Ripening: Dawn of the Wylding

Vanessa Walters is organizing this fundraiser.

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Ripening’s latest incarnation, Dawn of the Wylding, is an immersive dance theater performance that integrates interactive installation, cinematic interludes, live video and music to illustrate themes of ecofeminism, animal mythology, and femme empowerment. Directed, choreographed, produced, and written by Vanessa Walters, in collaboration with the performers and creative team, Dawn of the Wylding will premiere November 30 - December 3 at the Irondale Arts Center in Brooklyn, NY.

Dawn of the Wylding features performers Alexandra Berger, Alicia Dellimore, Gwendolyn Gussman, Joey Kipp, Tara O’Con, Trevor Vaughn, Vanessa Walters, Michelle Yard, Lucy Struever York, and Omar Zubair. Video by TAXIPLASM. Costumes by David Quinn. Makeup design by Jodi King. Sound design by Omar Zubair. Lighting design by Alex Taylor. Installation art direction by Nicholas Papadakis.

We are reaching out to our community for help covering essential expenses, including:

Video Design
Make-up Design
Sound Design
Set Design
Costumes
Performers' Compensation

Any donation helps us to reach our goal and bring this piece to life!

To learn more about Dawn of the Wylding, read below.

Dawn of the Wylding centers on SHE-YETI and her cousins, the WYLD WOMEN —ancient animal-human hybrids from another realm—who find themselves confronting compounded calamities of habitat loss, extinction, and misogyny across the millennia. Through these characters’ chance encounters with human research scientists, Dawn of the Wylding explores and illustrates themes of ecofeminism, animal mythology, symbiosis, and femme empowerment as ways to navigate crises across dimensions of time and space.

WILD WOMYN

Moving with a mighty ferocity, the Wyld Womyn are a tribe of formerly hyper-urbanized humans, each of whom has reached a breaking point in their lives, driven to the brink by misogyny, injustice, and climate disaster. They once believed that their unusual talents and unique voices would be forever hidden and suppressed into extinction--in much the same way that they have seen in the flora and fauna of their natural world.

Every Harvest Moon, they are called together from various parts of the globe to join their oracle, She-Yeti, in a mystical world where their shared outrage is compounded by that of their ancestors across the millennia, and culminates in an explosive exorcism of dance. Each Wyld Woman is an expression of resistance, with their own wyld origin story to share.

What is Ripening? Check out the Sizzle Reel Here!