Pioneers Go East Collective presents the second edition of the Out-FRONT! Festival. Centering LGBTQ and feminist voices, the festival features the work of artists exploring bold new performance modes for a lively exchange of art and culture. 

The 2024 festival features performances by Arthur Aviles and Collaborators, Joey Kipp with Pioneers Go East Collective, Christopher Unpezverde Núñez, Jason Anthony Rodriguez, Paz Tanjuaquio, Ogemdi Ude, and Annie MingHao Wang, as well as films by Fana Fraser, Omega X and Danni, and Tourmaline. The festival will also include two workshops: a teen voguing workshop with Jason Anthony Rodriguez, and a storytelling through dance workshop for older adults taught by Magda Kaczmarska. 

Paz Tanjuaquio / TOPAZ ARTS Dance Productions

Silweta (World Premiere)

Friday, January 19, at 7pm, and Saturday, January 20, at 6pm

Abrons Arts Center Playhouse

TOPAZ ARTS Dance Productions will premiere an evening-length dance, Silweta, choreographed and performed by Paz Tanjuaquio with a trio of guest performers, and created in collaboration with sound and visual artist Todd B. Richmond. With Silweta, based on silhouette images of traditional dance forms of the Philippines, Tanjuaquio traces a distant dance in her ongoing process of creating new movement. Behind the silhouettes, Tanjuaquio explores cultural connections, migration, and displacement. Inspired by various texts, including Dead Stars, a short story by her namesake Paz Márquez-Benítez, in which the idea that light from dead stars still shine can be a metaphor for lives lost and a presence of culture that resonates within our bodies. Silweta brings to light edges of a distant dance, tracing the outer limits of our connected lives. The work includes Petroglyph by Indigenous composer Brent Michael Davids, a digital dance of silhouettes made with Onome Ekeh will also be incorporated within the performance.