American Dance Festival is pleased to invite you to an open showing with Alexander Davis

The showing will be at 5:00 pm on Sunday, July 6.

We hope you will join us for this special event!  This is a FREE event, but we do ask that you reserve your spot here in advance. With thanks for your interest and support.

Gay Aesthetics: Based on a True Story – Work in Progress Showing 

Gay Aesthetics: Based on a True Story is an evening-length dance solo / play / lecture / gathering event that excavates the history of queer aesthetics, representation in media, survival tools, and reality television. Drawing from Hal Fischer’s pioneering Gay Semiotics research, Bob Mizer’s vintage physique photography, and contemporary queer scholarship, Gay Aesthetics has been described as “one overeducated white gay’s unearned and overdramatic existential crisis.” Which hurts, but also… it feels good to be seen. Armed with only a marginal understanding of PowerPoint, Alex embarks on an earnest exploration of embodied and authentic queer existence as he grapples with physical expectations, belonging, isolation, and the challenge of bringing poppers through TSA. Is this a free and “informal” showing? Sure. But while Alex wrestles with both the material and holding space as a solo performer, you’re going to be served a spectacle of insecurities. You’re not going to want to miss it. Special thanks to The American Dance Festival and Lisa Vanderpump.

Bio
Alexander Davis is a Boston-based performer, fiber artist, and choreographer. He holds an MFA from Smith College (2023). Davis was named City of Boston Artist Fellow in 2019. His performance work includes collaborations with Ryan Landry’s Gold Dust Orphans, Boston Lyric Opera, Boston Children’s Chorus, Global Arts Live, Improv Asylum/Laugh Boston, and Urbanity Dance. He assisted choreographer Monica Bill Barnes on Greta Gerwig’s film Little Women (2019) and has worked as an assistant to choreographer Shura Baryshnikov. Davis has received grants and residencies from The Studios at Mass MoCA, The Boston Foundation, NEFA, The City of Boston, and The Theatre Offensive. In 2018, he and collaborator Joy Davis were named Bessie Schonberg (Boston) Fellows at The Yard, where they developed Junk Drawer, which toured New England in 2019-2020. Together as The Davis Sisters, they have held residencies at Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Studio@550, Boston Center for the Arts, Chelsea Theatre Works, Bates Dance Festival, Wesleyan Center for the Arts, and Goodyear Arts in Charlotte, NC. Davis’s fiber art series Federation of Athletic Gentleman (F.A.G.) was exhibited at Childs Gallery, Boston, in Interlaced: The Fabric of Art, which he also curated. His curatorial work at Childs Gallery includes Gaze: A History of Male Physique Photography, Closet to Quarantine: Queer Art Then and Now, Chuck: The Photography of George Platt Lynes, and John MacConnell: Fragments.

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