Dance, Contemporary Performance Festival 'American Realness' Returns to Lower East Side

LOWER EAST SIDE, NY — American Realness festival will return for it's eighth year at the Abrons Art Center on the Lower East Side this Thursday. This popular dance and contemporary performance festival will run from Jan. 5-12.

The annual festival is curated and produced by Ben Pryor, in partnership with Abrons Arts Center. The festival began in Jan. 2010 as an effort to promote "new artistic production from socially and aesthetically marginal and subversive artists tearing at the boundaries of form and wrestling with the realities of identity," the press release states.

Over the years, the festival has expanded from three days to one week. This year's festival will feature 50 different performances, which each start and end at a different time so attendees can see various shows.

According to the press release, some of the performances include:

• Carrying Capacity by Mx. Oops / Wendell Cooper: "Mx. Oops / Wendell Cooper performs a multimedia ritual using sound meditation, urban dance, video projection, and rap, within an installation by sculptor Jasmine Murrell; featuring guest choreography and performance by Slim Ninja."
• This is a musical by Karol Tyminski: This is a musical, presents a laboring body in the production of a visceral, discordant and deeply queer electronic fantasy.
• Clap Hands by Jen Rosenblit: "Clap Hands is a mating call, an over-crowded solo, looking to hail, disguise, displace, reveal and track the disappearance of the body."

You can check out the calendar online to see all of the performances offered this year.

Festival-goers can purchase a $100 festival pass, which includes tickets to 6 American Realness performances. Attendees can also purchase passes individually for each show they want to go to.

“Realness coincides with the citywide conference of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters — international curators and producers in the market for new work — which returns each year like a recurring dream, or nightmare, depending on your relationship to the idea of shopping for live art,” wrote Siobhan Burke of The New York Times in her review of the 2016 festival.

Photo by: Michael Korcuska/Flickr