Photo credit – Elisa Goroya
A poetry reading with dove/Christine Kirubi
+
a dance-theatre performance of Bhanu Kapil’s How To Wash A Heart directed by Blue Pieta.
Saturday, November 9th at 3 pm
Doors open at 2.45 pm
Judith E. Wilson Drama Studio
Faculty of English
9 West Road Cambridge
Blue Pieta – Choreographer / Performer / Musical Director/Set Designer
Bhanu Kapil – Poet
Samantha Hines – Dancer
Kath Gifford – Singer, Sound Designer
Ynys Barnard-Masterson – Musician
This event will last an hour, and should be complete by 4.15 pm.
Please contact Bhanu Kapil at bk426@cam.ac.uk if you have any questions.
dove / Christine Kirubi is an artist-poet-collaborator based in London. Their debut poetry collection WILDPLASSEN was published by the87press this year. Recent projects and performances include The Archive is a Gathering Place at Tate Britain in collaboration with Rhoda Boateng, The Blue House co-founded with Daniel Baker-Wells, and a collaborative improvisation at Décalé with petals Kalulé. Recent commissioned texts include Fabulous Musics published in response to Shenece Oretha’s UAL 20/20 commission with Hepworth Wakefield and a note on audrey mbugua’s dog published in the Jerwood Survey III catalogue in response to Ebun Sodipo’s work.
Blue Pieta is a director, choreographer, dramaturg, performer and writer. Their practice explores ritual, ancient mythology and embodied poetics. They studied Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, History of Art at Cambridge University, and trained in performance at: Sadlers Wells, Impulstanz Vienna, Siobhan Davies and the National Youth Theatre. Their works have been staged at the Royal Court Theatre, Battersea Arts Centre and Courtauld Institute of Fine Art. Blue Pieta regularly collaborates with Bhanu Kapil. A recent collaboration HUMANIMAL debuted at Stone Nest, curated by Serpentine Gallery as part of a live programme, Queer Earth and Liquid Matters. Blue Pieta was also the dramaturg for the contemporary Chinese Operetta Nine Songs which debuted in the AlUlah desert Saudi Arabia, directed by Farooq Chaudhry, with musical direction from Jocelyn Pook. Their staging of Kapil’s How to Wash a Heart depicts the complex relations that emerge between an immigrant guest and a citizen host. Drawn from a first performance at the ICA in London in 2019, this work begins to ask difficult and urgent questions about the limits of inclusion, hospitality and care. This exciting, staged performance of Kapil’s award-winning collection, which premiered at Soho Poly Theatre, will feature musical performances from Kath Gifford and Ynys Barnard-Masterson, dance from Samantha Hines and Blue Pieta, and poetry by Bhanu Kapil.
Bhanu Kapil writes intergenre works. She has been awarded a Windham Campbell Prize (Yale University), and a Cholmondeley Award (Society of Authors, UK). A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she is the author of six full length collections: How To Wash A Heart (Pavilion Poetry, 2020), Ban en Banlieue (Nightboat Books, 2016), Schizophrene (Nightboat Books, 2011), humanimal [a project for future children] (Kelsey Street Press, 2009), Incubation: a Space for Monsters (Leon Works, 2006), and The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers (Kelsey Street Press, 2001). How To Wash A Heart was the winner of the TS Eliot Prize and a Poetry Book Society Choice. In 2023, two new, non-identical editions of Incubation: a space for monsters were published, by Prototype (UK) and Kelsey Street Press (USA). Based at Churchill College, Cambridge, as an Extraordinary Fellow, Bhanu is writing [with] [near] [alongside] the archive of Enoch Powell. With Blue Pieta, she has developed performances of many kinds.
Thank you to the Judith E. Wilson Drama Studio committee for the funding that makes this event possible.
Please do not attend if experiencing cold-like symptoms. The Judith E Wilson Drama Studio is located in the basement of the Faculty of English and is accessible by lift (or stairwell).