Chicago Performs | cat mahari, blk ark: the impossible manifestation

Creator/Director/Performer/Visuals | cat mahari
Performer/DJ | Jarius King
Sound composition | Regina Martinez
New Media Art design | MORAKANA
Lighting design/Visual | Giau Minh Truong
Technical director/Visual | Tiago Velho
Costume designer | Michael Kelley
Producer | La Mar Brown

cat mahari‘s practice is built from a richly layered body history, stemming from an archive of research, physical training, and an intent to manifest an intellectual, material, and informal legacy of Black liberation through documentation. By examining personal marks and socio-genealogical maps, she explores inner and outer environments. She is a 2023 MAP Fund microgrant recipient, and a 2022 Foundation for the Arts Emergency grantee for blk ark: the impossible manifestation. Her upcoming works include the film Sugar in the Raw, a surrealist-inspired exploration of Black intimacy, trust, and touch via Chicago house dance and stepping. In 2021, she was named the City of Chicago Esteemed Artist Awardee in Dance and received a 2021 3Arts Award in dance. Her works include the Afro Sci-fi Krump film Imprints & Traces, and the multidisciplinary performance BAM!, for which she received a CSF Generative Performing Artist Fellowship. BAM! is an immersive ensemble work, focusing on Blackness, racial identity politics in the US, and violence. Her genre-defying work, the mixtape series: violent/break, volumes I and II, has received national and international development support at Brink Festival (London), High Concept Labs (Chicago), and Imir Scene Kunst (Norway). mahari is a culture bearer of hip-hop and house, having participated, judged, and held community initiatives and events. As well as a former member of the Krump family Gool, mahari holds a BFA in dance from the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and an MA in performance, practice, and research from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama at the University of London.

Jarius “Man of God” King is a performing artist, Black Arts (“street dance”) instructor, professional DJ (King G.N.S., pronounced “Genius”), and event MC. He was a member of Rhythm Attack (Hong Kong) from 2006–2019 and is a current member of Motion Disorderz (US). King has taught courses and workshops around the world tailored towards the art of breaking, as well as other art forms from the US and creative movement in general. He has been described as having an “unorthodox style of dancing,” and draws on his love of music, dance, martial arts, and creative movement to further develop himself and others as well-rounded and unique dancers. King’s passion for dance as a way to connect people from various backgrounds led to him co-directing Breakin’ The Law: International Festival of Urban Movement. “BTL” ran for 11 consecutive years and grew to be one of the largest annual urban dance festivals in the Midwest. The impact of hip-hop as a connective culture inspired a global level of participation with qualifiers in Hong Kong, Cape town, Panama City, Manila, and various cities in the US. King’s artistry is defined by living life in 3D: dad, DJ, and dancer.

Regina Martinez: Handworkers, songbirds, and athletes. First mirrors. New Mexican parents Erlinda and Valentino. Pride, dried beans, and inflammation. Collector of children’s art. Just trying to do some laundry. Misses you a lot.

MORAKANA is a New York City–based studio founded by Tiri Kananuruk (Thailand) and Sebastián Morales Prado (Mexico). Our work is characterized by experimentation, the development of custom tools, and scientific and artistic inquiry. By leveraging scientific principles and challenging the role of technology in our lives, MORAKANA invites us to think critically about plausible means for nature to reclaim the physical and digital ecosystems of which we are a part. We teach at the School for Poetic Computation (SFPC) and Collaborative Arts at New York University. Our work has been supported by Culture Hub, Autodesk Pier 9, Mana Contemporary, Tropical Futures Institute, and NEWINC, among others.

Tiago Velho is a native of Brazil with more than 30 years of experience in video editing, audio engineering, and technical directing. He is the co-founder of SOUND+COLOR, a company dedicated to producing broadcast-quality streaming services as well as providing video editing, motion graphics, and content creation. He is a lifelong musician, performer, and creator. After receiving a degree from the Chicago College of the Performing Arts and spending time as an actor, Velho migrated to working “behind the curtain.” His deep love for music naturally led him to becoming an audio engineer and soon he was mixing bands, designing sound, and writing music for theater, as well as mixing sound for live corporate events. For the next 15 years, Velho’s career took him all over the world to work on large-scale corporate and sporting events and live music and theatrical performances. He has had the opportunity to work as an audio engineer, sound designer, technical director, show-caller, video director, and editor for high-end, technically demanding shows.

Giau Truong is a versatile artist and technologist whose work spans performance, design, fabrication, and technology. Over a decade ago, he served as a teaching artist at StoryCatcher (formerly Music Theatre Workshop), where he managed programs and taught set design, construction, storytelling, script writing, etc. In this role, he created transformative educational experiences for teens at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center and the Illinois Youth Center in Warrenville, fostering creativity and engagement among incarcerated youth. Giau has also designed and fabricated environments for diverse events, ranging from theater performances to pop-up events, enhancing audience engagement through interactive technology. In his art practice, Truong focuses on creating spaces that explore human behavior within environments, offering unique, transformative experiences. He cofounded Axis Lab, an arts and architecture community organization in Uptown, Chicago, focused on urban design, culinary curating, and arts education. Axis Lab advocates for the ethical development of immigrant and refugee communities. Amid the pandemic, Truong pioneered initiatives at Links Hall to foster collaborations between technologists and artists, devising virtual performances that captivate and engage audiences remotely. He currently works full-time at Links Hall as Technical Director and Associate Curator, driving innovation and supporting the intersection of technology and the arts.

La Mar Brown is an arts manager, producer, dancer, and singer. He currently serves as the Operations Manager for Chicago Dancemakers Forum, where he manages functions to support administrative, fundraising, and programming activities. He has also served as coach for the “Art of Rehearsal” process for Links Hall during its Co-Mission Artists Program in 2022–2024. After relocating to Chicago from Dallas, Texas, he completed his Master of Arts Management at Columbia College Chicago in 2016. He is a 2022 Leadership Institute cohort member of YNPN Chicago. Brown’s other administrative and producing credits include Company Manager, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago; Project Coordinator, the Ruth Page Center for the Arts; Box Office Supervisor, Writers Theatre; and Associate Patron Services Manager, the AT&T Performing Arts Center (Dallas, TX). His performance credits include Dallas Black Dance Theatre, the Ruth Page Civic Ballet, Porchlight Music Theatre, Dallas Metropolitan Ballet, Uptown Players, Garland Summer Musicals, and the Dallas Opera.

Thanks to Surinder Martignetti, Enki Andrews, and James Scruggs for their administrative, technical, and artistic mentorship. Blk ark: the impossible manifestation was developed with support from DCASE, CultureHub NYC, Pact Zolverrein, Seoul Arts Institute, 3Arts Projects, and Steppenwolf Theatre.

Laura Paige Kyber: How did this project begin?

cat mahari: blk ark began as an interest into what ties, binds, and distinguishes community practices of liberation and play. I was interested in how social and political mechanisms can stimulate and further deeper understanding the interconnectedness of marronage, hip-hop, and Blk Anarchy. Basically asking, how can we abide, and how have we abided, in resistance? What are the ways of reflecting, living, etc., we use to get “there”? . . . to that space/place of liberatory practice.

LPK: Your background as an artist takes a winding path, with explorations through many fields of research and creative disciplines, including Black social dance forms like hip-hop and house dance, as well as electronic music and cultural theory. What throughline among these various avenues of exploration brought you to create the work you’re performing today?

cm: I’m always so interested in what will happen if I address this or another aspect of my life, my psychomateriality. I like adventures that are internal and externally impactful to my world and the perception of those around me. It’s somewhat in fun, definitely in rebellion, and always in a need to provide me with greater cultural grounding and sense of expansiveness. I get hurt by what I don’t know or understand about myself and the world.

LPK: You’ve talked about the “anarcho-choreographic” as a driving force in your work. What is that and how does it show up in the work you create?

cm: The anarcho-choreographic is the refusal of colonial apparatuses in performance and performativity. I think of it as a goal, more so than a current en masse or even personal designation. As someone brought up within the colonial world, with many of its afflictions, I also am a student of peoples whose politic (of course that includes cultural expressions) are manifestly anti-colonial. Hip-hop, as cultural formation, is anti-colonial—I strive to maintain that and I do not give ground in as many ways as I can. In my work, that shows up through the dynamics of audience-performer expectations, as well as through presentation.

LPK: An element of the stage design for this show involves an intricate set of lines taped to the floor that the dancers traverse. You’ve called this tape outline a “rhythmmetics board.” What is rhythmmetrics and how do participants use the board?

cm: Rhythmmetrics is an embodied philosophy and movement practice created by Sekou Heru (a legendary dancer, artist, and teacher based in New York, NY) and realized through space/place interactions in the club, of the street . . . connecting ancestry, connecting people, connecting you to yourself. There’s multiple ways to use the board. . . . I’ve definitely not found nor mastered them all. I use it when teaching and when creatively exploring to get into a deeper, yet more expansive, way of moving, of reflecting, and of listening. In blk ark, the board’s shapes and directions are grounding jump-off points for my collaborator Jarius King and I to change our relationship.

LPK: What do you want people to take away after having experienced blk ark?

cm: I think that this work speaks to many people, but it’s heavily “worded” in specific Blk languages, paradigms, and paradoxes. Everyone can get free, but I want us to ask how. The how as in what, where, when, and why we practice (express) with each other what we do. I want people to get fired up enough to risk this world . . . soon.