Ligia Lewis

“Sorrow Swag” is the first part of Ligia Lewis’ trilogy “BLUE, RED, WHITE”– a triptych that deals with affect and embodiment, as well as race and representation.

The performance takes place in an immersive visual and auditory space drenched in deep blue. Using texts and images derived from mid 20th-century classical theater to interrogate race, authorship, gender, and grief, “Sorrow Swag” produces an imaginative reformulation. Thinking through the blues, this work disrupts the canonical by means of a radical othering. For this work, Lewis developed a choreographic practice that incorporates Stanislavski’s acting techniques and the practice of authentic movement to attain an intense state of embodiment. With musical accompaniment by Twin Shadow, she and the performer create a meticulously crafted hybrid body in a state of flux. While Samuel Beckett’s “Not I” and Jean Anouilh’s “Antigone” serve as the backbone to this work, the piece shifts from a state of flux to an “unrelenting scream,” – what Billie Whitelaw, the first literal mouth of “Not I” described as the core of her performance. Through this unstable figure the theater is transformed.

Ligia Lewis was awarded the Prix Jardin d’ Europe by Impulstanz (2015) for “Sorrow Swag”.