This summer and fall has brought so many wonderful performance collaborations, I haven't always had a chance to share. I wanted to take a moment to highlight a few artists you should know and meaningful community-centered projects to delve deeper into.
Chromic Duo
Chromic Duo is composer-performer music duo Lucy Yao and Dorothy Chan. Lucy is wearing NOT Parallel Neck Top and Dorothy is in the Single Cord Top. Recent grand prize winners of the Concert Artists Guild, Chromic Duo blends classical music, toy piano, and electronics into genre fluid performances and installations. This summer, they partnered with Gesso App (I love this audio tour app for exploring cities and museums, highly recommend!) and NY Philharmonic's Young Composers Program to create an augmented audio walk around Lincoln Center. Learn more about Emerald Futures here.
Save the date for their upcoming performance at Joe's Pub on November 23. More details here: https://publictheater.org/productions/joes-pub/2021/m/miki-sawada--chromic-duo/
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Danielle Russo "Final Notice"
If you happened to be around Williamsburg or Red Hook on one weekend in September (or thought you were watching Squid Game come to life) , you may have spotted these eye-catching dancers making their way down the streets. Featured in the news by News12 and CBS, "Final Notice" is a project spearheaded by choreographer and activist Danielle Russo, which I designed costumes for. This traveling dance piece, accompanied by a new collaboratively built mobile app, traced the increasing floodplain in the affected neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Red Hook due to climate change.
For more on the app and research, visit www.finalnoticebk.com. Enjoy a video of the performance paired with music from NY Choral Society below.
Del Sol Quartet "Angel Island Project"
I had the immense pleasure of designing the outfits for Del Sol Quartet for the Angel Island premiere at Angel Island and Presidio Theater.
Between 1910 and 1940, as new immigrants flowed into Angel Island inside the San Francisco Bay, Chinese immigrants faced massive discrimination due to the Chinese Exclusion Act. Being held for sometimes up to years in brutal conditions in this detention center, many immigrants looked for solace by inscribing poetry into the wood walls. Composed by Huang Ruo, Angel Island - Oratorio for voice and strings brings these poems to life, weaving a story of immigration, discrimination and confinement, bringing history into the reality of our current lives.
Discover more about the project including video interviews and history here, and a feature on NPR here.