A New Decade of Dance Films: Screening by Kierah {KIKI} King & Patricia Nguyen with a moderated conversation facilitated by Jenn Po'Chop Freeman.
In Fruitful Devotion (2023), dance choreographer and Columbia College alum Kierah {KIKI} King (b. 1998 Hartford, CT) explores ideas of body and self-intimacy through a lens of Black Queerness, observing and understanding how to authentically love. Fruitful Devotion is currently on view in the LOVE: Still Not the Lesser Museum of Contemporary Photography exhibition through Dec. 22, 2023. Also screening will be King's Act ll Scene ll and Black Women Why. Patricia Nguyen’s (b. 1987, Chicago, IL) newest sensorial experimentation and haptic performance work Creating Worlds with My Mother (2023) features the artist and her mother, Thuy Ta, exploring the aftermath of war, inherited trauma, intergenerational healing, refugee resettlement, and queer worldmaking. This is the premiere of Creating Worlds with My Mother.
Following the screening of the films Jenn Po’Chop Freeman will lead a conversation with the artists and then open it up a Q&A with the audience. KIKI and dancers from Fruitful Devotion will offer a participatory workshop sharing some of the improvisation prompts and scores used to create the movement captured in the film.
About the Artists
Kierah {KIKI} King received their BFA in Dance with a minor in Black World Studies from Columbia College Chicago with the class of 2020. A native of Hartford, Connecticut, KIKI was homeschooled in their family’s café where they learned the power of service, education and creativity as central to life. KIKI’s work in Chicago comes from their passion and commitment for social justice, activism, and community building that present themselves through forms of media, performance, choreographic work and different forms of workshops and events throughout the city of Chicago.
Patricia Nguyen is an artist, scholar, and educator based in Chicago and Charlottesville. She earned her Ph.D. in Performance Studies at Northwestern University. She has performed and exhibited at the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Chile, Prague Quadrennial, Mission Cultural Center in San Francisco, Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Milwaukee Art Museum, Contemporary Arts Network, and Nha San Collective in Vietnam. She is an award-winning memorial designer for the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial Project. Patricia is also the co-founder and lead artist of Axis Lab, a community-based arts and architecture organization focused on inclusive and equitable development for immigrants and refugees.
Chicago-based burlesque artist Jenn Freeman also known as Po’Chop uses elements of dance, storytelling, and striptease to create performances and inspire students and collaborators across the country. Creator and author of the blogzine, The Brown Pages, Po’Chop is a Board Member & Cast Member, for Jeezy’s Juke Joint, an all black burlesque revue, performs on Netflix’s Easy (Season 2), appears in music videos for songs by Jamila Woods and Mykele Deville, and creates and performs experimental dance films such as LITANY. Recognized as a 2022 United States Artist Fellow, a 2021 Foundation of Contemporary Art Artist Grantee, a 2019-2020 Urban Bush Women Choreographic Fellow and a 2018 Chicago Dancemakers Lab Artist, Po’Chop was dancer in residence at Rebuild Foundation in 2020.
About the Museum of Contemporary Photography
A New Decade of Dance Films is part of the Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP)'s current exhibition: LOVE: Still Not the Lesser led by MoCP Associate Curator Asha Iman Veal. Twelve international artists, uniting across communities to share the ways they encounter and understand love, explore dynamics within romantic partnership, sensual eroticism, family structures, social utopia, and life and death. They observe and declare circumstances of love that serve various intentions. The MoCP is a world premier college art museum dedicated to photography. As an international hub, we generate ideas and provoke dialogue among students, artists and diverse communities through groundbreaking exhibitions and programming. Our mission is to cultivate a deeper understanding of the artistic, cultural and political roles of photography in our world today. Founded in 1976 by Columbia College Chicago as the successor to the Chicago Center for Contemporary Photography, the Museum of Contemporary Photography began collecting in the early 1980s and has since grown its collection to include over 16,800 objects by over 1,800 artists. The MoCP is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.
About the American Dancing Bodies Symposium
In 2012 a curricular revolution took place at the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago recognizing the American dancing body as a rich fusion of techniques originating in Africa, Europe and the United States. More than a decade since this transformation at the Dance Center, the impact locally and nationally has been profound. The 2-day American Dancing Bodies Symposium invites dance educators, enthusiasts, practitioners, scholars, and students to explore together the intersectionality of present-day dance: what's now and what's next in dance, on the stage, in the studio, and in the classroom?
