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WHAT??!  is a contemporary performance series by SCREAMING TRAPS in the bars and streets of New Orleans with a rotating cast of collaborators.​

 

WHAT??! Is a project about conditions. It’s a project about working where you are with what you’ve got--in a bar, or your bedroom, with your friends and co-workers, putting up your own posters and showing up no matter what.

 

WHAT??! Comes out of three years of collaboration between Shannon Stewart, Sierrah Dietz and Ellery Burton making queer, feminist, contemporary dance work and presenting it literally ANYWHERE people will let them in the city (art galleries, parades, graduate student symposiums, theaters, and parks to name a few places). 


WHAT?? Is a series of regular shows at the Siberia Lounge, the Allways Lounge and maybe in a parade.  The format is a recurring evening length show that SCREAMING TRAPS continually refines and alters. Every show includes one or two guest openers--dancers and musician--that collaborate with the TRAPS and become integrated into their show.  Every show has a different headlining musical guest that composes a new score for the TRAPS show and put together on the spot, creating a kind of “chance operations” format. Movement material for WHAT takes the ongoing research practices of SCREAMING TRAPS and puts them into performative format that fits in the spatial confines of the bar.  At the heart of WHAT?? Is creating a regular night of contemporary performance that is continually incorporating collaboration and exchange into the work itself.

 

 

Created and Performed by: Shannon Stewart, Sierrah Dietz, & Ellery Burton

Musical Collaborators: Tupamaro (Padi & Willis), Peter Bowling, Ashley Teamer, Aurora Nealand

Guest Performers: Owen Ever, Angelle Hebert, Wes Chavis, Ann Glaviano, Rhia Jade and Claire Kohn, Kimmie Allen, & Katya Chizayeva

 

Thanks to Allways Lounge (Dennis & Scotty), Siberia - Luke Allen, and Adam Sekuler for documentation

WHAT??! (2018) 

© 2021 Shannon Stewart

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