INTERVIEW: Out-FRONT! Festival returns with 2024 edition
Photo: Ogemdi Ude’s work will be featured at the 2024 Out-FRONT! Festival in New York City. Photo courtesy of Maria Baranova / Provided by press agent with permission.
The Out-FRONT! Festival has returned for a second year of programming centered around LGBTQIA+ and Feminist voices in the dance and performance art worlds. The festival, a partnership involving the Pioneers Go East Collective, The LGBT Community Center and Abrons Arts Center, runs Jan. 10-20. There are many artists represented this year, including everyone from Arthur Aviles to Joey Kipp to Christopher Unpezverde Núñez, among others.
In addition to the performances, there are also a couple of workshops planned, according to press notes. One workshop focuses on the dance style of voguing with Jason Anthony Rodriguez, while another workshop is centered on storytelling through dance with Magda Kaczmarska.
At the helm of the festival is Gian Marco Riccardo Lo Forte, artistic director of Pioneers Go East Collective, “a radical Queer laboratory collective of performing and visual artists dedicated to dance-theater and video art to empower the LGBTQ experience.” In addition to Lo Forte, the collective is led by Daniel Diaz, Kipp and Philip Treviño.
Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Lo Forte to learn more about this year’s incarnation of the Out-FRONT! Festival. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
When did a second year get greenlit? Did you have to wait to see the success of the first year?
We knew this a while back! The Out-FRONT! Fest 2024 was in the making before the premiere of last year’s festival. In fall 2022, we started conversations with artists who were ultimately in this year’s festival lineup. We were all in and knew we wanted to repeat this festival! We love this adventure and the opportunity to build a new chapter in the January festival season.
We are a collective of genuinely dedicated and curious artists, and our outreach and creative strategy are purposefully long-term and multi-year to support a creative space, empower NYC’s lesser-heard communities and build lasting relationships through creative exchange. Since 2017, with Pioneers Go East Collective, I have envisioned a creative and cultural community-driven platform that is expansive, thought-provoking, and Queer. The Out-FRONT! Fest builds on Pioneers Go East Collective’s high-visibility inclusion platform, including the Crossroads curated series at Judson Church and The 14/Y, and The Stars Cycle — a series of original projects by our collective developed and/or presented at various venues in the city, including BRIC Arts Media, BAM, Center for Performance Research, La MaMa and many more spaces.
What sets this festival apart from other festivals around the city?
Pioneers Go East Collective is a radical Queer laboratory collective at the nexus of art, culture and community. As a multicultural performance art group, we entertain, celebrate and liberate to amplify the LGBTQ experience. We are collaboratively run by LGBTQ+, BIPOC, Immigrant artists and cultural organizers. Our collaborative spirit expands to our curatorial platform. We activate safe spaces and provide free and accessible programs. The Out-FRONT! Festival follows and expands on this model to offer equitable creative development and presentation opportunities to cross-disciplinary emerging artists whose work is often overlooked by established art institutions in New York City.
As an artist-driven, grassroots nonprofit, we create and curate works of high artistic merit and speak out about social issues to positively impact the LGBTQ community. Pioneers Go East Collective is dedicated to portraying LGBTQ+, BIPOC and Immigrant experiences, memories, heritage, and marginalization that resonate with contemporary lives. We create platforms of inclusion that link audiences throughout all of NYC to celebrate LGBTQ and Feminist artists. We champion creative understanding, respect and inclusion. We support each other and collaborate with many artists and friends to embrace individual and collective processes — with openness, respect, honesty, vulnerability, courage and no judgment.
What are some highlights that you’re most looking forward to for the 2024 edition?
Fueled by our vision to give artists creative agency and explore unique perspectives, we are excited about this year’s festival! The 2024 Out-FRONT! Festival features artists spanning several generations, including vogue artist and Pose star Jason Anthony Rodriguez; Annie MingHao Wang’s personal and physical inquiries into the human invocations of animal energies within Chinese culture; Paz Tanjuaquio’s exploration of cultural connections and migration; Ogemdi Ude’s new work Hear, a ritual that preserves impressions of loved ones who are no longer here; YO OBSOLETE by Christopher Unpezverde Núñez who embodies fantasy and escapism to recall childhood memories; and a film series featuring Radical Queer artists Fana Fraser, Omega X and Tourmaline. In addition, we are psyched to offer multigenerational programs, including a voguing workshop for teens and a storytelling workshop through dance for older adults with Magda Kaczmarska. All our projects are on a sliding scale and free if you can’t afford to make a small donation.
What’s it like to partner with The LGBT Community Center and Abrons Arts Center?
We feel deeply connected to our partners and aligned with Abrons Arts Center and The LGBT Center’s communities.
The LGBT Center is an essential space for our community to gather and meet. It’s a place representing us and our Queer history. We love The Center’s team, including Richard Morales, program director. We love the free and accessible programs and services, including recovery and wellness programs, and arts and cultural programming offered there — that sustain and provide a supporting space for many generations of LGBTQ+ community members. We feel at home at The Center, where we have been a company-in-residence for a few years.
We also love being able to expand our platform to underserved communities on the Lower East Side, where we are based. The beautiful spaces at Abrons Arts Center are a great fit for the three projects we are presenting there, including Arthur Aviles’ larger-scale offering, Naked Vanguard, which reimagines several of his classic nude solo dance works.
You have been quoted as saying that these performances spark “positive dialogue” in the community. Can you further explain?
The idea behind the Out-FRONT! Fest was sparked by a conversation I had in early 2022 with Richard Morales, The LGBT Center’s director of programs. We both acknowledged there is a lack of safe spaces in the performing arts field for Radical Queer artists to take risks away from the constraints of producing large-scale works. We envisioned the festival at The Center as a space that allows for artists to grow, thrive and explore during the very competitive January festival offerings in NYC — a space that allows for positive exchange between artists and between artists and communities.
As a values-driven grassroots nonprofit, we continue to ask ourselves and our community: “How can we extend our understanding of ourselves, our gender identities and our sexual identities, and then positively redefine ourselves outside of those binary conventions?” To reshape the narrative positively, we must showcase personal and heartfelt stories that help us broaden perspectives and share our values. We challenge viewers by exploring pathways to communicate psychologically complex experiences. We create poetic fictionalizations that alternately stand in for a silenced past and act as the starting point for a viable future. We reflect on our history, vulnerability, courage, beauty and power.
With these values, we seek to expand this positive dialogue by reflecting on the participants’ understanding of social justice and human and civil rights, and promote a deeper connection between their shared histories.
What’s your day-to-day like preparing for this festival?
We are a small part-time team of seven, including Jo Wiegandt (producer, and artists and community liaison), Philip Treviño (designer and curator), Daniel Diaz (curator and cultural organizer), Hilary Brown-Istrefi (curator and cultural organizer) and Joyce Isabelle (development consultant and cultural organizer). As the artistic director / curator of the festival — and the director of one of the projects in the festival, Tracing Lorraine by solo artist Joey Kipp — I meet daily with my collaborators and our partners to discuss marketing outreach strategies, production schedules, outreach to curators and industry. On Jan. 2, we move to The LGBT Center, where we secured rehearsal space for the artists ahead of tech and presentations.
On Jan. 10, we open the festival! We are psyched to get together with so many generous and beautiful artists who are truly visionary collaborators dedicated to radical LGBTQ+ and Feminist artmaking in conversation with our community.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Out-FRONT! Festival, presented by the Pioneers Go East Collective in partnership with The LGBT Community Center and Abrons Arts Center, runs Jan. 10-20 in New York City. Performances and workshops take place at The LGBT Community Center and Abrons Arts Center. Click here for more information and tickets.
