Art Happens

Drawing upon memory and invention, the performance invites the audience into a fictional archiving of Admiring La Argentina. In The Return of La Argentina, Harrell fictitiously remembers, stores, accounts for, forgets, registers, memorializes, ritualizes, and gives home to Ohno’s work.

It is all at once a departure for Harrell – bringing voguing theory and the archive together with butoh’s life among ghosts. As much for those with no prior knowledge of Ohno’s original work, the viewer’s presence becomes essential as witness and admirer as they too archive into their memories perhaps a new signature work on the imagination and our accountability for what we keep; what we choose to remember and forget; and what we are powerfully left to invent in the here and now.

Where Harlem voguing is inspired by the movements of models, Admiring La Argentina was inspired by La Argentina. This web of danced relationships brings Harrell’s audience on a journey of remembering, forgetting, memorializing, and ritualizing Admiring La Argentina.