ROT is the name of this moment. Through ROT 2025 and a communal conversation, there will be a new name coming circa 2026 for What. is. Next. And honestly who the fuck knows?! Maybe we keep the name if backed by popular demand.
Are we willing to not know? We are willing to not know.
YES
ROT/FRESH/ROT/FRESH/ROT/FRESH/ROT/FRESH
Well I guess this is kind of an abrupt end to this chapter, to this article, to what was once FRESH, but also here we are writhing in the ROT, digging through the compost, improvising with ghosts, and giving thanks to those who came before us and those that will come after us.
????What. is. Next.????
ROT/FRESH/ROT/FRESH/ROT/FRESH/ROT/FRESH
We want to emphasize what has been at the heart of this festival these past few years and amplify what we loooove about it. It’s a microcosm of events across experimental dance, interdisciplinary art, and academic spaces. It is a community that appears and dissolves. It is a community that co-learns, co-creates, and trains together.
It is an incubator for collaboration; a shock to the system that re-invigorates and holds space to collectively build possibilities that become more possibilities—
practicepracticepracticepracticepracticepracticepractice
KH FRESH performance (2024)
—[a site of experimentation, study, risk-taking, mishaps, ] all while centering anti-racist, proto-feminist, (light?) anarchist politics as participants and organizers. It is quick, dirty, and creates an environment that allows us to generate better questions, moremoremore questions, and questions that don’t have answers. Just a tiny few (moremoremore) of the largesse of questions to ourselves— How is this a community care practice and what are the limitations around this type of work? How does legacy get passed down through the body / embodiment? How do scarcity and abundance and sustainability collide? and to you— How are you interested in / what do you need to support being together? Who are your / our communal dancestors? What do you want to see?
This article has been co-written by Clarissa Rivera Dyas and ainsley e. tharp, the two primary caretakers of ROT 2025. CLARISSA RIVERA DYAS is a Bay Area, Ohlone land, based dancer, choreographer, and arts producer. Their artistic practice flows from the truthfulness of improvisation, is rooted in her communities, and cen- tered around movement as a spiritual practice and a conduit of change. They’ve performed with Flyaway Productions, Zaccho Dance Theatre, OYSTERKNIFE, GRAVITY, and many others. Clarissa is a co-conspirator of RUPTURE and collaborates with Sara Shelton Mann and Embodiment Project. They’ve presented in the Black Choreographers’ Festival, Dresh- er Ensemble Artist Residency, Queering Dance Festival’s FROLIC! and KH FRESH Festival. She was awarded Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” in 2024 and is on the Queering Dance Festival Steering Committee. ainsley e. tharp’s work is experimental, feminine but not very ladylike, fixated on failure as protest, and informed by improvisation as play, impermanence as study, and mess making as necessity. She is a queer white interdisciplinary artist and witch working in between and with fringe subcultures rooted in the Bay Area. Her work is inspired by antira- cism, proto feminism, and anarchist principles and practices. ainsley’s artistic background is in the field of experimental dance, visual art, video art, and projection design. She works towards creating and organizing low-income accessible art access spaces in the Bay Area.
ROT 2025—February 16-22 https://www.freshfestival.org/2025-calendar
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In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org
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