As part of ODC Theater’s virtual Theater Festival, NAKA Dance Theater presents And the Twins Return, the Film, directed by filmmaker Jody Stillwater.
And the Twins Return is a meditation on bewitchment and calamity, deception and possession, inspired by images from Northern Japan and Southern Mexico. When a fox attaches itself to you, it dunks you into a dream world, controls your thoughts, alters your behavior. The fox is a fickle trickster who brings fortune one day and misfortune the next. We attempt to go backwards in time to find something intact, something old. But there are few clues, so we turn to the unconscious, giving space for flow. Strip away and listen to what our decolonized selves might sound like.
Tickets: https://odc.dance/festival
And the Twins Return was created during a Japan-US Friendship Commission Artist Fellowship in Japan and is influenced by ritual dance practices and yokai (a class of supernatural spirit-monsters in Japanese folklore).
Jody Stillwater 周青海 is a writer, director and creative technologist whose project themes are based in dream logic and tactile reality, with a modern, transformative approach to visual semiotics & archetype. His work has been featured at the de Young museum, YBCA, Mutek and ISEA, with commissions from Google, Knotel and Bentley Mills. His cultural background is Chinese/Norwegian/Cherokee-American.
Lenape Films focuses on bringing visually stunning, socially impactful, genre-bending cinematic and immersive media experiences to life. Started by 5 BIPOC members, their mission is to employ storytelling that prioritizes equity and inclusion, allowing for diverse stories from underrepresented communities to thrive.
Photo by Robbie Sweeny