“In Eight Acts” began as a poem written the week of the 2020 Presidential U.S. election to reflect the complexity of the moment and build love, hope, and understanding in the pandemic times of 2020. Each stanza begins with the words “my love stands,” “my love listens,” and “my love breaths.” In selecting active words related to the body, I fuse poetry and performance to create an embodied experience with the audience. The duality of ideas entwined in each stanza creates a musicality in the vocal performance as words interweave the body with the text. I constructed the performance in digital space and live streamed using animation, digital video effects, and analog aesthetics performing in my persona of queen of luxuria. Each stanza is transformed into a different virtual world, providing unexpected surprises throughout the performance. My aesthetic has been defined as a sparkly palette of utopia. In this work I oscillate between beauty and horror. The performance is a lyric for hope that also acknowledges the darkness our global community had to face in 2020—it was created in direct response to and provides commentary on the ramifications of systemic racism and political precarity that people in the U.S. have endured. The performance was created to provide a light of hope to people in these bleak times.

My poetry is integrated into a performance art score using movement and interactive elements. The ancient poetic tradition where poets provide a mirror for society’s issues so that people can perceive them from different angles and then reflect and resolve is part of my intention as a performer.

In addition to performing as queen of luxuria, I organize Out of Site Chicago, a public performance program. The portrayal and exploration of the body bounded by time is part of the ongoing performance research and investigation that was a structural device “In Eight Acts.”