New work in process from LA artists
Originally piloted in 2019, CASUAL provides Los Angeles artists with an opportunity to show a work in process. CASUAL supports artists who are looking to engage in a critical exchange with audiences by presenting their work in the early to mid stages of development. The new work can be loose. Anything between the spark of an idea or an excerpt from a new performance that is ready to be tested for the first time. CASUAL creates a space for experimentation with an engaged and enthusiastic audience that feels useful to the artist’s practice and process.
Read “PEEK BEHIND THE CURTAIN: A CASUAL THEATRE POST-MORTEM” by LAPP’s Marsian De Lellis, William Ruiz Morales, and gina young HERE
MORE ABOUT CASUAL 2024
Co-presented with the Los Angeles LGBT Center on October 19, 2024, CASUAL 2024 featured new works in development by LA artists Vic Marks, Cayla Mae Simpson, CadeMoga with Ironstone, and Anuj Bhutani. The evening moved between ensemble and solo dance, multimedia performance, and genre-fluid live music as artists tested material in real time. Shifting between text, ritual, body horror, and sound, the works offered distinct yet resonant approaches to myth, memory, identity, and care. Together, the program fostered an intimate, interdisciplinary exchange grounded in experimentation and audience engagement.
A Deer Walks into a Dance
Ensemble dance from Victoria Marks
In her ensemble piece A Deer Walks into a Dance, choreographer Victoria Marks investigates audio description as a site of access for the visually impaired that illuminates the profound ramifications of misunderstanding. Reacting to the cryptic parable told by the work’s narrator, four dancers elaborate different interpretations of the same phrases, pointing toward language’s ability to draw and destroy connection in the same breath.
VICTORIA “VIC” MARKS is a choreographer living and working in Los Angeles. A Herb Alpert Award in the Arts recipient, she has also received awards, honors, and fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim and Rauschenberg Foundations. Marks has been making dances for stage and film for more than 40 years. Her work has continuously challenged conventional notions of virtuosity and embraced an expansive view of dance. She is a professor in the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance and Chair of UCLA’s new Disability Studies major.
Phoenix
Solo movement from Cayla Mae Simpson
Phoenix follows the cyclical life of a mythical firebird and her dialogues with Oya, the Yoruba goddess of death and rebirth. Building on questions regarding rest, cosmic rhythms, and the divine feminine, the solo dance presents new mythologies about menstruation and reproductive care. An embodied ritual that honors menstruating people by exploring the womb beyond its reproductive function, Phoenix charts a path toward Indigenous understandings of the human body and its natural cadences.
CAYLA MAE SIMPSON is an interdisciplinary movement artist based in Los Angeles. Raised in Sapello, New Mexico, Simpson grew up on a small farm immersed in agriculture and enchanted by the elements. Her live performances, immersive installations, and dance films explore the profound connections between nature, animism, and technology. Simpson has held fellowships and residencies with the Hemera Foundation, the Marlin Miller Dance Program, and the Institute of Electronic Arts at Alfred University. Her work has been presented at Lincoln Center, the Baltimore Museum of Art, 1969 Gallery, Fosdick-Nelson Gallery, and festivals internationally. She holds degrees in dance performance, film, and media arts from Southern Methodist University.
Property
Multimedia performance from CadeMoga + Ironstone
Property is a three-chapter examination of the mythology and history of cultural cannibalism in Brazil. Taking cues for contemporary body horror and science fiction, duo CadeMoga and Ironstone contemplate flesh eating as a form of queer absorption where those being consumed are beloved and possess desirable, extractible traits. Their psychosexual romp questions if queerness itself is cannibalistic, suggesting that love and consumption share a complicated past oozing with intimacy.
CADEMOGA works across film, poetry, installation, and performance. Originally from Curitiba, Brazil, CadeMoga received their BFA from Otis College of Art & Design after relocating to Los Angeles. Influenced by the intersections of queerness in Body Horror Cinema and Magical Realism in South American Literature, their work seeks to redefine notions like feminism, the erotic, and transmasculinity. CadeMoga’s films, performances, and visual art have been featured at The Venice Biennial, Thessaloniki Queer Arts Festival, Tag!, REDCAT, Film Maudit, LAST Projects, Ben Maltz Gallery, and Galeria Plexi.
manu
Live music from Anuj Bhutani
In his concept album manu, singer-songwriter Anuj Bhutani meditates on intergenerational memory and identity. Culling musical inspirations from his childhood in Texas alongside traditional Indian instruments like the tabla, Bhutani traces connections between genres and experiences that are seemingly worlds apart. The resulting composition blends electronic and acoustic instrumentation to produce a genre-fluid, memory-bending live performance with notes of screamo, electronic, and Indian classical music.
ANUJ BHUTANI is a first-generation Indian-American composer and performer based in Los Angeles. His genre-fluid music incorporates acoustic and electronic instruments and combines visceral grooves, meditative space, and a strong sense of narrative. Bhutani has presented work at venues including National Sawdust, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, So Laboratories, and the Banff Centre. His compositions have been performed by Ashley Bathgate, American Composer’s Orchestra, the University of Southern California’s Thornton Symphony, Metropolis Ensemble, and Khemia Ensemble, among many others. Bhutani holds an MM from the University of Southern California, where he was awarded Outstanding Graduate in Composition, and completed undergraduate studies at both the University of North Texas and University of Texas, Austin.
Experimental musician Anuj Bhutani at CASUAL 2024. Photo by Argel Rojo.
CASUAL is supported in part by the California Arts Council, a state agency. Learn more at www.arts.ca.gov.
PREVIOUS CASUAL EVENTS
October 19, 2024 at LA LGBT Center
Featuring work from Vic Marks, Cayla Mae Simpson, CadeMoga and Ironstone, and Anuj Bhutani
October 22, 2022 at Frankie
Hosted by Anna Luisa Petrisko
Featuring work from Vanessa Hernández Cruz, Jennifer Jonassen, and Ajani Brannum
October 18, 2022 at Frankie
Hosted by Anna Luisa Petrisko
Featuring work from Magnolia Yang Sao Yia and Lydia Li
November 19, 2019 at The Bootleg Theater
Hosted by Marike Splint
Featuring work from Selena Caffey, DaEun Jung, Anya Cloud and Justin Morrison
September 25, 2019 at The Vortex
Hosted by d. Sabela Grimes
Featuring work from Maya Gurantz, Kate Ladenheim, Jinglin Liao, and Isaac Schankler