Bri Blakey

remembering future mornings - again and again

Materials of Time Travel, A Guide:
Log #1

You come to know things differently when you're folded between time like this, your mind may give you a way—like a day to a plan. So you can come back to this note often, add to it if there is something I forget.

It is important to remember that this is about listening, with skin and thread. That this is about quilting, which is about memory. That it is about the moon, and its life between morning and night (and its life when we can’t see it). That it is about the well of perpetual sadness that sits at the bottom of your throat, and the everyday ritual of dredging up hope. That it is about granny’s dining table, and the first person you sat with as they died. That traveling through time makes your fingers tingle and your head woosh. You may begin to remember less of yourself and more of everyone else, that is okay, memory will bend back toward you at some point. In the meantime collect things, let them remember for you. 

Good luck, bend your knees, go slow.

Bri Blakey is a Twin Cities-based interdisciplinary artist and dance/movement therapist whose work is rooted in dance, somatic practices, and philosophies of care. Drawing on a variety of other mediums—including fiber art, poetry, set design, and collage—her work acts as a form of world-building and archiving, particularly through the lens of her Black and queer identity. Deeply invested in the relational aspects of creating and living, her work also seeks to foster restorative and connective experiences between people, other creatures, places, and times. Her work has been supported by and presented at Arts On Site, Remy Theater (NY), and Minnesota Fringe Festival. She studied Dance at St. Olaf College, and earned an MS Dance/Movement Therapy from Sarah Lawrence College.

Thank you to Red Eye for facilitating a space for making. Thank you to my cohort members who have been generous with their wisdom and enriching with their spirits! 

*This work is informed by my work as a therapist and the grief I hold with myself and others. I want to express big gratitude to the people with whom I have traveled in time, the daily practice of mourning and moving forward is perilous and courageous

snem DeSellier

talk to me like THIS:

snem - writer, creator/cartographer, performer

onionn - performer, video

(plus focus group participants for their time, wisdoms, insights, and encouragement)

how much can you fit in the between

do they have patience for

can you guard against

do you / can you / will you expose

talk to me like THIS:

Sometimes you know the care you need/want to receive and sometimes you cannot ask for it in the moment - how can we asynchronously record and offer those plans to our dear ones?

What are some of the complexities between emergency responses, bystanders, legal mandates, etc when someone refuses care they know won’t serve them?

If you could be the one offering you care in moments others decide is a crisis (or don’t), how would you offer? talk to me like THIS:

How do you want to be talked about when you are in the other room and your friends are discussing the plan of support you might need?

Could we adapt emergency contact forms to include more nuance, esp in case of somewhat expected chronic crises?

talk to me like THIS:

in this iteration, we are ? beginning ? 

this is the seed of “okay, so answer it yourself”

we are still in conversation we are in relation 

we are iterating and adapting to external and internal feedback

it’s as much a practice of trusting i’ll show up as it is trusting i don’t have to

when the thing feels right, i try to let it stay

talk to me like THIS:

if you have something to say back or want to attend a focus group where we delve in deeper and you try answering some of these questions - from any angles or positions you know - you can RSVP here.

snem DeSellier is a wiggly idea raised by the long tidal river and ghosts of western massachusetts. They are stubborn, they are slow, they are blowing a million seasons through their body at any given moment. Here along these rivers they have created/designed/performed work in various rhythms with Lightning Rod, 20% Theatre Company, Body Watani Dance, Red Eye Theater, 9x22 Dance/Lab, Playwrights’ Center, Pillsbury House + Theatre (2023 Naked Stages Fellow), and Wonderlust Productions. They build for a future of transdisciplinary stretching and translational medicine that has capacity for the wide and complex bodies of those they love, those they are, and those they don’t yet know. They are here for the misaligned misattuned immeasurable ones.

long before being in minneapolis, onionn came from a small rocky island in maine. onionn is a professional child - a sometimes filmmaker and animator - a multi-media collage artist - queer+trans. they value play and gentle listening and small scraps and bodily autonomy. they value learning and nature and repair. their making is often quiet and close to home but you perhaps saw them dancing with the clouds during the Art Shantys 2025 or maybe saw that one video featured virtually through the Walker in 2020. and perhaps you will see them again somewhere soon.

Thank you Bevibel for projection care and dreaming, thank you Rachel for sound file wrangling, Cat/Milo and Rivers for early draft support, MOVO for being a site of conversation, and this WIP cohort for stabilizing the last 6 months in this landscape of making and recalibrating.

D Hunter

It's Inside

1. In a dance club, a young man is taken by a young woman, Marty, for casual sex. The man dies afterwards, and Marty leaves the room as a man. FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are called to the scene; Mulder believes that the man's death was caused by a fatal dose of pheromones.
-Wikipedia’s plot synopsis of “Gender Bender”, season 1 episode 14 of The X-Files

2. You know that scene in The Fly where Seth Brundle, played by Jeff Goldblum, peels his fingernails off? I’ve had a nail ripped off by my acrylics twice and once the bleeding stops and the throbbing goes away, having bare nail bed isn’t that bad. I don’t know why we have fingernails when the nail bed seems just fine on its own and fingernails are so vulnerable and painful when fucked with. If it were up to me I wouldn’t have fingernails at all and I’d never worry about them breaking again.

3. A Republican state lawmaker in Alabama was caught looking at transgender porn online, just a week after he voted in favor of a bill that attacks transgender minors’ access to lifesaving health care.
-”Alabama Republican busted looking at trans adult pics online after voting against trans rights,” March 9, 2021

D Hunter is a Minneapolis-based performance artist from Arizona. D’s work is interested in how surveillance and voyeurism affect the queer body, and the horror and ecstasy and absurdity of having a body at all. D is inspired by yarn bombers, powerlifters, zombies, and more. Since moving to Minneapolis, D has had the opportunity to perform for Shane Larson in Arena Dance’s Candy Box Dance Festival, Morgan Thorson in the Great Northern Festival and the Dark Sky Festival, and for Taja Will and Mathew Janczewski in the Cowles Center Merge in March. D is excited and very grateful to be involved in the Works-in-Progress program.

Thank you to everyone at Red Eye for the opportunity and support. Thank you to MOVO for the beautiful studio space. Thank you to the other WIP artists for being vulnerable and courageous and thoughtful throughout this process. Thank you to my loved ones for not letting me quit.  

Jess Kiel-Wornson

Hymn to Elsewhere(s), an excerpt

Collaborators: Alice Shindelar, Erika Hansen, Emma Dvorak

This work is a collage.

These are not new ideas. 

This work is part of something larger. Please join later for the larger-ness.

Story the first:

When Aunt Em came there to live she was young, pretty. The sun and wind had changed her, too. They had taken the sparkle from her eyes and left them a sober gray; they had taken the red from her cheeks and lips, and they were gray also. She was thin and gaunt, and never smiled now. When Dorothy first came to her, Aunt Em had been so startled by the child’s laughter that she would scream and press her hand upon her heart whenever Dorothy’s merry voice reached her ears; and she still looked at the little girl with wonder that she could find anything to laugh at.

Uncle Henry never laughed. He worked hard from morning till night and did not know what joy was. He was gray also, from his long beard to his rough boots, and he looked stern and solemn, and rarely spoke.

– The Wizard of Oz, Frank Baum, 1900

Story the second:

Gert put her arm round his neck, and looked into his eye, but she could see nothing. But it was not gone; it was one of those bits of the looking-glass—the ugly glass which made everything great and good appear small and ugly, while all that was wicked and bad became more visible, and every little fault could be plainly seen.

– The Snow Queen, Hans Christian Anderson, 1844 (maybe)

Story the third:

“I don’t see why we need boys at all. They’re so loud.”

“We need boys, so that we can grow up, get married, and turn into shadows.”

– Uncle Buck, John Hughes, 1989

Story the fourth:

“...Those shining eyes trouble her heart more painfully than the flames which will soon consume her body to ashes. Can the fire of the heart be extinguished in the flames of the funeral pile?”

“I don’t understand that at all,” said little Gert.

“That is my story,” said the tiger-lily.

– The Snow Queen, Hans Christian Anderson, 1844 (maybe)

Story the fifth:

Caretaking, the reparative, making life more livable and humane for us all—all of these things matter enormously. But, for better or worse, they are not everything. For many—perhaps even most—life feels more ample, more livable, “wider and more various,” when it doesn’t reduce to one long episode of caretaking and repair. It feels good when it has more texture, more space for different kinds of pursuits, compulsions, and delights, even those with no apparent use value. 

To those who would scoff at such a characterization as sentimental enchantment, or who have come to see art as just another bankrupt concept or damaging tributary of capital, I offer no rebuttal, save a reminder that it can be other things too—things that to some of us matter as much or more than the fruits of demystification. 

– On Freedom, Maggie Nelson, 2021

Story the sixth:

“I often give myself such very good advice. But I very seldom follow it.”

– Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll, 1865

Story the seventh:

“I don't know why, but every now and again in my life, for no reason at all...I need you, all of you.”

– The Labyrinth, Terry Jones, 1986

Jess Kiel-Wornson is, among other things, an interdisciplinary artist. Grounded and rescued by feminist and performance theories, she considers the everyday stuff of our lives: the regular, low-brow, foolish, and forgotten, as tools to reimagine a deeply oppressive systemic world. In visual art, performance, and text, she gathers and merges unfinished and broken pieces into webs, considering, as Audre Lorde said, how old ideas might feel in new situations. She and her artwork demand criticality and emotionality in enormous measure, as forms of essential resistance to supremacist culture. Recent collaborations include Echo: We are Imperfect Mortal Beings (April Sellers Dance Collective, 2025), It's Physical (Jennifer Glaws and Jagged Moves, 2024) and Mariology (Nancy Keystone and Critical Mass Performance Group, 2023). Jess is delighted by the exercise of being a trusted but unreliable narrator of her own life.

Alice Shindelar is a nonbinary author + filmmaker currently seeking a festival premiere for her narrative feature film The Last Movie They Ever Made. She has written short stories, poetry, and screenplays, and directed narrative shorts, documentaries, and virtual reality experiences. She is the Creative Director of YouVisit Studios, an immersive content studio under the umbrella of EAB Agency. Alice is the recipient of a Jerome Foundation VERVE grant for spoken word, and has had her short stories featured in independent online markets and zines. Alice was an Austin Film Festival Finalist for her script Dandelion Manor, and won the Columbia Bluelist for her hour-long TV drama Sweetland. Her VR documentary Four Walls, featuring Rashida Jones, premiered at the Vanity Fair Summit and was honored with a Webby. Her short films have been optioned by AMC, won multiple awards, garnered over 20,000 views on YouTube, and screened at festivals around the world. Alice has previously worked as the Program Manager for Film Fatales. She graduated from Columbia University School of the Arts with an MFA in film directing. 

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 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.

Thank you to Lexi Marie, Diana Marie, and Emily Murrie. Thank you to Ezra, Edith, and Llewy, who are brave. And to Alice Ann, Bri, D, Taylor, and snem, who are brilliant and hold me.

Taylor West

Lagniappe Yearning

*Lagniappe: a cajun word meaning “a little something extra”

Sound composer/collaborator: Farai Malinaga

Witnessing the fulfillment of a prophecy centuries in the making. We knew it would arrive, yet its realization still amazes.

I awaken

Almost as if (re)-living a tumultuous labor

A steady undercurrent of disorientation

These creatures witness with an intensity that beams into my core

The expectancy in their gaze is impossible to ignore

Taylor West is a Black dancer, choreographer, and teacher originally from Chitinacha (New Orleans). She holds a BFA in dance from Florida State University and has performed works by Millicent Johnnie, Christopher Huggins, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. Taylor also works as an artistic and production collaborator with Brownbody. She was a dancer for Theatre Mu’s 2025 world premiere of Ankita Raturi’s play Fifty Boxes of Earth, directed by KT Shorb and choreographed by Ananya Chatterjea. Taylor’s own work is rooted in explorations of identities and embodied histories, with Blackness forever at the core. She has presented her work at the Center for Performance Research in Brooklyn New York, MODArts Dance Collective’s Collective Thread Festival in Harlem, and most recently at the Black Dance Improvisation Festival 2025 presented by Leslie Parker Dance Project at Mixed Blood Theatre.

Farai Malianga, born and raised in Zimbabwe, began his career in African Dance in Colorado with Leticia Williams’s Harambee and Musical Director Judy “Fatu” Henderson. Upon arriving in New York he began studying dance and drum with pioneers Yousouf Koumbasa, Mbemba Bangoura, and Ronald K. Brown. Performing with the Masters; Chuck Davis in BAM’s “Dance Africa,” Reginald Yates and Heritage O.P. for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre for their 40th Anniversary. In Theatre; “Darker Faces of the Earth” directed by Trezana Beverley and on the Broadway Stage in the musical “Fela!” and appearing in the Kasi Lemmon’s film “Black Nativity.” In 2021 he performed for the Public Theater in their Shakespeare in the Park reimagining of “Merry Wives of Windsor” and the HBO documentary “Reopening Night” cataloguing the return to Central Park. Malianga's composition credits include commissioned works for Camille Brown, Karen Love’s Umoja, Christal Brown’s Inspirit Dance Companies, Leslie Parker Dance Project and "Jenaguru," an African Creation Myth for the Smithsonian. Dance Documentary’s “Black Stains” and Kehinde Ishangi’s “Not My Enemy” produced and edited by Tiffany Rhynard. Farai Malianga is an Assistant Proffesor at Florida State University with a focus on Music for dance and choreography.

Deep gratitude to my WIP cohort, the producers cohort, the Red Eye team, and my friends for their support. Gratitude always to my family and to NOLA; you will always be home for me.

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!