Skywatchers’ Towards Opulence invites us to dream of our most fulfilled futures, individually and collectively claiming the most opulent expressions of our humanity beyond the limited goal of mere survival.
Using spoken word, dance, music, and photography, the Skywatchers ensemble will disentangle opulence from its material, hierarchical & colonial associations. We honor instead its usage in the underground ball culture, a QTPOC celebratory scene in New York as early as the turn of the 20thc., which claimed opulence as a language of liberation and resistance. We find inspiration, too, in the natural world, whether the wildly improbable metamorphosis of the caterpillar into a butterfly or mycelium’s tenacious breadth. From these roots, the Skywatchers ensemble is exploring and expanding what it means to move Towards Opulence.
Towards Opulence, Part One: Heart of Care first premiered at the SF public library in 2022. The next iteration of Part One was then performed the following year at Cutting Ball Theatre.
