Photo credit: Careem A. Gilbert

Jermaine Rowe (he/him/his) is the Associate Director of the newly anticipated Watch Night which will open in the premier season of the Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center in Fall 2023. His original musicals includes The Legend of the Rolling Calf which got selected for the The TEAM Perti Development lab for Spring 2024. His other work The Children from the Blue Mountain was recently presented at the Lincoln Center’s Performing Arts library “Broadway Future songbook series.” His most recent performing role, Mlima in Lynn Nottage’s Mlima’s Tale, won him the CT Circle Award for Acting (Westport Country Playhouse). His Broadway credits include: The Lion King and Fela.

Transitions explores community’s decision to allow a trans spirit access the land of the dead. The work is inspired by a real life incident of a transwoman in Jamaica. Using dance, music, projection design, storytelling and a live DJ Transition (DJgazatwin) audiences will be invited into a contemporary Jamaican A Ni-night – a folkloric ritual usually performed on the 9th Night after the passing of a family/community member (wake).

Photo credits: Yoko Murakami by Bernardo Gasparini; Maria Takeuchi by Maria Takeuchi

Murakami x Takeuchi

Yoko Murakami (she/her/hers) is a Tokyo-born and NYC-based movement artist. She explores ways to activate and question the way we interact with our environments, through site-specific installations and multi-disciplinary collaborations. Her new venture into experimental film has led her works to be screened in numerous international film festivals.

Maria Takeuchi, aka ÉMU, (she/her/hers) is an audiovisual artist who creates sonic and visual poems, merging organismic soundscapes with generative art and illuminating objects inspired by nature. Her latest piece, “ENN,” is an immersive dome installation with interactive particles and spatialized sound at Satosphere for SAT artist residency.

membrane | 虚実皮膜 is a collaboration between movement artist Yoko Murakami and audiovisual artist Maria Takeuchi using motion-tracking technology. The work is inspired by the theory of “Kyojitsu Himaku,” in which the truth of the art lies in the fine line between artistic fiction and fact. This “membrane” will be represented by a translucent screen in the space, the line in which duality will be explored. The movement performance will be captured by a motion tracking sensor and illuminated by bio-inspired generative visuals, accompanied by an original score to create a transporting experience.

Photo credit: September Dawn Bottoms

Naima Lowe (she/her/hers) is a Black queer disabled writer and artist who creates films, performances and texts using improvisational and collaborative strategies rooted in the alchemic survival practices known as Black cultural production. She earned her BA from Brown University and MFA from Temple University where she was a Student Academy Award Finalist for her experimental nonfiction film Birthmarks. Birthmarks also won Best Experimental Film at The Newark Black Film Festival, Best Sound Design at the NextFrame International Student Film Festival and in 2020 received the Duke University Archive of Documentary Arts Collection Awards, where it is now part of the permanent collection.

Late Bloomer is a poetic musical performance about love, longing and ambition written and performed by Naima Lowe, with a highly improvised punk-jazz musical score co-created with musicians kara lynch and Jordan Wright, and with direction by Asher Hartman. As the Late Bloomer, Naima embodies a heightened version of herself experiencing various stages of a secret, unrequited love affair with an unseen and unknowable figure known as “the old man who has agreed to be the human embodiment of her ambition” or simply “Ambition.” Ambition is charming, elusive, and may or may not be a figment of the Late Bloomer’s imagination. Combining tactics from experimental theater, improvisational music, spoken-word poetry and physical comedy, Late Bloomer is about a monstrously beautiful body and soul embracing its multiplicity and sexual power by growing ever bigger, badder and more willing to risk it all in the name of love.

Photo credit: Ahmed Gaber

Nava Derakhshani (she/her/hers) is a New York-based mixed-media artist. Born to Iranian parents in eSwatini, her work explores themes of migration, identity, belonging, gender, and the natural environment. She holds a BA in architecture from the University of Cape Town. Her Master’s in Sustainable Development took her to rural Ethiopia where she used photography and oral histories to explore spiritual ties to farming and conservation. Her practice is influenced by her experience in low-cost eco-housing and urban design, as well as her NGO and grassroots work in human rights, social justice, and sustainability. Her work has been presented at the Johannesburg International Art Fair, the UN FAO Rome headquarters, Cape Town Queer Feminist Film Festival, the Washington Post, Lensscratch, and Aint-Bad Magazine, among others.

In Meet Me Between Tehran and Mbabane, artist Nava Derakhshani invites you to her global-diaspora experience of belonging between these two cities. The first being her mother’s birthplace in Iran and the second her own in Eswatini, Africa.
The show uses shadow play for world-building, while Persian and African dance styles come together in collaborative fusion. Expanding on themes of migration and loss, the work speaks to the Woman Life Freedom movement in Iran. It integrates storytelling from the artist’s mother and khaleh (aunt) while using protest chants from the streets of Iran. The performance is animated by live piano and percussion, where dance is conceptualized as a form of spiritual resistance.
Tea will be served after the show.