sweat variant / Okwui Okpokwasili & Peter Born
my tongue is a blade
US premiere
Dance / Installation / Visual Art
my tongue is a blade is a three-hour movement performance-practice that is a work with relation, memory, and reflection. It asks: What are the limits of our attention and how does that test the strength of our bonds? Four performers commit to remembering each other, holding each other, bearing each other, and sustaining the world that contains them. This rich visual and sonic landscape is an invitation to the audience to witness this practice and resonate within it.
my tongue is a blade will be performed by Okwui Okpokwasili, Bria Bacon, Kris Lee and AJ Wilmore.
We are interested in building a spectacle of radical intimacy, where both performers and audience are acknowledged as being locked in a mutual gaze. We build gestural vocabularies and narrative frameworks that are concerned with the problem of memory in the inherent instability of the construction of a persona.
We hope to activate a space that allows the audience to question who they are looking at and how they are looking. We hope this creates a critical space of wonderment, of uncertainty and of mystery. It is in this space that we believe we can see each other anew.
Performance details: This is a 180 minute durational piece – We encourage audiences to come and go throughout the piece. Entry is rolling through the duration of the installation, and space is available on a first-come, first-served basis with two slotted entry times. Guests are welcome to arrive any time at or after their ticketed admission and stay for as long as they like.
The Dark: PS21’s fearless winter festival of live performance radiating across Columbia County
The Dark is a new annual festival from PS21 : Center for Contemporary Performance that celebrates and elevates the depths of winter. Taking place February 16–22, 2026, the festival will unfold at PS21 and across Columbia County—in theatres, restaurants, libraries, saunas, and outdoor public spaces. Featuring more than 60 international artists and over 80 performances, The Dark offers a packed week of world-class contemporary performance, installation, music, dance, and theatre—all exploring winter as a time of community and solitude, fire and ice, darkness and light. A major new attraction for the region, the festival positions Columbia County as a year-round cultural destination—not just a summer one.
It is a light in the dark—and The Dark is the light.
Secure your Festival Pass to The Dark now which includes tickets to every performance along with a complimentary sauna and ice skating session!
Commissioned by the Irish Museum of Modern Art as part of Take a Breath, with support from the Sam Gilliam Foundation. Support for sweat variant is provided in part by the Mellon and Howard Gilman Foundations.
sweat variant is the collaborative practice of artists Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born, partners in their work and their lives. Since 1996, they have been working at the intersection of dance, theatre, and visual art to make challenging and rigorous work that reaffirms that which has been deemed marginal as the true center through the exploration of Black interiority. Okpokwasili and Born have created the Bessie Award-winning pent up: a revenge dance and Bronx Gothic, and their work has been presented worldwide. Okpokwasili has earned numerous accolades, including a Doris Duke Artist Award and a MacArthur Fellowship.
Please note that this performance has an unconventional seating, limited seats or standing room only. We are happy to accommodate any specific accessibility needs.
Please reach out to Adriana at boxoffice@ps21chatham.org, and she will coordinate with our front-of-house team to ensure your experience is comfortable and enjoyable.
