Refrigerated Dreams
October 27, 2018 (Joe’s Pub, New York)
Directed and co-created by Niegel Smith
Nona Hendryx created Refrigerated Dreams, an immersive multimedia installation and concert transforming Joe’s Pub into the dinner party of the season. Inspired by Carrie Mae Weems’s seminal The Kitchen Table Series, the work-in-progress is directed by Niegel Smith and features choreography and performances by Francesca Harper, Josh Johnson and The Francesca Harper Project, with original music by Nona Hendryx.
From the first message announcing Refrigerated Dreams, the audience enters a world of binaries: man or woman, black or white, stay or go. In that first email, a man invites you to a dinner party, for which he has secured Nona Hendryx and her performance art band Anon as the entertainment. But lurking behind him are the images from The Kitchen Table Series. In a way, they are asking, what’s going on in the kitchen; what’s the backstory? Missing from the dinner table is ‘The Man,’ performed by Josh Johnson and ‘The Woman,’ performed by Harper. Where is she? Is she coming? Will she break out of the heteronormative?