J.H. Shuǐ Xiān

feral

choreographed by J.H. Shuǐ Xiān in collaboration with performers Jules Bither, Margaret Ogas, Pramila Vasudevan & Rachel Sadie Lieberman

sound mixed by J.H. Shuǐ Xiān using works by Caroline Polachek as CEP & Liz Harris as Grouper

0. feral is an energetic container for heartbreak and layers of grief, loss, and rebirth that accompany it. This dance consists of two concentric circles: the sulking, the eye of the hurricane, the pit in your stomach; and the ghosts, apparitions, gargoyles, guardians that swirl their way around and past us. We hope to hold you, we hope to reflect past selves back to your eyes, we hope to mourn with you, we hope to see newness unveil itself.

1. a cave, cavern, tavern, trail, tunnel, tower, silo, swamp. curtains are pulled. head to cushion. crying yourself to sleep. new year. newark not jfk. jolted. decade, decaying, demons, detrimental, desideratum, destitute, deciding, disregarding, death, den, done. the drugs. the nervous system of a prey animal. the dungeon or the mind. the lies. the sludge. the patio or poolroom. not remembering. avoiding it. inferno, embers, ashes, unsure.

2. (1.5) anxious/avoidant. push/pull.

3. 2. swirl in the mirror. valley that is the deepest you’ve walked in yet. solemnity in foggy seaside town mornings. sweating it out in the sun, saying sorry, screaming to the moon. clubbing. cloaking, closing, clamoring, clarifying, clavicle. cemetery/sanctuary. hurricane/monsoon. mochi/yacht. too soon. tap/flick. too much.

4. (?) Love is endless and unbound.

many thanks to MOVO for their lovely space, Red Eye for the staple that is NW4W, Emily Gastineau & Val Oliveiro for trying on this material in it’s infantile stages and helping me see it through, Fio Adams for the gorgeous photography accompaniment to this dance and to the beloveds in my life who’ve held me through the making of this work. i’m dead chuffed xx

J.H. Shuǐ Xiān is an improviser, choreographer, teaching artist and sound enthusiast based in Minneapolis. She also spins minimal techno as Gilda St Graf & loves going to the beach. She has been researching ritual and meditation through movement, sound, video & prop work for the last several years and is interested in investigating the difference between “making performance” & “creating sensory environments.” J.H. is joyous and appreciative of her star-studded cast for taking this journey into the depths of heartbreak with her.

Jules Bither (they/them) is a trans/non-binary dance artist living and working in southside Minneapolis. Jules was born in Vermont, raised in Minneapolis and studied "Performance and Place" at the Gallatin School at NYU. Jules has deeply enjoyed collaborating with and dancing for Claire King, HIJACK, Laurie Van Wieren, Anna Marie Shogren, Galia Eibenschutz, Chris Schlicting, and GENDER TENDER. They co-founded Good Job, a quarterly Twin Cities dance zine with Eben Kowler and currently create textile art under the name "Dbbl Stndrd." Jules works as the Office and Event Coordinator at Young Dance in St. Paul, MN. They are a punk-adjacent anarchist, DIY purist, yolo-enthusiast and guerrilla archivist.

Growing up, Rachel Sadie Lieberman trained, performed, and taught primarily with Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago. She moved to Minnesota to attend Macalester College, and graduated in 2018 with a BA in Geography. Rachel has since performed in works by Contempo Physical, Leila Awadallah, Off-Leash Area, A Cripple’s Dance, ARENA Dances, Javan Mngrezzo, Annika Johansson, Analog Dance Works, Black Label Movement, and Zoë Koenig. Primarily a movement artist, Rachel also plays in textile arts, textual arts, sound, set, and costume design and construction. She has choreographed work presented by Alternative Motion Project, Franconia Sculpture Garden, Candy Box Dance Festival, Black Label Movement, Threads Dance Project, and the Walker Art Center. Off-stage, Rachel works at Cow Tipping Press, teaching and publishing creative writing by authors with intellectual/developmental disabilities.

Margaret Ogas is a dance artist working at the confluence of movement, storytelling, and experimental performance. Drawing from Chicana sensibilities, queer theory, and diasporic futurisms, her dances weave personal narrative with playful design to foster tender connections with audiences. Ogas is a 2023-2025 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow and was a 2021 Naked Stages Fellow at Pillsbury House + Theatre. Her choreography has been presented throughout the Twin Cities at spaces such as the Walker Art Center, the Southern Theatre, and the Cedar Cultural Center. Her projects have received support from the Minnesota State Arts Board (2024) and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council (2022, 2023, 2024). Beyond her choreographic work, Margaret is a dedicated teaching artist, freelance performer, and grant writer. She holds a BFA in Dance from the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities. 

Pramila Vasudevan is of Tamil descent and has been living and working in the Twin Cities, in Mni sota Makoce, for the past twenty-plus years. Pramila Vasudevan is grateful for the opportunity to perform in Judee’s piece, feral. In the last five years she has performed in her own projects and also works by Valerie Oliveiro, Chitra Vairavan, and Laurie Van Wieren.

Preshow artist credits:

Thursday: Tegan and Sara, Clairo, Laura Marling, Elliott Smith, Jessica Pratt, Fleetwood Mac, Broken Social Scene

Friday: Billie Holiday, Townes Van Zandt, Neko Case, PJ Harvey, Mazzy Star, Edith Frost, Broadcast, Julie Doiron

Saturday: Dusty Springfield, Emmylou Harris, Doris Duke, Crystal Gayle, Townes Van Zandt, Connie Smith, Karen Dalton, Colter Wall, The Verge

Postshow artist credits:

Bow: Caroline Polachek

Friday engagement: Sophie & Cecile Believe, Troye Sivan, Solange, Heiko Voss, kitty ray, Charli XCX, Shygirl, yeule, Tegan & Sara

Charles Campbell

Making Monsters

Performers: Akiko, Erika Hansen, Megan Mayer

Costumes and direction: Charles Campbell

Lights: Heidi Eckwall

Sound: Mike Hallenbeck

For over 20 years, I have been exploring questions of power, coercion, political violence, and the effects they have on our society as reflected in the individual and the personal. This piece marks the beginning explorations of a question that has recently come violently into broader awareness through the grabbing of people off the street without warning by unidentified representatives of the state and sending them to foreign prisons: what constitutes a person's humanity? From that arises other questions, including: how do we see other people, and how does that inform what we are authorized to do? 

Last year I read a book called Making Monsters: The Uncanny Power of Dehumanization by the American philosopher of psychology, David Livingstone Smith. It seemed relevant. Tonight's performance is a tributary to the river of a larger project on these themes slated to take place next May. You can sign up to receive updates at skewedvisions.org.

I want to recognize two other excellent artists, Masanari Kawahara and Jess Kiel-Wornson, who are taking part in this larger project. Their presence won't be seen tonight, but their work deeply informs everything here.

Thanks to Susan McKinnell for your partnership in so much for so long.

Akiko is a multimedia story teller, teaching artist, curator, and activist. She has been creating both visual and performance art since 2016. She uses poetry, music, dance, collage, and puppetry. She creates art to reflect her time, and the narrative of immigrant women of color. She aims to create a shared language within her community to collectively resist the oppressive system.

Charles Campbell has been making original performance works in various disciplines since 1998 and he is a founder of both Skewed Visions and Fresh Oysters Performance Research. skewedvisions.org

Heidi Eckwall is a lighting designer whose work in dance, theater and performance spans several decades. She has toured with Nora Chipaumire, Urban Bush Women, Rosy Simas, Emily Johnson, BodyCartography Project and Hijack, and she teaches Lighting Design at Colorado College.  Heidi has worked with Charles for years and years.

Mike Hallenbeck is a sound designer and composer. Recent years have seen collaborations with animators (Merit Thursday, CC Stanhill, John Akre), filmmakers (Kevin Obsatz, Kari Jo Skogquist, Natalie Peracchio), and music artists (mix engineering for composers Andy McCormick of Dreamland Faces and Dan Dukich, plus hip hop artist Lucky Tiger, singer-songwriter Matt Gladue, and Hallenbeck’s own band 10 Items or Fewer). He designed sound for puppeteer Oanh Vu’s productions “Phantom Loss” and “Chim Lac (Lost Bird)”, the latter with the MN Opera, and executed voiceover engineering, original musical score, and audio post on Skewed Visions’ recent podcast “Impossible Performances” (available everywhere). Mike Hallenbeck home page: coolcataudio.com

Erika Hansen is inspired by the unconventional. Erika has worked with Charles Campbell since 2018. In the Twin Cities she has performed in works by Angharad Davies, Laura Holway, Leslie O’Neill, Deborah Jinza Thayer|Movement Architecture, Sandy Silva, April Sellers and others. Throughout MN, she continues to perform in JG Everest’s Sound Gardens in parks, nature centers and once on the shore of Lake Superior. In addition to her performance career, Erika has worked in various roles as an arts administrator.

Megan Mayer I am an award-winning artist who has worked in Minneapolis for 35+ years in choreography, dance, experimental video and photography. An occasional curator and educator, I have an appetite for patience and subtle shifts in the body. I am curious about the tension between onstage and offstage and how the body organizes around its nervous system. I've had the good fortune to perform in Charles Campbell's work since 2009. Prior to the current fascist devaluation of artists' worth, my work received support through two McKnight Foundation Fellowships in Choreography, numerous national and regional choreographic residencies including NCC (Akron, OH) and MANCC (Tallahassee, FL), grants from Jerome Foundation, MRAC and MSAB, various commissions and generous private philanthropists. www.meganmayer.com

NW4W Embedded Writer

In 2025, current OMNIVERS artist and New Works 4 Weeks alumnus José A. Luis joins the festival as embedded writer. His writing practice, titled “Reflections,” meets the festival through a series of pieces surrounding the public performances.

New Works 4 Weeks Continues!