2019 FESTIVAL
Thursday, August 1st -- Sunday, August 4th
Track One | Flamingo Cocktail Club | Royal Circus
In its second year, Kindling Arts Festival remains committed to fulfilling its mission of empowering diverse local performers with the space and supporting resources to take daring creative risks and explore challenging ideas. The 4-day line-up features adventurous work ranging from abstract performance art to a showcase for emerging female choreographers, with artistic expressions including dance, theatre, circus, performance art, immersive happenings, and hybrid forms.
Want to explore multiple events in the Festival? We want that too! Create a full adventure with the Wildfire Weekend Pass and see everything for only $75. Or choose a Triple Play pass for just $38 to see your favorite genre or work - Dance, Theatre, or Performance Art. If you'd like ultimate flexibility, consider an 8-ticket or 4-ticket Flex Pass that will allow you to divide your tickets among the ticketed events however you choose!
Obsession is an immersive site-specific dance-theatre experience that will provoke questions about your own preoccupations and desires. Acclaimed directors Stacie Flood-Popp & Cailin Manning collaborate on a wholly unique event utilizing the grounds of the Flamingo Cocktail Club that reveals what makes us weak in the knees and surrender to that place beyond curiosity. Whether for a moment or a lifetime, obsessions -- as small or grandiose as they might be -- forever alter us for better or worse. What are the limits of your obsession? Or is that obsession an addiction?
OBSESSION
FOUND MOVEMENT GROUP
Flamingo Cocktail Club
Secure your spot with a pay-what-you-can donation
Explore the rhythms of connection and community with Suspended Gravity’s latest knockout aerial-dance performance. Set to an electronica-inspired soundtrack, Wavelength utilizes the flow of a single day to reflect moments of commonality, joy, and loneliness in the midst of the bustle of modern urban life. The evening promises a range of dynamic emotions and physical feats as each performer creates a universal message through their personal strength on aerial apparatus.
WAVELENGTH
SUSPENDED GRAVITY
The Garage at Track One
$15 in advance / $20 at the door
Explore three wildly different meditations on identity, status, and transformation in Brief Encounters, a one-of-a-kind evening of performance art. Gardening, Not Architecture delivers “Absence of Me,” featuring original music, movement, and video to delve into the uncanny. “Birdgirl,” a durational performance devised by Madeleine Hicks featuring Lila Toshiko and Christen Heilman, creates a visual representation of personal rebirth, creative force, and primal femininity utilizing a rich soundscape and video installation accompanied by devised movement. And Natalie Risk offers a powerful blend of spoken word poetry and choreography that provides a new perspective on appropriation of bodies and the colonization of the mind.
BREIF ENCOUNTERS
AN EVENING OF BOLD PERFORMANCE ART
Silo Room at Track One
$12 in advance / $15 at the door
Witness the story of the spectacular rise and fall of a wealthy southern family told across the crumbling treasures and mostly false recollections they left behind. This unique, immersive theatre experience from an unprecedented collaboration of five of the country’s most exciting young playwrights takes audiences on a guided tour of surreal scandals, super weird kinks, southern money, and statistically unlikely tornado outbreaks. All the Dead Things plays for a very limited audience inside Royal Circus – advance reservations are highly recommended.
Conceived by Nate Eppler
Directed by Alicia Haymer
Written by Nate Eppler, Tori Keenan-Zelt, Krista Knight, Andrew Kraymer, and R. Eric Thomas
Produced by Erica Jo Lloyd
ALL THE DEAD THINGS
NATE EPPLER + ALICIA HAMMER
Royal Circus
$20 in advance / $25 at the door
Bringing together some of the most exciting choreographers in Nashville, Counterpoint offers a series of unique perspectives on the world through the eyes of young women. The assemblage of short-form dance pieces includes a focus on representations of the female body, the changing state of comedy, complex interpersonal relationships, and meditations on contemporary society’s expectations of women. Blending exciting floor choreography, aerial work, and original film, Counterpoint is an evening not to be missed.
Including performances by: Becca Hoback, McKay House, Amanda Howard, Lena Mazel & Lauren Cougan, Tosha Marie Pendergrast, Hadassah Perry, and Amanda Reichert
COUNTERPOINT
A CELEBRATION OF FEMALE CHOREOGRAPHERS
The Garage at Track One
$15 in advance / $20 at the door
Compiling stories about women told through movement by women, Knitty Gritty is an original dance work weaving together tales to tie us together. Energetic, emerging female choreographers – led by Hannah McCarthy and Bernadette Turnage – take over the evocative Silo Room to explore the female experience through movement and portray the interconnectedness of women throughout time. As the performers use their own bodies to weave new fabrics, both literal and metaphorical, the collective reclaims an art form associated with quiet domesticity and presents it as a powerful unifying force worthy of celebration.
KNITTY GRITTY
BERNADETTE TURNAGE + HANNAH MCCARTHY
Silo Room at Track One
$15 in advance / $17 at the door
In The Darkness and Other Black Things, acclaimed local actress Jennifer Whitcomb-Oliva presents an original solo performance that is both searing and timely. Audiences are invited to hear this anthology of lyrical essays told from the perspective of a Black vampire full of biting truths, sardonic humor, and centuries-old wisdom. At times painstakingly funny and shockingly relevant, Whitcomb-Oliva’s powerful words and commanding presence will provide a theatrical experience that packs a gut-punch. Are you afraid of the Darkness?
THE DARKNESS AND OTHER BLACK THINGS
JENNIFER WHITCOMB-OLIVA
Silo Room at Track One
$10 in advance / $12 at the door
Welcome to The Lil' Amanda Show! There is nothing quite so sacred, secret, and magical as a little girl's bedroom - especially when that little girl is an aspiring talk-show host/actor/singer/dancer/playwright/soap opera star. In Lil' Amanda's room, there's no telling what you might see. Stuffed animals that come to life? Definitely. Dancing coat racks? Probably. But what happens when a child who lives primarily in their daydreams is faced with trauma? For the first time on stage, beloved Nashville actress Amanda Card delivers a sampling of a new work that is at times hysterical and consistently personally vulnerable and honest.
THE LIL AMANDA SHOW
AMANDA CARD
Silo Room at Track One
$10 in advance / $12 at the door
The Possibility Room is a fully interactive performance pieces filled with a fusion of improvisational dance, music, and poetry that invites the audience to be an essential part of the creation process. Following prompts from the performers, audience members will offer phrases to poets and musicians who will generate material on the spot, resulting in a performance that has never existed before and will never be replicated again. This wholly unique experience explores the ways our lives, beliefs, bodies, and souls are (and aren't) constantly changing. How are we like the tide? Do we shift constantly, unpredictably? Is it possible to really change at all, or to keep ourselves from changing?
THE POSSIBILITY ROOM
TESSA BRYANT + DANA PURSER GARY
Silo Room at Track One
$15 in advance / $17 at the door