Piko Dance Arts presents Walking on Eggshells, a live performance installation featuring Walking Through Walls by Sami L.A. Akuna (aka Cocoa Chandelier), Never Justify Your Truth: Black Females Navigating in Constructed White Female Spaces by Sequoia Carr-Brown, and Equilibrium by Kara Jhalak Miller.

Walking On Eggshells will be performed Friday, March 4th and Saturday March 5th, 2022, 7pm and 9pm at The ARTS at Marks Garage. Purchase tickets here.

Drawing from personal histories and exploring points of intersection, Walking on Eggshells is a dynamic live performance art installation directed and created by an award winning artistic team. The production engages community dialogue reimagining the body and addressing themes of sovereignty, race, and gender through dance and theater that includes movement based media art. The performance is a luminous dialogue between visionary artists and performers.

Walking Through Walls by performance art artist Sami L.A. Akuna (aka Cocoa Chandelier) is a performance that will be centered in the main theater space and focuses on varying media including choreography, improvisation, vocalization, and digital media. Akuna says, “The installation will explore space and performance points of gender, sexualism, sovereignty, and immigration.”

Never Justify Your Truth: Black Females Navigating in Constructed White Female Spaces by Butoh dance performer and mixed media artist Sequoia Carr-Brown is a live-performance movement installation that will take place in the gallery and focuses on how to unify as a truly empowered, mobilized sisterhood. Carr-Brown says, “My performance fuses live Butoh dance performance with the mixed media of photography and modern art sculpture, in a gallery setting with strong architectural design. The Harlem Renaissance and Afro-Futurism movements greatly influenced my expression.”

Equilibrium by dance performer, choreographer, and video installation designer Kara Jhalak Miller reflects on the “invisiblizing” of generations of women. The choreography will take place outside on the street sidewalks with video projection on building surfaces. Miller says, “My dance performance installation focuses on abstract choreographic development of the theme and includes contemporary dance movement patterns exploring opposing forces, falling off center, balance, symmetry, equipoise, parity, and equality in rhythm and gesture.”

Akuna, Carr-Brown, and Miller have worked together on numerous projects locally and internationally. The performance is sponsored by the Hawai’i Academy of Performing Arts / The ARTS at Marks Garage. The project is the recipient of the prestigious National Endowment for the Arts Grant and the MAP Fund Grant for the commission and creation of these three artist’s new work for this production. The event will be performed live at The Arts at Marks Garage on Friday March 4 and Saturday March 5, 2022 at 7pm and 9pm.