Price: $25
Seating: General Seating
Aligned by a mission to foster artistic experimentation and champion voices that are reshaping the landscape of new music for this century, Harlem Stage and National Sawdust band together in a cross-borough collaboration to present yuniya edi kwon, SUN HAN GUILD, and Bora Yoon.
On February 16, 2023, Harlem Stage presents silver through the grass like nothing, a work in progress solo by yuniya edi kwon, and even in the shadow of a retching fog, the WORLD PREMIERE of a new work by SUN HAN GUILD.
On March 9, 2024, National Sawdust presents (( ( PHONATION ) )) a work of sound and visuals by Bora Yoon and R. Luke DuBois.
silver through the grass like nothing (in process)
yuniya edi kwon
With her intensity of presence, embodied musicianship, and fierce vulnerability, yuniya edi kwon creates performance work that is deeply felt, spiritually emergent, and “absolutely stunning” (The Wire Magazine). silver through the grass like nothing finds kwon stretching her capacities as a solo performer, creating an immersive world of sound, welcome & unwelcome shadows, entangled gazes, and fluid voices, within which she journeys as both messenger and message. The piece is a ritual convergence of continuums, including embodied story-singing, experimental music-theater, and emergent movement.
Connecting to the history of pearl relics (sari) and their keepers, as well as the true story of yuniya’s sudden, sibylline illnesses and their reverberant medical traumas, silver through the grass like nothing is an impressionistic, bardo-like meditation on sickness, grief, and the body’s incessant pull toward transformation.
is this
how to live
unafraid
pearling in the eyes
silver through the grass
like nothing
ABOUT YUNIYA EDI KWON
yuniya edi kwon (b. 1989 – also known as eddy kwon) is a violinist, vocalist, poet, and interdisciplinary performance artist based in Lenapehoking, or New York City. Her practice connects composition, improvisation, movement, and ceremony to explore transformation & transgression, ritual practice as a tool to queer space & lineage, and the use of mythology to connect, obscure, and reveal. She is a recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Robert Rauschenberg Award in Music/Sound, an Arts Fellow at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts, a Civitella Ranieri Fellow, a Johnson Fellow at Americans for the Arts, and a United States Artists Ford Fellow. www.eddykwon.net
Artists and Personnel
yuniya edi kwon – Creator, Performer, Director
Maggie Heath – Lighting Design Du Yun & James Egelhofer – Project Support
Leo Chang & gamin – Translation Support
even in the shadow of a retching fog (WORLD PREMIERE)
A ritual for grief and an opening for generosity, even in the shadow of a retching fog connects SUN HAN GUILD’s ecstatic compositional collectivity to the continuum of sinawi, or the improvisational music that flows through Korean shamanic rites. Drawing from the electricity that emerges when reconciling solitude and connectivity, the work features the ensemble’s masterful composer-improvisers Laura Cocks, Jessie Cox, Lester St. Louis, and Luke Stewart, with improvisational lighting designer Maggie Heath. Representing the next evolution in SUN HAN GUILD’s group practice, even in the shadow of a retching fog creates a dense and generative gravity, such that the invitation and transformation of grief can be liquid, embodied, and deeply enjoyed.
even in the shadows
of a
retching
fog,
there is silence
and there is the body,
singing
ABOUT SUN HAN GUILD
SUN HAN GUILD is a performance collective led by yuniya edi kwon. Inspired by the Spirit Worshipers’ Guild of early 20th century Korea, SUN HAN GUILD uses sound, improvisation, movement, and ritual performance to create spaces of intense presence and transformation. SUN HAN GUILD is composer-improvisers yuniya edi kwon, Laura Cocks, Jessie Cox, Lester St. Louis, and Luke Stewart, with lighting designer Maggie Heath.
Artists
yuniya edi kwon – violin, voice, small percussion
Laura Cocks – flutes, voice, small percussion
Jessie Cox – percussion, voice
Lester St. Louis – cello, voice, small percussion
Luke Stewart – bass, voice, small percussion
Maggie Heath – lighting design
This program is supported, in part, by, public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Additional support is provided by the Diana King Memorial Fund presented by the Charles and Lucille King Family Foundation.
