Press Release: LAVA’s New Evening-Length Work, we become. 

Brooklyn-based performance troupe LAVA has garnered tremendous critical acclaim for an “exhilarating” (Newsweek) and “amazing” (New York Magazine) artistry that combines dance, theater and acrobatics to push the limits of dance and the female form. Expanding upon LAVA's collaborative way of working as an ensemble, we become integrates the work of two equally eminent women artists from other fields: musician Toshi Reagon and visual artist Nancy Brooks Brody. Together, they have created a poignant and virtuosic evening about community and the delicate balance of harmony and revolution, separatism and integration. 
 
Directed by the ensemble's founder and Artistic Director, Sarah East Johnson, and choreographed by LAVA company members Diana Y Greiner, Molly Chanoff, Lollo, Rose Calucchia, Allison Schnur and Amy Verebay, we become builds upon LAVA's signature themes (women's strength and power, the nature of relationships, and our connection to both urban and natural environments) as well as their unique movement vocabulary (an athletic combination of acrobatics, wrestling, improvisation and trapeze), while adding new elements such as standing meditation, capoeira, rope climbing, and movements observed on NYC sidewalks. With original music composed by Brooklyn’s own Toshi Reagon as well as a site-specific wall-drawing made of hundreds of pieces of silver tape by Nancy Brooks Brody, we become uses a diverse palette to explore the tensions and harmonies inherent in sharing spaces that are too small and trying to be alike (or trying to be oneself) within a group. The piece expresses various dichotomies: solitary vs. joined, individual vs. community, supported vs. encumbered, free vs. rootless. 

 
About LAVA 
Working out of their studio in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, LAVA is a movement-based ensemble as well as a community-connecting organization. Through live performances, classes, workshops and neighborhood events throughout New York City and the U.S., LAVA is a non-profit organization dedicated to fostering the growth of physical, creative, socially-conscious and intellectually-engaged cultural expressions across all forms of social diversities.

About Toshi Reagon
Singer, songwriter, musician, and producer, Toshi is known for her high energy and uplifting shows either as a solo artist or with her band BIGLovely. From her rock platform Toshi easily jumps from funk to country, spirituals to folk, taking any style, updating it and making it her own with ease. She has toured both nationally and internationally and has shared the stage with a list of artist that include Nona Hendryx, Ani Difranco, Chaka Khan, Le Tigre, and the late great Odetta. She has collaborated with Urban Bush Women, Jane Comfort and Company and has served for the last five years as musical director for the opera The Temptation of St. Anthony, directed by Robert Wilson, with composer and librettist Bernice Johnson Reagon. Currently Toshi is touring to celebrate the release of her latest recording, "Until We're Done," available at goldenrod.com. For more information on Toshi, visit toshireagon.com.

About Nancy Brooks Brody
Nancy Brooks Brody’s drawings, paintings and sculptures have been shown in galleries across the U.S., including Virgil de Voldere Gallery, White Columns, Exit Art, Andrea Rosen, Lehmann Maupin and Weatherspoon, and in Europe at the Musee de Beaux Arts in Rouen, Trafic Haute-Normandie, and the Musee de Beaux Arts Bernay. In an Art in America review of her recent one-woman show at Virgil de Voldere, Sarah Valdez praised the artist’s "sure-footedness, patience and intelligence, adding, “It's not often that an exhibition like this comes along." In The New York Times, Holland Cotter has described her work this way: "The effect is like having Agnes Martin’s bars and bands transmitted as sound waves, a soft, vibrant humming." Nancy Brooks Brody’s work with LAVA has spanned over a decade and has included photographs, videos, costumes, props, and set designs.

LAVA is supported by funding from Brooklyn Arts Council, New York City Dept. of Cultural Affairs, Estelle's Choice, The Threshold Foundation, Independence Community Foundation, and donations from grassroots contributors (like you!).

we become was created through residencies at BRICLab, MASS MoCA, and the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival.