Reorient the orient (2024)

About the Project

Reorient the Orient is a durational performance by Lionel Popkin unpacking the history of inter-culturalism within the nearly 30-year archive of his dance-making, placed in the context of the history of presentations of the Indian diaspora within the United States. Part performance event, part durational installation and part social agitation on the history and assumptions that have attached themselves to performances of South Asian identity, Reorient the Orient is a personal response to the dubious history of inter-culturalism and seeks to expand the discourse on how brown South Asian bodies inhabit contemporary art and performance spaces. Reorient the Orient will premiere in the 2023-24 season with the help of a National Performance Network Creation Fund Award and is co-commissioned by REDCAT ion Los Angeles and Dance Place in Washington, DC.

The design team includes video design by ‘Bessie’ Award winning video designer Meena Murugesan, who worked on Popkin’s last project. The music is by Tom Lopez, a Professor of music composition at Oberlin College. Popkin and Lopez first worked together in 1988 and then again in 2017. Reconnecting after nearly 30 years inspired a synergy of approaches that fits this project. Finally, archivist Cori Olinghouse, Popkin’s former colleague from the Trisha Brown Company, has a practice dedicated to the archiving and contextualizing of embodied histories and will bring her expertise to the book project.