Im happy to announce a recent participatory collaboration with the French artists Jocelyn Cottencin and Emmanuelle Huynh. The film and performance premier on Nov. 7, 8, and 9th, 6:30pm at MATCH BOX 2, 3400 Main Street, Houston, TX, 77002. See below for details.
LANDS – Portrait of the City of Houston is a performance and film installation developed by the French artists Jocelyn Cottencin and Emmanuelle Huynh.
LANDS examines the past and present of Houston and its growth toward becoming the 4th largest city in the United States and invites audiences to reimagine the city’s possible future. The evening will feature a series of outdoor performances that Cottencin and Huynh choreographed with their Houston-based collaborators: Ayla Davis, Anthony Almendárez, Liyen Chong, Roger Moore, Isabella Mireles, and Henry G. Sanchez, who will then guide the audience from the outdoors into the MATCH theater to experience the film installation.
LANDS expands on ideas of plurality, and the connections or disconnections between personal and cultural memory and local history, braiding together a unique chronology of the city that is part documentary, part poetic narrative, and part futuristic re-imaging of the local geography. The artists invite the audience to ponder how we begin telling a new story about an ever-evolving city.
The project, organized by DiverseWorks Curator Ashley DeHoyos Sauder, was developed through a series of artist site visits, interviews, and workshops with Houstonians from the fall of 2022 through the summer of 2023. The interview transcriptions are the basis of a choreographic vocabulary utilized in the performance and installation. In the film, the perceptions of Houstonians as they correspond with their personal histories, cultures, and beliefs, are shared in a layered and interwoven narrative.
LANDS was commissioned by DiverseWorks beginning in 2020 as part of FUSED (French U.S. Exchange in Dance), a program of Villa Albertine and FACE Foundation in partnership with the French Embassy in the United States. Houston is the fourth city in Cottencin and Huynh’s portrait series following their first collaboration in New York in 2017. The project will travel to Paris as part of the Chaillot Experience weekend dedicated to the United States at the Théâtre National de Chaillot on December 9th, 2023.
DATES & TIMES
Tuesday, November 7 – Thursday, November 9, 2023
6:30 PM, Doors 6 PM
ADMISSION
Pay-what-you-wish. $25 suggested.
Reserve Tickets
LOCATION
MATCHBOX 2 @ MATCH
3400 Main Street, Houston, TX, 77002