Miami, Oct. 16, 2018 – Miami Dade College’s (MDC) MDC Live presents La Medea, a Greek tragedy reimagined as a Latin-disco variety show, Thursday Oct. 25 – Saturday, Oct. 27, at 8 p.m., at the Sandrell Rivers Theater.
Euripides’ myth of the wild foreign woman who vengefully murders her own children is shattered in this genre-bending musical and dance theater piece. La Medea is an original work of Miami’s own Yara Travieso, graduate of MDC’s New World School of the Arts and recipient of a YoungArts Award. Employing Latin American magical-realism, mythology and monumental objects, Travieso’s work lives in the intersection of films, performances and immersive installations that embrace a multiplicity of cultural lenses.
As a live simulcast and feature film that is directed, performed, shot, and edited in real time, La Medea creates a high-stakes vulnerability for cast, crew and audiences alike. Performers and camera operators play the characters, while studio audiences act as the Greek chorus. The plot centers around the story’s protagonist in a TV tell-all special and it employs a wild mash-up of genres and storytelling tropes, shifting seamlessly between dance and music, talk show and telenovela, scripted on-camera action and unscripted behind-the-scenes plot twists.
The multidimensional dismantling of Medea’s original narrative challenges the idea of a “dangerous,” “hysterical,” foreign woman—instead revealing an infinite woman that rejects the limited gaze imposed on her. Starring former Bill T. Jones dancer Shayla Vie-Jenkins, with music and libretto by composer Sam Crawford and set design by Miami local artist Brookhart Jonquil, La Medea has been hailed as “a spectacle that upends any attempt to pin it down.”
This marks the Miami debut and the first run since its premiere at Bric Arts/ PS 122’s COIL Festival. It is anchor to and representative of MDC Live Arts’ 2018-19 season, which is dedicated to and representing strong women, immigrants and innovators.
Brooklyn-based Yara Travieso is a director, filmmaker, writer, and choreographer who hails from Miami, where she graduated from New World School for the Arts in 2005, received a YoungArts Award and co-founded the Knight Arts Challenge-winning Borscht Film Festival. She moved to New York City, received a BFA in Dance from The Juilliard School in 2009 and danced for The Metropolitan Opera for five years, all the while directing her original works.
Travieso creates a hybrid of live performance and film that reclaims the cultural and mythical lens for female figures. Travieso’s live works have been presented with NYC’s Park Avenue Armory’s Drill Hall, Lincoln Center, EMPAC, BRIC Arts, PS122, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Miami’s New World Symphony Center, Vizcaya Museum, Colony Theater, and France’s Amphithéâtre D’oin. Her film works have been featured in SXSW, Film Society of Lincoln Center, Miami Film Festival, Museum of The Moving Image, and commissioned by Hermes of Paris, Glamour Magazine, among others. Her 2018 production, El Ciclón took over half a Miami block to create a live film about a heroine named Ava. Her 2017 production of La Medea received a Creative Capital award and premiered with NYC’s COIL Festival. The production was featured in a VICE article that noted “A Modern-Day Medea is Mythology’s ‘Nasty Woman,” and has since been engaged in a national tour. In 2015, Travieso was awarded The National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures Grant via The Ford Foundation. She is also the recipient of a number of residencies such as, PS122 RAMP (2016), LMCC Process Space (2015), BRICLab (2014), STREB Lab (2014), Tribeca Performing Arts Center (2013), and Bessie Shonberg (2010).
Sam Crawford completed degrees in English and Audio Technology at Indiana University in 2003. A move to New York City led him to Looking Glass Studios where he worked as an assistant engineer on film projects with Philip Glass and Björk.
He is a multi-instrumentalist on electric guitar, lap steel, banjo, piano, organ, and trumpet and called one of “a fiercely intelligent, talented crew of players” by the New York Times. Crawford’s recent compositions and sound designs have included works for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company (Venice Biennale, 2010), Kyle Abraham (Pavement, 2012), Camille A. Brown and Dancers (BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play, 2016), and David Dorfman Dance (Aroundtown, 2017). La Medea, Crawford’s live multi-media collaboration with director Yara Travieso, premiered at PS122’s Coil Festival in January of 2017.
La Medea, a Creative Capital project, was commissioned by Performance Space New York and premiered in Brooklyn, NY in as part of Performance Space New York’s 2017 Coil Festival, co-presented with BRIC Arts and Dance Films Association. It is a recipient of The National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures award via The Ford Foundation and The Surdna Foundation.
WHAT: MDC Live Arts Presents La Medea
WHEN: Thursday, Oct. 25 at 8 p.m., Friday, Oct. 27 at 8 p.m., and Saturday, Oct. 27 at 8 p.m.
WHERE: Sandrell Rivers Theater
6103 NW Seventh Ave
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Tickets are $35. To purchase tickets, please visit mdclivearts.org
About MDC Live Arts
MDC Live Arts is Miami’s most eclectic performing arts series. Created in 1990 as Cultura del Lobo, MDC Live Arts has a celebrated history of bringing extraordinary national and international performing artists to Miami. The annual series presents today’s most exciting artists and designs meaningful engagement between these artists, the students of MDC, and the greater community. MDC Live Arts seeks artists from across the globe who push boundaries and honor traditions relevant to Miami’s diverse community, and aims to offer audiences opportunities to discover new ideas, perspectives and forms of expression. For more information, please visit www.mdclivearts.org.
MDC Live Arts Contacts: Alexa Burneikis, Marketing Manager, 305-237-7733, aburneik@mdc.edu
Lisa Palley, Palley Promotes, 305-642-3132, lpalley@bellsouth.net