American Realness: Sorrow Swag

New York Premiere

Sorrow Swag takes race and melancholy as points of departure for an experience that unfolds through the language of sadness. Performed by Brian Getnick with live musical accompaniment by George Lewis Jr. of Twin Shadow, the performance uses texts and images derived from mid-century classical theater (Beckett and Anouilh) to interrogate race, authorship, gender, and grief. Sorrow Swag disrupts the canonical by means of an imaginative reformulation that prioritizes sensation. The work takes place in an immersive visual and auditory space and uses color as a synesthetic texture and emotional referent to produce a choreography that engages language, text, affect and embodiment.

Sorrow Swag was produced with funding from the Berlin Senat’s Tanzstipendium with further support from Human Resources Los Angeles, ADA Studios Berlin, and a residency at Pieter Space LA.

Sorrow Swag is presented in collaboration with, and in part made possible by the generous support of the Goethe-Institut.


Sorrow Swag is part of American Realness, which also presents the US premiere of Antonija Livingstone's Culture Administration & Trembling (in partnership with Jennifer Lacey, Dominique Pétrin, Stephen Thompson).