Steven Kazuo Takasugi (CRF 2017) and Civitella Board Director Du Yun (CRF 2013) were both awarded 2022 Creative Capital Awards. Congratulations, Steven and Du Yun! This year’s awards represent 50 projects by 59 artists from all over the United States. The projects span a range of genres, including literature, performance, the visual arts, moving image, technology, and socially-engaged art. See the full press release.
R.S. in Cody: Heart Mountain is an evening-long work for music theater whose subject involves the fluidity and malleability of identities in the light and shadow of Japanese-American Internment during World War II. Inspired by the personal story of Takasugi’s family, who were incarcerated in US concentration camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the work engages with the complex, ambivalent struggles of assimilation, resistance, loyalty, conformity, and social ostracization.
In For Ever More—FutureTradition: An XR Opera Garden, Du Yun will bring for the first time ever one of the oldest evolving forms of Chinese opera, known as Kunqu opera, to life using augmented reality, web-based virtual reality, and large-format projection. Shattering traditional borders of programmatic gatekeeping by allowing presenters, professionals, amateurs, and audience alike access to living, breathing culture, the piece blends avant-garde experimentation with Asian culture and heritage. For Ever More will build a public digital space where a series of curated performances and skill-sharing material are shown and freely shared—accessible to anyone in the world with a device and data—creating a new way of learning from and experiencing live performance.