Performance “The Ruthless Cosmopolitan: Apotropaios”
COVID 19 Protocols
All attendees must provide one of the following: proof of up-to-date vaccination, including a booster when eligible; a negative result from a PCR test taken within three days before arrival; or a negative result from a rapid test taken the same day. Masks must be worn in concert and lecture venues and are encouraged and optional elsewhere indoors. For more information on the New School’s Covid-19 safety protocols, please visit the website.
Starring interdisciplinary artist Chelsea Steinberg Gay’s alter-ego drag persona, The Ruthless Cosmopolitan, this one-night-only performance combines elements of contemporary dance, hip hop, Yiddishkeit, drag, ballroom, color theory, and queer activism. Apotropaios is a protective amulet realized through the sublimation of ancestral rituals and the queering of folkloric Jewish femme narratives.
Conceived specifically for the Tishman Auditorium at The New School, accompanied by multimedia video and sound integration, and featuring live DJ mixes, Apotropaios reinvents ritual, sublimates ceremonial objects and practices, and roots down into Ruthless’s unequivocal New York Jewess drag persona to excavate familiar moments that are then distorted and decontextualized. The work culminates in a monumental crescendo of immersive visual, terpsichorean, auditory, and emotional content.
Apotropaios manifests, recognizes, and dissolves the restrictive confines surrounding ancient and contemporary gender identities. Together the dancers embody, personalize, reveal and deconstruct each of the six genders identified in Jewish biblical, mystical, and exegetical sources.
A one-night-only performance, The Ruthless Cosmopolitan: Apotropaios is the result of collaborations with multidisciplinary artist Austin Casebolt, polymath performer and vogue femme dancer Carlos Zipactonal Martinez of the Royal House of Nina Oricci, contemporary dancers Theo Armstrong, Paris Cullen, and Arien Wilkerson, choreographer Rebecca Pappas, and turntablist and producer Amore Querida.
The performance is presented by Ruthless Cosmopolitan Productions, New York, in partnership with the Parsons School of Design, Intlx Productions, and The New School for Social Research.
Time: 7:30 PM — 11:30 PM EST
Free!
