In the LA Times:
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Okwui Okpokwasili: Bronx Gothic (excerpts) 1 from Peter Born on Vimeo.
A young girl stands in a corner, half dancing, half wriggling. The movements are adult as much as they are childlike. She shakes her hips with a budding sense of sensuality, then flails her arms as if she were having a temper tantrum.
This sequence is the opening scene from New York artist Okwui Okpokwasili's gripping one-woman show, "Bronx Gothic," which is having its West Coast premiere under the auspices of Show Box L.A. (Seriously, go see it. It's riveting.)Okwui Okpokwasili in Bronx Gothic Bessie Award-winning artist Okwui Okpokwasili is in L.A. to perform "Bronx Gothic," a piece inspired by her childhood in New York. She is not a trained dancer, but she employs movement in all of her work. (Okwui Okpokwasili / Show Box L.A.) The hybrid play/performance tells the story of two tweenage girls through the intensely emotional and unwittingly hilarious notes they pass to each other in class.
Image courtesy of New York Live Arts
"I was inspired by notes because we'd pass them around and they'd get into the wrong hands and they'd create these seismic social eruptions," says Okpokwasili, who grew up in the Parkchester neighborhood of the Bronx. "We were having this really full world and the language was so dense and thick and filled with curses and love — all of it happening under the noses of our teachers."
