Jane Raleigh X Brendan Drake
In this special Artist Talk Jane Raleigh of DC Dance Network (@dcdancenetwork) chats with Dance Artist/Writer/Educator Brendan Drake ahead of his newest show, Ceremonials, at Dance Place!
Brendan Drake / Ceremonials
July 10 & 11 at 7pm at Dance Place
Choreographer and Interdisciplinary artist Brendan Drake makes their Dance Place Debut with Ceremonials, presented by DC Dance Network and co-presented with Dance Place. Please note that this performance is for an 18+ audience and community members.
Drawing inspiration from Catholic iconography and Gay Porn, Ceremonials is an hour-long performance work exploring the not-so-subtle similarities between Christianity and eroticism.
The work connects 14th-century Christian mystic Julian of Norwich’s text Revelations of Divine Love with images of contemporary queer smut to consider how sorrow and ecstasy are such strange but familiar bedfellows. Ceremonials is a utopic fever dream that lives somewhere between passion play and an elegiac orgy.
A bacchanalian parade of images, complete with fallen angels, messianic delusions, beautiful boyx drenched in holy water, and Mother Mary herself. It is a raucous meditation on pleasure, pain, and surrender as well as a call for hope, despite the horrors.
Sorrow is the content, ecstasy is the form.
This work was commissioned in part by the 2026 DC Dance Network Choreographer Commission.
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Photo Credits
Elyse Mertz
Pedro Pollarolo
Brendan Would like to thank;
Thank you to George Washington University Corcoran School of the Arts and Design for the use of their beautiful space. To my dancers Blythe, Amanda Hameline, Sydney Goldston, Javi Padilla, Joey Rauch, Drew Scammell, and Joey Schuman for being so down to clown for the last 6 months, and to Jane Raleigh for shepherding this opportunity with very little skepticism. Muchas gracias a me amorcito Pedro Pollarolo Gracias a mi amorcito, Pedro Pollarolo por su apoyo durante este proceso creativo, a pesar de ser un terreno tan inexplorado. Much gratitude to Jamison Curico, Kale Hall and Juliana Pironti for keeping Dance Place a sanctuary for experimentation despite the horrors and to MY artistic director Tariq O’Meally, who continues to show all of us what it means to really invest in community.
Substack:
Making dances is hard and expensive. Consider making a tax deductible donation to our process: https://fundraising.fracturedatlas.org/brendan-drake-community-exorcisms
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