ABOUT THIS EVENT 

TRAP DOOR uses narrative device, sound and movement to explore Trans politics of visibility and abstraction. Mortality, bodily precarity and embodiment are problematized as ways of seeing and being seen, ignored, clocked and passing. TRAP DOOR exists as a performance project with spoken word, live music and sculpted video elements. 
 
After TRAP DOOR at Steppenwolf Jude Gallery will be hosting an exhibition with recordings from the performance. Check out their website for more details.


The Friday, Janauary 13th performance of TRAP DOOR is sold out. Standby tickets may be available for purchase at the door starting one hour before the performance. 

 

About Nereida Patricia

Nereida Patricia (b. 1996, New York) is a visual artist and poet based in Brooklyn, NY. Patricia’s practice spans sculpture, painting and performance, and explores themes of mythology, trans poetics and identity. Her work draws from postcolonial and Black feminist theory, Peruvian and Caribbean symbolism, as well as autobiographical fragments, to explore trans femininity, violence, gender, race and sexual politics. She has studied at The New School and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute Chicago. Her work has been exhibited at venues at DUPLEX, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit; Eric Firestone Gallery, New York; Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago; Prairie Gallery, Chicago; Annka Kultys Gallery, London; the Museum of the Moving Image, Queens and The Knockdown Center, Queens, among others. 

 

About Asante Owusu-Brafi

The transdisciplinary practice of Asante Owusu-Brafi emerges through performance, fashion, sound, sculpture and electronics, mapping connections and dislocations within memory. The corpus of Owusu-Brafi’s work lives as a mediation between waste management and the ephemeral space of the body. Owusu-Brafi is currently collaborating in music composition, filmmaking and poetry.

Instagram @memorywelder instagram.com/memorywelder

 

About Lileana Pryde Davis Moore

Lileana is an artist, filmmaker and performer seeking to unite our inner worlds with the outward. She invites you to climb inside her heart if you promise to leave things where you found it. She is born and raised in Chicago, IL. 

 

About Angel Bat Dawid

Composer, clarinetist, singer & spiritual jazz soothsayer Angel Bat Dawid descended on Chicago's jazz & improvised music scene just a few years ago. In very short time, the potency, prowess, spirit & charisma of her cosmic musical proselytizing has taken her from relatively unknown improviser to borderline ubiquitous performer in Chicago's avant-garde. On any given night you can find Angel adding aura to ensembles led by Ben LaMar Gay, or Damon Locks, or Jaimie Branch, or Matthew Lux, or even, on a Summer night in 2018, onstage doing a woodwind duo with Roscoe Mitchell.

 

About Emily Yan Neale

Emily Yan Neale is a movement artist, multidisciplinary performer, model and somatic wellness instructor. Raised by a Chinese mother and Armenian-English father, Emily's most natural means of expression is channeled through the languages of dance, music and creative performance. Her pre-professional training is complex and abundant, having studied under classical ballet masters like Gelsey Kirkland and Edward Ellison, while absorbing contemporary influences from Hubbard Street Dance and Alonzo King's LINES Ballet. She danced professionally with Ballet West for 6 voluminous seasons, and retired from the company in 2021 as a Soloist. Since re-locating to Chicago, Emily has received a 200-HR Yoga Teacher Certification, and guides movement classes of her own personal healing design, known as Movement Meditation, with a central focus of nurturing the mind, body and spiritual connection.


About Jarais Musgrove 

Jarais Musgrove is a Chicago-based, multidisciplinary performer and writer from Joliet, IL. They are a BFA recipient in Musical Theater with a dance concentration from Roosevelt University’s Theater Conservatory. Jarais has been seen in productions at regional theaters such as Paramount Theater (Newsies), Drury Lane Theater (An American in Paris), and Chicago Shakespeare Theater (A Midsummer Night’s Dream). More recently, an excerpt from their poetry e-book titled As Quiet as It’s Kept was featured in The Chicago Reader’s Poetry Corner, and they can be seen dancing in music videos for musical artists such as Vasil Garvanliev. Jarais is currently collaborating and studying with other artists and professors to develop a multi medium healing modality.


IG: @jaraisdotcom 


About Ishmael Ali 

Ishmael Ali is a first generation Filipino-Arab-American cellist, guitarist, improviser, composer and electronic artist currently residing in Chicago. His work centers on exploring sound through improvisation, experimentation, collaboration, as well as a wide array of idiomatic approaches in an ever-changing, always-growing list of projects with diverse focuses and influences.Though varying drastically from group to group, a common thread in his work is the juxtaposition of seemingly disparate elements to create something new: both foreign and familiar.

Frequent collaborators include Bill Harris, Jeff Kimmel, Eli Namay, Je’raf, Fred Jackson, Avreeayl Ra, Adam Shead, Wills McKenna, Jakob Heinemann, Timothée Quost, Aaron Quinn, and Deric Dickens. In addition, Ishmael has played or recorded with Jim Baker, Ed Wilkerson, Carol Genetti, Peter Maunu, Josh Berman, Andrew Scott Young, Johanna Brock, Abhilasha Chebolu, David Leon, Raf Vertessen, and many others.

Content Advisory

Steppenwolf does not offer advisories about subject matter, as sensitivities vary from person to person. If you have any questions about content, age-appropriateness or stage effects (such as strobe lights or theatrical fog) that might have a bearing on patron comfort, please contact the box office at 312-335-1650.

Ticket Pricing

The $15 ticket price for TRAP DOOR is for BIPOC/NB invidiuals

Content Advisory

Steppenwolf does not offer advisories about subject matter, as sensitivities vary from person to person. If you have any questions about content, age-appropriateness or stage effects (such as strobe lights or theatrical fog) that might have a bearing on patron comfort, please contact the box office at 312-335-1650.

Ticket Pricing

The $15 ticket price for TRAP DOOR is for BIPOC/NB invidiuals