WORK UP IS AN ANNUAL RESIDENCY, PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT, AND PERFORMANCE PROGRAM THAT SUPPORTS EMERGING ARTISTS.

Melanie Greene: Sapphire
Sapphire is a time traveling golden goddess moving through moments that police and celebrate Black female bodies and experience. She is humanity canvassed in an evolving constellation of identity. She is a reflection to see you and see through you…a vessel of love, ferocity, grief and audacity.

Summer Minerva: Femminiello/Belonging
Femminiello/Belonging is a prayer to unite disparate layers of identity. It is a ritual to bring together the parts of me that have died with the parts of me that are yet to be reborn. It calls upon the spirits of my italian ancestors, my queer and trans ancestors and my living beacons of love, wholeness and infinity.

EmmaGrace Skove-Epes: in search of mirrors, and catch the light just right
in search of mirrors, and catch the light just right constructs and unravels real, remembered and imagined landscapes and environments, transposed onto and melded into the performance space. It serves as the enactment of a desire to be at once in private and in public, a desire to find intimacy and preservation through self-abstraction and knowing but not naming. There is a desire to listen to the particular resonance of an unfamiliar but familiar space, to hear how static sounds and friction feels different at different times of day. Where is the physical mark of these day-dreamt sensations, where do they leak—seep out and stain? How does the physical impact of imagination reflect in the spaces and bodies that house it? We activate the space between us, and it activates us. The pace of my breath and fluids finds the pace of yours. The weight of my bones and muscle shift when you speak to me. My eyes are touched by what I see, my eyes touch what I see. Your ears touch and are touched through listening, skin too. Our breaths meet somewhere beyond us, quietly. Are these meeting grounds, these touches—portals/ghosts/quiet spells cast?

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