden with guest choreographers and site specific performers who shape the evening length piece for presentations venue
“Recently, I had a realization about an aspect of what is so upsetting to me about our current American focus on “sexual misconduct.” It suddenly occured to me that I was raised believing that all gay sexual activity was “sexual misconduct” and that I never learned what accepted queer interaction looks like so in all of the current discussions I fight overwhelming suspicions of my own guilt. That is jarring and deeply disturbing because I had come to believe that I was beyond feeling shame about my desire….I think, somehow, this realization is central to what New Love: 1910: A World Out of Kilter needs to dive into" TW.
Support for New Love: 1910: World Out of Kilter was provided by: The Jerome Foundation, The New School University, Errances and Fractured Atlas.
Paris, 1938
This Dancerie: Paris, 1938 is the first work produced as part a ten part cycle of multidisciplinary works by Tony Whitfield entitled This Dancerie and explores possible permutations of dynamics in an intimate same-sex relationship behind a pivotal historical event.
This Dancerie: Paris, 1938 was installed on Ile de La Cite as an OFF event in Paris’s annual dusk to dawn arts festival, Nuit Blanche on October 7, 2017. Shown in a repeating program, Paris, 1938 was accompanied by additional videos and music in a deejayed program constructed by the film's composer, Andrew Alden, in collaboration with the project's Artistic Director, Tony Whitfield. This version of Paris, 1938 was designed for installation at 5 rue des Ursins, visible from le Quai aux Fleurs.
Paris 1938 had its New York premiere as part of LaMaMa Moves, an annual festival of post-modern movement based performances on May 11,12 and 13 in conjunction with the world premiere of New Love: 1910 : World Out of Kilter.
In the autumn of 1938, 12,000 of the Polish Jews living in Germany were expelled from the territory and deposited at the Polish border. Poland refused them entry.
In early November, a German Nazi diplomat, Ernst vom Rath, was assassinated by a young German Jewish student of Polish descent, Herschel Grynszpan who stated that his actions were in retribution for Jewish persecution. As a consequence, the German government declared its indignation calling this murder an “act of war” perpetrated by the “Jewish world community” and the Nazis subsequently trigger a pogrom in Germany known as “Kristallnacht, ” implementing acts of extreme violence in which more than 400 synagogues and 7,000 Jewish businesses were looted and burned, many Jews were murdered and others transported to concentration camps.
While it is undeniable that Grynszpan murdered vom Rath and there was a direct relationship between that action and the persecution of German Jews, it is remains unclear whether this was, in fact, what today would be thought of as actions of a politically radicalized lone wolf or an operative in an anti-Nazi conspiracy, or the culmination of a more intimate and complex interpersonal relationship. From the day of the shooting, claims ranging from total denial of any connection between the two men to sexual abuse of the younger man by vom Rath have been advanced. This Dancerie: 1938 presumes and explores possible permutations of dynamics in an intimate same-sex relationship.
Support for This Dancerie: Paris, 1938 provided by: The Jerome Foundation, The New School University, Errances and Fractured Atlas.