SPLIT BILL #45

AKANE LITTLE | LAMBKIN

RUNTIME: About 60 minutes with an intermission.
Portions of this performance contain the use of water based haze.

Left: Benja Thompson. Right: SVH Atelier.

NOV 20-22, 2025
8PM

formaldyhyde
Akane Little

-INTERMISSION-

Deena
Lambkin

Photo by Benja Thompson

formaldehyde

formaldehyde begins with a mortal body hypnotized by fantasies of material preservation. In a soundscape of sparkling commercials, the body is seduced and disciplined by materials that resist decay - nail polish, Botox, embalming, competition dance. As the body processes each encounter, it contends with the inevitable decay of flesh, ultimately arriving at a plea for eternally preserved death. This state, inherently untenable, cracks at its edges as the body is alchemized by rot and fungi - offering a re-entry into a different eternity.

Photo by Benja Thompson

Direction, choreography & performance by Akane Little
// in partnership with formaldehyde, flesh & fungi

original sound by Onu Kang
commercial composites by Benja Thompson & Akane Little
costume & set design by Zo Roze
dramaturgy by Benja Thompson
lighting design & stage tech by Anna Wotring

special thanks to Ximena & Shige, Cia, Zee, Shannon
deep gratitude to the Trisk team - Anna, Miriam, and Rachel - for your incredible scope of support

fun facts about formaldehyde and fungi
- a body that has been treated with US-standard embalming practices, including the use of formaldehyde and other chemicals, maintains its preserved state, on average, for less than a week
- “Scientific discoveries suggest that formaldehyde was one of the first substances in the universe. Interstellar formaldehyde – first discovered in 1969 by L. Snyder et al. using the National Radio Astronomy Observatory – found its way into comets and asteroids during the birth of our solar system. Over time the substance underwent chemical reactions to form complex organic molecules. These comets and asteroids could have then slammed into our planet during its early years, leaving behind their precious carbon-rich cargo and water, essential for life to evolve…”
- scientists have trained oyster mushrooms to metabolize used cigarette butts

Photo by Jeff Wang.

Deena

In Deena, the titular backup dancer longs to be a pop star. However, when her estranged father suddenly passes, unconsolable grief and unresolved remembrances force cracks through her reality, fracturing her sense of self and complicating the pursuit of her dreams.

Photo by Karina Macchioli

Choreography, concept, projection, sound: Luna Beller-Tadiar

Performed by Luna Beller-Tadiar

Selected Music: elekhlekha อีเหละเขละขละ

Additional music and sound: Interstellar by Gigi Masin and Jonny Nash. Sound mixed by Luna Beller-Tadiar with music by Loscil (“Khanamoot”); and Ambience Mastery (“Realistic Sci-Fi Robots”); and samples of Ezequiel Viñao and Shane Shanahan (“Color de Tiento”); J-Squad (“Super Buck Krump Music”); El Camarón de la Isla (“Tu Cariño es Mi Castigo”); and Carlos Di Sarli and Alberto Podestá (“Tú… El Cielo Y Tú”).

Lights: Anna Wotring

Dance forms referenced (incomplete list): krump (especially via Nach, Rize, and hallowdreamz); macho dancing (via Eisa Jocson); tango; flamenco; balinese dance (especially videos from Sanggar Tari Bali Pradnya Swari); pangalay; waacking; burlesque.

Thanks: To all building, preserving, sustaining, creating, nurturing alternatives. To those who resist.
And to my parents and friends <3 Thank you.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Akane Little is a Brooklyn-based dance artist approaching the body and performance as an altar-portal for transmuting energy and channeling worlds. They started off in competition dance in a small-town studio in Mississippi, and continued on to study contemporary dance under Alysia Ramos at Oberlin College. They have freelanced in both Cleveland, OH (Catherine Meredith, Megan Young, Madi Jackson, Rebecca Burcher, and more) and New York City (Kinesis Project, Boy Friday, Hivewild, Hard/Femme Dances, God Complex x Aeon Andreas, Nick Brooke, Michael Chinworth, Chaesong Kim, and more). Commercial credits include Bridget Kearney (Lake Street Dive), Carolina Oliveros (Combo Chimbita), Tom Petty, and Sam Smith. Since 2023, they have been a core member of the LEIMAY Ensemble under the direction of Ximena Garnica & Shige Moriya.

onu kang is a Korean trans sound artist and composer based in Brooklyn. Their practice is rooted in the reclamation of temporal sovereignty and the preservation of living tones that defy colonial flattening. Under their new project arbitrary rationale, they will be releasing a collection of songs this winter.

A practicing queer archivist, Benja Thompson interweaves historical truths with radical imagination. They established Marin County's queer archive, preserved experimental performance history as a 2024 Dance/USA Archive Fellow, and will present an hour of archival footage for the upcoming AMIA Conference. Their filmwork has shown in microcinemas and festivals across the country, including Other Cinema, Northwest Film Forum, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Film-Makers' Coop. They are currently developing an emerging performance practice of embodied cinema.

Fluid in expression, Zo Roze generates work that integrates fashion, set and performance. Designing with the intention to channel a duality between the physical and psyche, their world-building aptitude has pursued costume, production, and movement direction. Rooted in Metro Detroit and continuing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Zo has accumulated an expansive range of ways to align the body within craft, employing their tainted trace of destructive nature to refine the process.

Lambkin is a musician, composer, and director based in Brooklyn, New York. Hailing from the DMV, the multi-hyphenate artist synthesizes the kinetic charge of electronic music and modern dance performance to stage narratives at the nexus of communal grief, ancestral memory, and the quotidian horrors of capital. Lambkin has collaborated with fellow artists such as KeiyaA, Cleo Reed, Ms. Boogie, and OHYUNG. on works ranging from live musical performances to experimental theatre shows. Lambkin's dance theater work has been presented with institutions such as Times Square Arts, the Solomon R. Guggenheim, Jacob’s Pillow, The Kitchen, Danspace, and The Shed. Perfect Blue, Lambkin’s debut EP which she self-released in 2020, is a collection of abstractionist R&B songs, which earned Lambkin notable recognition from the likes of the FADER, KEXP, and Resident Advisor.

ANNA WOTRING is a community-minded dance artist, designer, and production stage manager, dedicated to the practice of collaborative leadership. As the Director of Production at Triskelion Arts, Wotring shapes programming that makes production design accessible to movement artists, whether they're starting to explore an idea or deep in research. Trisk serves as a home, allowing artists to materialize their production vision and find imaginative pathways around and through tangible possibility. Wotring holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance from the Five College Dance Department in Western Massachusetts. She has had the privilege of working with a wide range of dance artists and organizations, including Alvin Ailey Studios, Annie Heath, Attack Theater, Ballet Des Ameriques, BalletNext, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, the Dance Conservatory of Pittsburgh, Dance Place, H2O Contemporary Dance, Jennifer Nugent, Lauren Horn, Monica Bill Barnes & Company, New York Live Arts, the Pillow Project, Prayers of the People, RoseAnne Spradlin, Scapegoat Garden, slowdanger, Time Lapse Dance, and many others. Wotring is deeply grateful and honored to be working, imagining, and making magic with the Trisk team and community.

We respectfully acknowledge that the work of Triskelion Arts is situated on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of Lenapehoking, the homeland of the Lenape peoples. We pay our respects to their land, water, and ancestors, past, present, and future. This acknowledgment demonstrates a commitment to the process of working to dismantle the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism and to learning to be better stewards of this land.