KINDLING ARTS FESTIVAL 2021
Wednesday, August 25th - Saturday, August 28th, 2021
OZ Arts Nashville | The Barbershop Theater
Nashville School for the Aerial Arts | Centennial Park
Kindling Arts Festival is back and bigger than ever! Fulfilling its mission of empowering diverse local performers with the space and supporting resources to take creative risks and explore challenging ideas, this year's 4-day event features more than a dozen projects created by some of Nashville's most interesting artists. The line-up includes a mix of contemporary dance works, new plays, immersive artistic experiences, and even small concerts inside a projection dome.
Get the most out of the 2021 Festival by having access to all the programming with a Wildfire Weekend Pass for only $85. Our multi-show Dance and Theater packages will secure you a ticket to each of the events in your selected genre, or you can even choose a more eclectic path with the Women at the Wheel package, featuring wildly unique projects driven by female artists. If you prefer having the ultimate flexibility, consider an 8-ticket or 4-ticket Flex Pass that will allow you to choose your own adventure!
VENUE PARTNERS
FLICKER SPONSORS
COVID-19 PROTOCOLS
We are invested in the safety and wellbeing of our artists, audiences, and overall community. With the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and the rise of the Delta variant, we are implementing the following protocols for the upcoming events in Kindling Arts Festival 2021:
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Masks will be required at all times when indoors at all venues when a guest is not actively drinking. This includes when seated and when moving about the buildings.
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All artists, staff members, technicians, and volunteers will be required to be vaccinated and will be masked at all times when indoors and not on stage.
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Capacities at all venues will be reduced by 20% or more from our original plan. Distanced seating will be implemented across all venues as much as possible.
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Due to the close quarters at The Barbershop Theater and in the Dome, we will require proof of full vaccination for entry at both venues, starting with verification at the point of purchase when buying tickets.
In Profile brings together some of the most distinct and exciting choreographers from Nashville’s thriving dance scene for an unmissable evening. The dynamic program of short contemporary dance explores our nostalgic relationship with the past, the physical limitations of the present moment, and dreams of what could lie ahead. The mix of movement styles includes solo works, group numbers, and installation-style choreography, representing the range of Nashville’s talented artists. Featuring works from: Di Mossa, Becca Hoback, novel. dance, Lena Mazel + Skyler Levine, Numinous Flux, Amanda Reichert + Sarah Salim, and Alexandra Winer.
VENUE
OZ Arts Nashville
PERFORMANCE TIMES
Wednesday, August 25th at 7:30pm
Thursday, August 26th at 7:30pm
ADMISSION
$20
Sinning never looked this good. In SEVEN, the highly anticipated performance film project from acclaimed actress and interdisciplinary artist Jennifer Whitcomb-Oliva, the Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Heavenly Virtues are seen in a whole new light. Directly confronting the intersection of Blackness and Fatness, Jennifer tackles these often marginalized topics through her personal experiences and opens conversations on mental health, sexual health, and spirituality that uniquely relate to Black women. The film project is directed by award-winning documentary filmmaker Valerie Whitcomb and features additional choreography by Marcus Hayes (Austin Peay’s Associate Dean for the College of Arts & Letters / Professor of Dance & African-American Studies).
VENUE
OZ Arts Nashville
SCREENING TIME
Saturday, August 28th at 8:00pm
ADMISSION
$12
Our time together and our movement together is sacred. In dance, our bodies connect to the spiritual and create a holy realm. Join acclaimed choreographer Shabaz Ujima of shackled feet DANCE and a variety of artists from the Nashville community in an outdoor celebration of our bodies, nature, and community at the southern end of Centennial Park. With site-specific dance performances created around Cockrill Spring and Musician's Corner, this processional, interactive performance invites audiences from all backgrounds to gather and savor the present moment, each other, and the beautiful world we call home. Come be moved and be ready to MOVE!
VENUE
Centennial Park (near Cockrill Spring & Musicians Corner)
PERFORMANCE TIMES
Thursday, August 26th at 7:00pm
Friday, August 27th at 7:00pm
ADMISSION
FREE
In this hour-long, hot-mic performance, participants reveal their untold truths through letters, texts, emails, or general ramblings that they never had the guts to send. Submissions range from heartfelt to horrifying, each with a healthy dose of humor, inspiring empathy or schadenfreude depending on the circumstances. Come hear what happens when you decide to bare it all rather than hitting the backspace button. Created by Alie Stewart and hosted by the hysterical Sam De Surra.
VENUE
The Barbershop Theater - **proof of vaccination required for all guests**
PERFORMANCE TIME
Friday, August 27th at 8:00pm
ADMISSION
$15
Maven of multimedia and spinner of tender tunes, Gardening, Not Architecture’s radiant performance art piece Absence of Me features a mix of live music, light show, original films created in collaboration with local filmmaker Dycee Wildman. G,NA’s projections are taken to a whole new level in this Dome Show edition of the performance, created for intimate audiences of less than 30 people per performance. The brief program promises to be a memorable and emotional journey that is both visually stunning and deeply moving.
VENUE
The Dome at the Barbershop Theater
**proof of vaccination required for all guests**
PERFORMANCE TIME
Saturday, August 28th at 7:00pm and 8:30pm
ADMISSION
$15
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Further exploring the concepts and visual aesthetics that drove his buzz-worthy run of PRISM at OZ Arts earlier this year, visionary choreographer David Flores shares a series of vignettes of bodies tethered to the space around them and to each other. A series of visually stunning props constrain, entrap, and embrace the performers in the intimate black-box space, becoming expansions of the dancers’ bodies and their internal emotional landscape. Combined, these scenes portray a surrealistic picture of the human experience that immerses the viewer inside the visual experience.
VENUE
The Barbershop Theater - **proof of vaccination required for all guests**
PERFORMANCE TIMES
Saturday, August 28th at 8:00pm and 9:30pm
ADMISSION
$15
Miniature ponies, heads of potato, and dolls from the ‘patch divulge their most honest inner monologues in this toy-centric performance exhibit that projects adult anxieties onto a carousel of your favorite childhood playthings. The Small Parts Playset is the latest creation from Nashville’s most incisively hilarious playwright, Nate Eppler, co-created with NYC-based nonbinary writer and action figure scholar, Jonathan Alexandratos. Directed by Jessika Malone and featuring Blake Holliday, this unique experience offers a toy's eye view of deeply human fears, joys, and desires. The Small Parts Playset queers our relationship to toys in order to break through to a shared universe that melts the rigidity of plastic and social norms alike.
VENUE
OZ Arts Nashville
PERFORMANCE TIMES
Friday, August 27th at 7:30pm
Saturday, August 28th at 3:00pm
ADMISSION
$15 in advance
Nothing is quite as it seems under the big top. Inside this circus tent, the impossible becomes possible and the boundaries of reality start to unravel, despite the Ringmaster’s best attempts. Join local circus legends from Suspended Gravity and an all-star list of special guests on their journey through a magical dreamscape that is elusive, yet familiar. Chimera is an ode to the classic circus experience with a dazzling surrealist twist, promising an incredible evening of aerial and spectacle.
VENUE
Nashville School for the Aerial Arts
PERFORMANCE TIMES
Friday, August 27th at 8:00pm
Saturday, August 28th at 8:00pm
ADMISSION
$20
An original creation from the mind of celebrated spoken word artist and actor Cameron L. Mitchell, Blackbird is a theatrical experience that uses poetry to dramatically examine the Black male experience in modern day society, with echoes to the not-so-distant past. This riveting solo performance raises questions about the way Black men are treated in contemporary culture, excavating feelings of entrapment and the internal struggle to adequately express emotion. Blackbird is a participatory theatrical event that takes audiences on a meaningful journey through one man’s psyche and ultimately offers viewers a chance to rewrite our collective future. The performance’s special re-staging for Kindling Arts Festival has been further developed in collaboration with award-winning director and performer Alicia Haymer.
VENUE
The Barbershop Theater - **proof of vaccination required for all guests**
PERFORMANCE TIMES
Wednesday, August 25th at 8:00pm
Thursday, August 26th at 8:00pm
Saturday, August 28th at 5:00pm
ADMISSION
$15
A mix of dance, music, sound design, poetry, and visual art combine to create a wide-ranging selection of performance films that explore our connection to self and community, to nature and the sublime. Grounded features collaborations between filmmakers, dancers, choreographers, poets, and other performers — together representing a unique fusion of live performance and cinematic experience that highlights an unpredictable year of artistic exploration, isolation, and realignment.
Featuring films from: Blue Moves Modern Dance Company, Megan Carvajal, Spencer Grady + Austin Flores, McKay House, Crystal Peattie, Taria Person, Caleb Peyman, and Satellite Dance
VENUE
OZ Arts Nashville
SCREENING TIME
Saturday, August 28th at 6:30pm
ADMISSION
$12
Take a breather from the world and enter an intimate, tranquil space that features ambient music by Winston Harrison and a dazzling projection show highlighting natural wonders. By sharing the experience with an entirely silent (and phone-less) audience, FuzzMuzz invites us into a space of shared community but also deeply personal introspection. Unplug and get fuzzy.
VENUE
The Dome at the Barbershop Theater
**proof of vaccination required for all guests**
PERFORMANCE TIME
Friday, August 27th at 7:00pm and 9:00pm
ADMISSION
$15
A contemporary twist on the infamous Cabaret Voltaire from early 20th century. A yummy, DADA-esque, postmodern stew served up live before your eyes. DADA-DADA-BRÜLLT-BRÜLLT is a half-hour of delightful chaos that fuses film, drama, poetry, music, and incomprehensible voices into an abstract interpretation of our current postmodern condition. For some, the experience will be an exhilarating, non-linear pastiche of artistic disciplines; for others, it will echo the academic work of Beckett, Kafka, Foucault, Lacan, and more; for all, it promises to be an oddly compelling experience that’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. Created and performed by Kevin Marshall Chopson.
VENUE
The Barbershop Theater - **proof of vaccination required for all guests**
PERFORMANCE TIMES
Friday, August 27th at 10:00pm
ADMISSION
$12