NYU Skirball will present the world premiere of Raja Feather Kelly/The Feath3r Theory’s “The Absolute Future (or Death, Loneliness, and The Absolute Future of the Multiverse, or How to Cover the Sun with Mud),” a NYU Skirball co-commission created by Raja Feather Kelly, with original composition by Christoph Mateka, on April 5 & 6 at 7:30 pm at NYU Skirball.

“The Absolute Future” is a devised danced-theatre performance about a group of friends who attempt to watch The Great American Eclipse (April 8, 2024) and miss it. A constellation of shadows come together in a daring mix of fiction, reality, fantasy, and surrealism.

On their journey, the friends reflect on their experiences of cultural phenomena, from Y2K through the Eclipse. Their stories, both spoken and physicalized, materialize a multiverse comprising everything–the entirety of space, time, matter, energy, information, and the physical laws and constants that describe them–ultimately landing them in a state of existential crisis. Darkness. The fear of totality. While the text tells one story of people coming together, the bodies sculpt a tumultuous story of crashing and exploding.

This passionately human and humorously charged work is furious, sensitive, and pulsates with a heart that is desperate to find a connection in a world evolving to keep us divided. The central question: “Do we make culture or does culture make us?”

the feath3r theory (TF3T), founded in 2009, is a New York City based dance-theatre-media company that produces the work of Artistic Director and Choreographer Raja Feather Kelly. As a collaboration of dancers, actors, filmmakers, musicians, photographers, and designers, the company’s mission to broaden the space for unheard voices and repressed histories, to bring into the theatre those sometimes left out, and to use theatre to provoke much-needed public conversations. the feath3r theory does this by challenging its audience and its creators to collectively interrogate – and celebrate – its shared relationship to human empathy and personal ethics as expressed in and distorted by popular media. By unabashedly appropriating the structures, themes, and aesthetics of reality television, celebrity culture, social media and the internet, the work of TF3T synthesizes dance, visual media, fashion, drag, standup, minstrelsy, and narrative theatre into virtuosic, expansive, radical and surreal large-scale pop-culture phenomena. The company is committed to addressing pressing social issues through dance, theatre, and media with an emphasis on LGBTQ themes.

Raja Feather Kelly is a choreographer, director, and the Artistic Director of the feath3r theory (TF3T). His upcoming works include the Broadway musical Lempika, Teeth at Playwrights Horizons and The Fires, which he wrote and directs, at Soho Rep. Kelly choreographed the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical A Strange Loop, and has created 18 evening-length premieres with the feath3r theory. He has choreographed many off-Broadway productions, most recently Michael R. Jackson’s White Girl in Danger. He has received numerous accolades, including three Princess Grace Awards, an Obie Award and an Outer Critics Circle honor, among many others. www.thefeath3rtheory.com

The Absolute Future
Conceived, Written, and Directed by Raja Feather Kelly
Original music composed by Christoph Mateka
Video and projection by Laura Snow
Lighting Design by Tuçe Yasak
Photography by Kate Enman
Performance by Chris Bell, Ashley Chavonne, Ami Gernux, Alexandria Giroux, Sara Gurevich, Amy Hoang, and Nick Sciscione

NYU Skirball is located in the heart of Greenwich Village, historically a center of resistance, dissent and free thinking. NYU Skirball’s programing reflects this history and embraces today’s renegade artists and companies, presenting works that aim to engage, provoke and inspire audiences. NYU Skirball is NYC’s home for cutting-edge performance, artistic research, and discourse, holding close to James Baldwin’s dictum that “artists are here to disturb the peace.” The 800-seat theatre provides a home for internationally renowned artists, innovators, and thinkers and presents ground-breaking events ranging from re-inventions of the classics to cutting-edge premieres, in genres ranging from dance, theatre and performance arts to comedy, music and film.

NYU Skirball’s presentation of “The Absolute Future” is made possible in part with support from the Harkness Foundation for Dance, the Kip & Ginny Gaylor Fund, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

“The Absolute Future” was first developed with a Research and Development Commission as a part of the Live Arts Bard commissioning program at the Fisher Center at Bard (fishercenter.bard.edu), Co-Commissioned by NYU SKIRBALL Center, and with generous support from The Simons Foundation and is part of its “In the Path of Totality” initiative. (For more information, visit inthepathoftotality.org.) Other support for The Absolute Future includes Gibney’s Open Interval Residency Program. This work is supported by a technical residencies at the National Center for Choreography (NCCAkron); The Church at Sag Harbor; The Mercury Store; a Guggenheim Works-in-process residency at Bethany Arts Project; BAM; The Park Avenue Armory, where Raja Feather Kelly is an Artist in Residence.