DIY: 2017 – Marikiscrycrycry: THE T R A P LAB

A dance workshop series, curated club night, open laboratory, and curated self-care night to dance our dreams into reality

APPLICATIONS ARE NOW CLOSED.

Project summary

THE T R A P LAB is a curated and facilitated laboratory series that finds dance and performance practices as praxis for perpetuity and continuance. 

Backdropped by deep political crises, and all of its ramifications on the body, it is necessary to create the space to rearticulate and reimagine new possibilities for the futurity of our bodies. 

Departing from the idea that creating spaces for bodies is to find continuance, especially in this age of rampant erasure, THE T R A P LAB seeks to create highly strategic performance tools against the resurgent violences of today.

Essentially, this is an intentional dance event, party, chill-out, hang-out, and exchange place where we can roll on the floor, cry if we want to, shake our asses while upside down, learn cute, fierce, tragic, and melancholic dance phrases, create collective choreographies, amongst many other things, in order to renege the hope that performance is radical and relevant during these fraught times. We are going to dance our dreams into our wildest realities.

This workshop is also built from the continual desire to amplify the aesthetics of pro-Blackness and pro-Queerness in movement, performance, dance, choreography, and self-care.

How to apply

Applications are invited via the link below. Included are questions on your practice, your wish to participate, the aesthetics of Blackness and Queerness, plus your relationship to dance and its role in self-care and world-building. Links to your work and any other stuff you do are also welcome.

APPLICATIONS ARE NOW CLOSED.

Dates, times and location

Dates: Mon 28 Aug, Tues 12 Sept 2017
Times: 6-10pm 
Location: London

The artist

Marikiscrycrycry/Malik Nashad Sharpe is an experimental choreographer originally from New York City, now based in London. His work exists and operates at the nexus of Blackness and Queerness, and colludes desire, violence, melancholia, joyousness and the advent of allostatic load in order to find ulterior futurities and to manifest other possibilities for his body. He currently makes work under the alias Marikiscrycrycry–three cries like three cheers for the melancholic, conflictual, gay af black boy. He has performed his work widely in New York City, and London, as well as internationally, including at Secret Project Robot Art Experimental (USA), Panoply Performance Lab (USA), Otion Front Studio (USA), CLOUD at Danslab (USA), Rich Mix (UK), Theatre Utopia (UK),Hackney Showroom (UK), AKC Medika (HR), Bushwick Open Studios (USA), 62' CTD (USA), Brooklyn Arts Exchange (USA), Five Myles Gallery (USA), Toynbee Hall/ArtsAdmin (UK), ShuaSpace (USA), Krannert Center for Performing Arts (USA), Bonnie Bird Theatre (UK), Theatre Utopia (UK) amongst others. He also performs for other artists and has worked with Project O (UK), Dalston Ballet (UK), Shua Group (USA), Cynthia Oliver (USA), Randy Reyes (USA), Night Star Dance Company (IE), Hana van der Kolk (USA), and others. In 2016, he formed choreographic duo EEMATIONAL with Montreal-based Ellen Furey. Their first duet “NO NATIONALISM” is being supported by Vermont Performance Lab (USA), Studio 303 (CA), and Hackney Showroom (UK), and will premiere at Montreal's Theatre La Chapelle in 2018. Malik is an Associate Artist at Hackney Showroom, and a 2017 Fierce Festival artist.

If you have questions about this project, please contact Malik.

This DIY is supported by Steakhouse Live as part of DIY Gateway, supported by Jerwood Charitable Foundation.