ABOUT THE RESIDENCY
DOCILE is a new solo performance combining dynamic physicality, theater containing script and embodiment, set design amplifying worlds, and raging sound score. Turning towards the gut of darkness, the belly of resistance, and invisibility colliding with a vibration of freedom, this works witnesses a Black Woman releasing her interiority of all that amassed in her navigating power. With an interest in this character pursuing confrontation and truth, what is this journey navigating this terrain, the amassed, and dismantling of tame? Not necessarily achieving clarity, nor linearity, this work is inspired by James Baldwin “Notes of a Native Son” as he bridged the decision of finding freedom outside of America’s Borders or returning home in the 1960s to commit himself to the resistance movements. In this solo work, I explore resistance, reclamation, and confrontation through wild movement and forms of the Diaspora, text and vocals, and feeling. From the well of her interior, the brewing eruptions bring her through a transformation of vulnerability and uncertainty, as the audience and she wander into the edges of truth together. What bravery does it take to be a part of movement towards resistance, and to hold your full humanity? DOCILE is a welcoming of wildness, challenging, and shedding testimony to question societal systems and freedom through Black Feminine Interiority amassed over time.
“A Beast That Came Apart Mid-Air.” The work part-archive, part-documentary, part-magical realism narrative will weave together moments and people of resistance to recover power within us. The beginning of this duet gave way to deep listening, poetry, truth-telling, and spilling of feeling and confrontation that allowed us to go farther. Birthing wildness and held space together…
CREATIVE TEAM
Kayla Farrish—Creator
Jamal Abrams—Dramaturgy
Hayley Ader—Dramaturgy
Ashli Bickford—Film Collaborator
Makaila Chiplin—Solo Collaborator
Truth Colon—Image Collaborator and Witness
Alexander Diaz—Image Collaborator and Witness
Kar’mel Small—Duet Partner, Poet, and Creative Collaborator
Jessica Ray—Film and Story Collaborator
Uwazi Zamani—Music Creation and Dramaturgy
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Kayla Farrish is a Black American Director merging dance-theater, filmmaking, narrative, and sound score. She captures ranging identity, the mythical dualities of history and present survival, and powerful dreaming lending to liberation.
Her commissions include Limón Dance Company, Gibney, Louis Armstrong House Museum, Danspace, Little Island, Harlem Stage, and beyond. She creates live works, films, site-specific/immersive, and music collaborations like Martyr’s Fiction and The New Frontier. She shared Choir (Carrie Mae Weems Exhibition), To Dream A Lifetime (BlackLight), Roster with Melanie Charles, MIXTAPES with Alex MacKinnon and site-specific Broken Record (Little Island) with Brandon Coleman. Her presenting spaces include Lincoln Center, Park Avenue Armory, Works & Process/Guggenheim, Symphony Space, and National Sawdust, and has received support from the Watermill Center, Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective, Baryshnikov Arts, La Mama, and others.
She received the Sundance Uprise Grant, Bessie Awards for NYLA’s Motherboard Suite and December 8th—Gibney, New York Times Top 2021 Dance Performances—Roster and Breakout Star. She is a recipient of the Harkness Promise Award for 2022. She was a Rehearsal Director for Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, and improviser with Trixie Whitley and Moor Mother. She’s the 2023 recipient of Watermill Center Nina Von Maltzahn Fellowship and the Ellis Beauregard Foundation Contemporary Dance Award. In 2024, she choreographed Limon Company’s The Quake that Held Them All and produced her company tour Put Away the Fire, dear, supported by NEFA NDP Grant.