Cassils Debuts Human Measure at REDCAT  

From Oct. 13 to 15, Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater (REDCAT), CalArts’ center for contemporary arts in downtown Los Angeles, proudly presents artist Cassils with their debut contemporary dance work, Human Measure.

 

Against an unprecedented backdrop of U.S.-based anti-trans legislation, Human Measure asks: How do we manifest empowerment, sensuality, and self actualization in a society that actively tries to erase trans and nonbinary individuals? Insisting upon plurality and avoiding legibility, Human Measure straddles dance and the history of photography. The work is purposefully designed to be difficult to see and is staged in low levels of red light found in photographic darkrooms. The viewer’s physiology is hijacked as live after-images are seared into the audience’s retina by a massive flashing light box, culminating in the active development of one of the world’s largest cyanotypes, on stage in real time.

 

Human Measure was made in collaboration with U.S. choreographer Jasmine Albuquerque, composer Kadet Kuhne, lighting designer Christopher Kuhl, and a team of five trans and nonbinary performers.