Location: The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center
Choreographer, director and performer Kayla Farrish has become renowned for work that seamlessly incorporates dance, narrative theater, film and sound score in service of transforming invisibilized histories into liberation. Put Away the Fire, Dear is a group dance-theater work unraveling American cinema, in which six marginalized characters defy their inherited roles and reimagine new narratives for themselves. Jumping through portals spanning reality and cinema, they change the lens, uprooting power and their distorted existence. We connect with those of the past like Zora Neale Hurston, Oscar Michaux, Ethel Waters, Bojangles and onwards. This work invites BIPOC audiences to see their worlds reflected and offers collective liberation in dreaming of our unwritten stories. In 100 minutes, this wild dance-theater production breaks down whose imagination we are living in with shifting scenic design by Dyer Rhoads and live music by Alex MacKinnon. Following her recent run at Chelsea Factory NY (2025) and American Dance Festival (2024), Farrish’s company makes its Clarice Presents debut with the D.C. area premiere of this vibrant multimedia performance.
Presented by Clarice Presents.