Davina Cohen

Blessed Unrest’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream closed in April and Darth and Lobster picked up the baton and hit the ground running.  For those who don’t know, Darth and Lobster are the alter egos of yours truly and Sophia Remolde.  Sophia and I began collaborating through the SITI Company in 2007.  Our first project together was Finding Om, a dance theater duet inspired by Siddhartha, Sesame Street, and seemingly endless amounts of water. The Inbred Hybrid Collective presented the piece as part of its Book Club Burlesque series in 2008.  Next came our Hamlet-explosion, EVERYONE DIES…RIGHT? directed by J Ed Araiza at the SITI studios.  Then while I was touring my adaptation of Deborah Hay’s I’ll Crane For You in 2009, foolsFURY invited us to present Ring, in which YouTube homages to Beyonce meet Shakespeare as “Single Ladies (“Put A Ring On It”) collides with Viola’s “ring speech” from Twelfth Night in a passionate duet for two women.  Ring’s exploration of drag and the objectification of women’s bodies is sexy and comedic and features an absurd surprise ending.

Prompted by my Singaporean director/writer/filmmaker/sometime performer friend Mei Ann Teo, Darth and Lobster entered a dance contest to win a trip to Singapore. We are still awaiting the final results, but in the meantime have made some very silly videos.  You can check out them as well as an excerpt of Ring here.

In other news, while I am in California I’ve got some studio time lined up with Katarina Eriksson and leaf Tine, my collaborators from The Safe Way, an ensemble created during our E|MERGE residency at Earthdance.  We’ve been invited to present more work at Earthdance in November, so this is an exciting opportunity to reconnect and continue the process we began in February.

I will perform on June 19 at Le Petit Versailles in the East Village as part of the "Chakra Cabaret". Touch Me, Thrill Me, Squeeze Me, Grill Me, my new site-specific work supported by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, will take place at NYC Greenmarkets in August and September.  Stay tuned.