Sugar Vendil's Antonym Showing

You're invited to a work-in-progress showing of Sugar Vendil's Antonym: the opposite of nostalgia. Antonym is a memoir of a Filipinx American childhood that interweaves music and movement. Excavating insignificant yet indelible experiences, Antonym envisions the future as an escape from pain and ponders how we can possess painful memories without being beholden to them. Using field recordings of New York City throughout the year, the four seasons serve as a cyclical frame and context for memory.

The showing will be followed by an audience talkback/q&a session facilitated by maura nguyễn donohue

Performers/collaborators: flutist Laura Cocks, violinist Cindy Lan, vocalist/dancer Thea Little, composer/choreographer/performer Sugar Vendil, and dancer Annie Wang

photo credit: still from video shot by Jake Laukhuf

Performers

Laura Cocks (she/they)is a New York based flutist who works in a wide array of creative environments as a performer and promoter of contemporary music. Laura is the flutist and executive director of TAK ensemble, and a member of the Nouveau Classical Project and the Association of Dominican Classical Artists. She has performed across the Americas and Europe as a soloist and chamber musician in ensembles such as The London Sinfonietta, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Talea Ensemble, Wet Ink Ensemble, and Ensemble Dal Niente. Laura can be heard with TAK, International Contemporary Ensemble, Wet Ink Ensemble, and others on labels such as Carrier Records, ECM, New Focus Recordings, Sound American, Denovali Records, Orange Mountain Music, and Gold Bolus.

Cindy Lan is a performer and composer from Queens, NY. She began studying the violin under her mother’s tutelage at the age of 7. Adopting the viola in high school, she found a unique voice and expression in the instrument. Since 2019, she has explored the combination of voice, strings, and other things in her project ‘Breath & Bow Meditations’. A graduate of Skidmore College and the Eastman School of Music, she has always found herself in interdisciplinary spaces. She is a pedagogue with over a decade of experience, and the Executive Director and co-principal violist of the Greenwich Village Orchestra.

Thea Little grew up in NYC dancing with NYCB and studying Classical piano for ten years, and she holds MFA and BA degrees in Dance from Hollins and Columbia Universities. Little has composed more than 50 music scores performed internationally and after living in London for a while, Thea returned to NYC where she developed her dance-vocalizing company for 10 years presenting her work at places such as NYU, The Brooklyn Museum, Asia Society and National Sawdust. Little is fascinated with Feng Shui and after receiving her Certification soon, Thea is committed to pioneering the synergy of Feng Shui and performance.

Annie Ming-Hao Wang is a freelancer with training in classical ballet, Graham technique, and Chinese martial arts. In her work, she is searching for a multi-dimensional physicality that is informed by crisscrossing interests in textiles, watercolor painting, storytelling, spatial mathematics, and the immigrant experience. She is a 2022-2024 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence and has also been Artist-In-Residence at Leimay Foundation, BRIC, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the Marble House Project. Annie has been presented by Five Myles, Pioneers Go East, Leimay OUTSIGHT, Brooklyn's Center for Performance Research, the 92Y, the Exponential Festival, and BRIC. Her work, Marigram, about protest movements around the world, was awarded a Brooklyn Arts Council grant. Annie is a company member of Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group and also dances with Same As Sister, Maho Ogawa, and Sugar Vendil.

Sugar Vendil (she/they) is a composer, pianist, and interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn.

About post-show conversation facilitator maura nguyễn donohue

maura nguyễn donohue (she/they) is the director of the MFA in Dance Program at Hunter College/CUNY. She's made work in NYC since 1995 and her ongoing Tides Project uses reclaimed plastics to examine the legacy of bodies ecological and diasporic. She has toured the world playing mortals, monsters and goddesses in La MaMa’s Great Jones Rep Co since 1997 and has written for Danspace Project, Gibney, Dance Magazine, American Theater Magazine and Culturebot. They co-curate the estroGenius festival, serves on the Bessies Steering Committee and thanks the ancestors and offspring for keeping the path clearly lit.