Exquisitely Punk

Walking into 12th Ave Arts, you are met with a sculptural run of salmon in the vestibule. Moving into the lobby, you are greeted with a DJ, a grapefruit mule, and a projection of a Jenga tower burning like a fireplace. You may have stumbled into the previbration party for Velocity’s newly launched Out There Experimental Dance Festival. Each Out There show features a split bill of local and touring artists, along with a pre-show and post-show party. Week one featured work from local artist maia melene d’urfé, alongside Los Angeles  artists Jobel Medina + Elliott Sellers. These works explore themes of isolation, connection, and humanity as performers find ways to both provoke and support each other. The pieces challenge audiences as they navigate complex relationships, intensity, and care.

IMMDED IMGEWD is a pressure cooker. This work, created by dancer and choreographer Jobel Medina, with filmmaker and musician Elliot “L” Sellers, is a vicious and tumultuous world that captivates audiences through its use of the body, drums, and cello. Continuously building tension, the collaborators create an alluring world that is both explosive and vulnerable. The stage is bright white and bare, aside from a drum kit in the back corner, when Medina enters, beginning to move with precision and grace–the attack of a heron going after a fish in stark silence. He lunges, squats, and leaps all without making a sound, smooth and captivating. Sellers enters from the audience and approaches the drums. Breaking into a near-deafening drum solo, he announces his presence. As the two play together, they constantly amplify each other. The two get louder and bigger until they cannot be contained by the stage. Tension builds as they push each other further and further, as if trying to outperform one another. At times, they reach a captivating harmony reflecting one another in the movement and music.  

Moments of softness and quiet juxtapose this amplified tension. Sellers begins rubbing a mallet onto a cymbal, creating a low rumbling sound. Medina responds physically to the sound frantically moving as if to shake something off, collapsing into Sellers’ arms when the sound becomes too much. This cycle repeats, abruptly stopping the sound each time to tenderly catch Medina. They are continuously the cause and relief to each other’s anguish.

Medina begins deconstructing the drum kit moving the pieces all over the stage, stealing the snare from under Sellers. They travel together out of the theater, Sellers playing a drum roll as Medina carries the snare, moving about the building, the audience following the sound of the drum roll echo behind them. Medina gets the entire audience to create a thunderous drum roll with their feet. Then the piece takes a very dark turn at the end as the pot finally boils over. Sellers begins a relaxed kicking, stomping groove, the type you see at a DIY house show. Medina takes a swig from a bottle, then lies in front of him. He begins spitting up fake blood and convulsing. Reaching stillness, fake blood pools out from Medina, Sellers continuing the passive kicking sway, standing above him. The grandiosity of the two performers distracts from the tense and divisive climate they are reflecting on stage. This ending was difficult to digest as it leaves its audience complicit and cautions the dangers of passivity.

d’urfé’s new work, a crisis of standing, navigates isolation and community as the dancers search for stability. The work opens with the three dancers, d’urfe, Ashley Menestrina, and Natalie Grant, contorted in the downstage corner, dimly lit to create an ominous amalgamation. Very slowly, they begin to unfold, revealing their own separate shapes that slink in and out of unison. They explore sweeping floorwork with arched backs swinging in and out of bridges. They crawl with spines that move like tongues, starting to find their way.

Two dancers embrace in the downstage corner as d’urfé lights a cigarette on the opposite end of the stage. As the two melt into each other and begin their duet, d’urfé sits in solitude while Billie Holiday sings. d’urfé abruptly begins to shift and reverberate alongside the cigarette, as the smoke dances in the negative space of their staccato and internal movement. The two dancers on the opposite end of the stage engage in a slow swinging duet, taking turns lifting each other. Traveling across to join d’urfé, each lights a cigarette and soon the entire theater is filled with smoke. The intense isolation of this section gives way as the music shifts and the dances all begin rocking and grooving to the new rhythm. Starting facing outward, they gradually come to facing one another in this durational groove. Ecstatically bursting into unison at the beat drop, they pound the floor, miming guitar and swing their limbs. As the energy fades, they continue their small grooves, now facing each other. 

The piece resolves as they  place their limbs on one another to create flowing shapes, like an amorphous sea creature. They slowly rotate, taking turns to support each other’s weight. A head dangling from the shape upside down, hair dangling like jellyfish tendrils. This soft, controlled, caring section connects the previously isolated dancers. The search for stability concludes as they learn how to lean on each other physically and emotionally. 

These two works, when paired together, create a complex depiction of humanity, individualism, and connection. The found relationships and community of a crisis of standing contrasts the isolation at the end of IMMDED IMGEWD. These works reflect the importance of care and the consequences of a lack of care. Watching the performers find harmony through their intensity is so satiating to watch. These works are experimental, challenging, and uniquely human. Out There is exquisitely punk. 

Out There Week 1 ran Oct 2-4 2025. Out There Week 2 continues Oct 9-11. For tickets and more information visit Velocity’s Website. 

The program for Out There Week 1 can be found HERE.