Project in Motion has ‘Othello’ in rap on Aug. 20-21

Project in Motion (PIM) aerial dance company of Las Cruces has two live original theater and dance productions coming this month, with more on the way, said PIM artistic director Hilary McDaniel-Douglas.

PIM’s season opens with “Othello: The Remix,” with performances at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Aug. 20-21. Tickets are $10, with a limited number of seats available. Masks are required for this open-air theater production.

The show is a 21^st-century retelling of “The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice” that Shakespeare wrote about 1603. Actor and filmmaker Julian Alexander returns to PIM to star, along with Joshua Horton, Juan Apodaca and Mark Kitanga.

“Julian first graced PIM’s stage as one of the handsome princes in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ which was the aerial/terrestrial hit of 2013,” McDaniel-Douglas said. Since that production, “Julian’s star has risen as a podcast creator, actor and film director, even taking on teaching at New Mexico State University. Julian returns from his studies in Manchester, England. with this rendition of ‘Othello,’ a modern take told by a diverse group of actors entirely in rap.”

“The remix was first performed in New Mexico by us (Alexander, Horton, Apodaca and Kitanga) in 2018 and 2019 with the Scaffolding Theatre Company,” Alexander said. “The energy of the show stayed with us as actors these last two years. In a year that forced us to look inward, examine race relations and witness political unrest, this show kept coming back to me as a performer. It resonates with so many of these themes in a very entertaining and thoughtful way.

“This show will challenge Shakespeare’s own work as we examine it today in modern rap language,” Alexander said. “Although we’re using much of original direction and design from our first run, we also have introduced more ideas that have popped up in our hiatus, a hiatus that allowed us to think deeper about the play. Collectively, we brought new themes to the table.

“The production is the debut of the Moor You Know Collective, a group of artists who, like Othello, may be considered an ‘other,’” Alexander said.

Performances are at PIM’s The Gin Studios, 430 N. Compress Road.

PIM, “an abandoned cotton gin turned into performance space … is a character in itself that will amplify the show’s experience in a way that will surprise us and the audience, as the location speaks back to us during our performance,” he said.

Several workshops that Alexander and other “Othello” cast members had planned at PIM in conjunction with the show were cancelled due to time constraints, McDaniel-Douglas said, and will be rescheduled at a future date.

Coming to PIM Oct. 28-31 is “Scheherazade: The Woman Behind the 1001 Arabian Nights.” Auditions for Scheherazade and PIM’s spring shows will be at 4 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 29 at PIM.

PIM also has very limited classes and open climbs are available, McDaniel-Douglas said.

PIM is a nonprofit founded in 1998 and works to “develop collaborative audio/video, theatrical, terrestrial and aerial dance productions and perform on traditional aerial apparatuses, as well as custom built devices and set pieces of our own design,” according to the PIM website.

For more information, call 575-208-4413 or email pimdance@gmail.com.

Visit www.projectinmotion.com.