PIVOT ARTS FESTIVAL GOES VIRTUAL JUNE 5–30, 2020: David Cale, Alex Alpharaoh, Seth Bockley, Red Clay Dance Among Participating Artists

Pivot Arts, which celebrates adventurous, multidisciplinary performance, is “pivoting” in the presentation of its eighth annual Pivot Arts Festival, in response to restrictions due to COVID-19. For this year’s Festival—subtitled “This is How We Pivot”—performances originally scheduled at venues in Chicago’s Uptown and Edgewater neighborhoods are shifting to online presentations premiering June 5–11, with content remaining available through June 30 at pivotarts.org/festival. Live events are postponed to future dates that will be announced.

 This year’s festival includes performance art, immersive theatre, contemporary and street dance, hip-hop opera, dance created for film and video, animation and more. Among the participating artists are Obie Award-winning solo performer-playwright David Cale, writer-director-performer Alex Alpharaoh, playwright-director Seth Bockley and Chicago’s Red Clay Dance Company and The Era Footwork Crew.

Saturday, June 6 6 p.m. – Red Clay Dance Company’s Resilience  Reimagined Commissioned by Pivot Arts, Red Clay Dance  Company presents a reimagining of its 2019  work Art of Resilience 2.0. Dancers will embody  the original work recording video from their  homes and site-specific spaces to further  demonstrate strength and perseverance. To build excitement and provide a backdrop  for these new performances, Pivot Arts also  will post a recording of Art of Resilience  2.0, a site-specific, mixed-media and  immersive activation of the DuSable  Museum Roundhouse. Using movement,  text, vibrant projections and soundscapes  mixed by DJ Sadie Woods, the “Urban Griots”  of Red Clay Dance guided the audience  through a journey of Chicago’s Black Belt,  the “Stroll” and the Black Arts Movement  while disquieting the impact of redlining,  restrictive housing covenants and state  violence on black life.