Julius Eastman | 'Gay Guerrilla' and MADBOOTS DANCE
19th June 2018
MADBOOTS DANCE, Scott Shaw
Julius Eastman
As part of NYC Pride 2018, the Joyce Theater presents a choreographic premiere of Gay Guerrilla created by MADBOOTS DANCE, the hyperphysical, provocative, all-male dance company mining topics of male identity and queer culture.
The long-neglected, fiercely original music by Julius Eastman is currently undergoing a rediscovery in the world of dance. Inspired by New York City's downtown scene and gay politics, MADBOOTS DANCE designers Jonathan Campbell and Austin Diaz explore Eastman's '…sublime work'. They feel that 'it's a repainting of an American image that was lost'.
'Julius Eastman is regarded as a brilliant composer as well as a magnetic performer. He was a slender man of medium height and graceful mien. If he wasn't being swish, or doing heavy metal with engineer boots and chains, or in his do-rag, you might think he was just another bookish university intellectual in thick-rimmed glasses and a modified Afro. He changed costume and hairstyles periodically in his quest for identity, appearing toward the end of his life in all white toga-like garb, a tacit proclamation of spiritual endeavor'.
— Renée Levine-Packer, co-editor of Gay Guerrilla: Julius Eastman and His Music
Listen:
Spotify playlist
Watch:
Gay Guerrilla trailer / interview
Tickets:
Joyce Theater
