Zavé Martohardjono | performer. video artist. community-minded curator.

About

zavé martohardjono is a queer, trans, Indonesian-American artist working in performance, dance, installation, video, and poetry. Dwelling in their ancestors’ mythologies, with dreams of a more just future, they make work that contends with the political histories our bodies carry. zavé’s work is concerned with and prompted by inquiry into whether and how embodied healing, anti-colonial storytelling, and political education can de-condition the body, reconjure liberatory memory, and untangle entrenched assimilation. zavé’s dance improvisations, experimental works, multimedia works and writing address and subvert political histories.

zavé has been presented at the 92Y, BAAD!, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Center for Performance Research, El Museo del Barrio, HERE Arts, Issue Project Room, The Kennedy Center, Storm King Art Center, the Wild Project, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Boston Center for the Arts, Tufts University, and elsewhere in the U.S. Internationally, they have shown films and performed in Amsterdam, Berlin, Glasgow, Zurich, Skopje, and Jakarta. They were a 2022 MRX/Movement Research Exchange program artist in Skopje, Macedonia, 2021 NYPL Dance Research Fellow, 2020 Gibney Dance in Process artist, 2019 Movement Research AIR, 2017-2018 LMCC Workspace Resident, and a 2011 EMERGENYC artist. Their work has been written about in BOMB Magazine, Brooklyn Rail, Culturebot, Hyperallergic, and The New York Times.

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up next

asmr4apocalypse | Oct 11 at 6-9pm | Aidekman Arts Center

I will be sharing a new solo work, asmr4apocalypse, on October 11 at Tufts University as part of Break/Down, a performance symposium curated and organized by Mac Irvine. This event is free and happening at the Aidekman Arts Center at 40 Talbot Avenue in Medford, MA. I’ll be performing during the last hour from 8-9pm. Other artists presenting in the symposium are Kama La Mackerel and María Rivera-Felizardo (P1NKSTAR).

asmr4apocalypse | Oct 14 at 8-10pm| Vivid Oblivion at | Tickets

I’ll be at Vivid Oblivion, a dance studio and arts space in Inman Square run by NiFe Lucey-Brzoza and on Saturday October 14, I’ll share asmr4apocalypse. I’ve invited Hadar Ahuvia to share the evening with me. Hadar will show a new work, nefesh, and we will stick around for conversation and feedback about the works. You can get tickets and read more about what we’ll present on Eventbrite. Vivid Oblivion is located at 288 Norfolk St, 2A, Cambridge, MA.

Resiliency Motions workshop | Oct 12 + 13 at 6-9pm | Register

I’m very excited to revive a dance-based workshop, Resiliency Motions, that I developed and shared regularly at the beginning of the pandemic during stay at home times in 2020-2021. Please tell friends in the Boston/New England area to join me for class! Offering practices such as meditation, automatic writing, visualization-based dances, small rituals, and collective moving together, Resiliency Motions taps into resiliency, permission, and our bodies’ wisdom. Prompts in these sessions offer re/connection to the body as a starting point for transformation. Facilitation holds space for dormant, thawing seedlings of action and decision to arise through a process of listening to see what is happening rather than doing or determining. Folks are welcome to attend one or both nights, and there are sliding scale rates to make this workshop most accessible to QTBIPOC community and/or people experiencing housing, income, food, and/or healthcare insecurity. All/no experience with dance and movement is welcome.

Performing Response-Ability | Oct 16 at 6pm | RSVP

As part of the Prelude Festival, I’ll be part of a performance/conversation event organized by Esther Neff called Performing Response-Ability on October 16 at 6pm at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center at 365 5th Avenue in Manhattan. Artists and organizers from Brooklyn International Performance Art Foundation (BIPAF), PERFORMANCY FORUM, and other mutualistic NYC performance communities debate tradition, change, and the ethics and politics of making work in response and relation to racial capitalism, climate collapse, and systemic eugenics. Is performance part of “immune systems” or resilience strategies? How can both artistic works and modes of production practice response-ability? The venue is the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center located 365 5th Avenue, New York, NY.

Queerceañera | Oct 19 at 6:30pm at 3 Dollar Bill | Tickets

EmergeNYC, an incredible emerging artists program run by Marlène Ramírez-Cancio and facilitated by George Emilio Sanchez, is turning 15 years old this October! To celebrate, it is throwing its first ever major fundraiser, a Queerceañera at 3 Dollar Bill, to seed a beautiful future. There’s a stellar line-up for the night which is hosted by River L. Ramirez. I will have an installation, a deferred dreams den in a grey curtained booth near the bar, that you can visit throughout the night. Come tell me your adolescent and/or queer dreams deferred. I’ll mix you a bit of medicine and we will co-create an incantation to call them into reality.

The Dance Union Podcast

I caught up with the illustrious Melanie Greene, co-founder of The Dance Union Podcast, to reflect on the culmination of a five-year performance series, TERRITORY, and talk about post-show life, lulls, and feels. Listen on SoundCloud, Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Play Music.