Velocity Debuts “Blood Baby” An Interdisciplinary Celebration of Queer Kinship

Coming very soon: a big weekend of complicated, diverse, and queer art and performance. It’s BLOOD BABY, a multi-day festival offering up performances, installations, workshops and other events that is happening September 1-4 at locations on Capitol Hill with a mission of “exploring the intersectional experiences of gender performance, queerness, parenthood, sexuality, and belonging.” It’s also a neat, arty alternative to more tradional Labor Day entertainments!!!

It’s the brain child of artist Meg Foley and being produced by Velocity Dance Center with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New England Foundation for the Arts, and Seattle’s Department of Neighborhoods.

MORE skinny!

Announcing Blood Baby, a constellation of free events – including 2 performances, 2 installations, and 1 workshop – taking place across Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood over Labor Day weekend.

Inviting audiences into an interdisciplinary celebration of queer kinship, radical gender performance, and belonging, Meg Foley’s Blood Baby offers a fresh and multifaceted exploration of the queer family experience through dance performances, interactive sculpture, readings, and community events. Performance and somatics extend beyond a discrete theatrical moment, as five related events—Carpet Womb, Communion, Primordial, Touch Library and a Queer Parent Convening—embrace a distinctive aspect and materiality of the experience of being a human (body) becoming: parenting and parenting queerly, gender dimensions, and building queer universes through choreography, sculpture, and drag.

With funding from the City of Seattle’s Department of Neighborhoods, the project unites an array of Capitol Hill institutions in its production – a collaboration initiated by Velocity Dance Center, in partnership with the Seattle Theosophical Library and Volunteer Park Trust to present this work across Seattle’s historic “gayborhood”. The process of bringing Blood Baby to Seattle is a collaborative effort between local and national artists, including Seattle-based performers Zara Martina Lopez, Kristine Manuel, and Fox Whitney. Blood Baby weaves together choreography by Meg Foley [PHL], video installation by Carmichael Jones [PHL], scenic design by Rabbit AL Friedrich [PDX], and costume design by Noél Puéllo [PRI/CMX], and enlists the perspective of queer parents to center gender-nonconforming identities, queer family, sex-positivity, and trans voices. By producing a series of events throughout daytime and evening hours over Labor Day weekend, Velocity and the artists hope to offer a family-friendly, alternative queer art experience to the bar-based nightlife events.  

Carpet Womb

[Performance]

Start Times

SAT, SEP 2 | 3 PM

SAT, SEP 2 | 9 PM (DISCO VERSION)

SUN, SEP 3 | 9 PM (DISCO VERSION)

MON, SEP 4 | 3 PM

A sweaty, gay, disco ritual performed by six dancers and experienced inside a large tent-like structure, occurring outside and holding intentional space for shared, radical embodiment. (60 min)

Carpet Womb is a performance  with limited capacity. We encourage reserving your spot ahead of time at velocitydancecenter.org/blood-baby

Location: Volunteer Park, meet at the Velocity Help Desk

Primordial

[Installation]

Hours

FRI, SEP 1 | 7-10 PM
SAT, SEP 2 | 7-10 PM
SUN, SEP 3 | 7-10 PM
MON, SEP 4 | 7-10 PM

“Rock drag,” a site-responsive, sculptural practice presented in a video and sound installation by visual artist (and Foley’s co-parent) Carmichael Jones, to connect geology, transformation, and queer gestation. (looped, 35m)

Primordial is an installation that can be entered at any time, with no reservation required.

Location: Volunteer Park, meet at the Velocity Help Desk

Communion

[Performance]

Start Times

SUN, SEP 3 | 7PM

MON, SEP 4 | 7PM

A participatory experience performed in part by its audience, Communion examines the space between body and language, demonstrating how language extends, represents, and ruptures our corporeal identities. (60 min)

Free tickets for Communion can be reserved at velocitydancecenter.org/blood-baby

Location: Volunteer Park, meet at the Velocity Help Desk

Touch Library

[Installation]

Start Times

SAT, SEP 2 | 2-8 PM

SUN, SEP 3 | 4-8 PM

MON, SEP 4 | 4-8 PM

A tactile browsing library and living archive, offering audiences the opportunity to engage with the physical traces of the performances on their own time and in their own bodies.

Touch Library is an installation that can be entered at any time, with no reservation required.

Location: Seattle Theosophical Society

Queer Parent Convening

[Workshop]

Start Time

SAT, SEP 3 | 2 PM

Queer Parent Convening invites queer and trans parents to connect and share about their experiences of parenting and family-building in relationship to gender, sexuality, community, and what parenting queerly means to them.

Queer Parent Convening is a workshop with limited capacity. We encourage reserving your spot ahead of time at velocitydancecenter.org/blood-baby

Location: 12th Avenue Arts, Pike/Pine Room

And, daily schedules:

Friday, SEP 1

7 – 10 PM Primordial [Volunteer Park]

Sat, SEP 2

2 – 8 PM Touch Library [Seattle Theosophy Library]

3 PM Carpet Womb [Volunteer Park]

7 – 10 PM Primordial [Volunteer Park]

9 PM Carpet Womb (Disco Version) [Volunteer Park]

Sun, SEP 3

2 PM Queer Parent Convening [12th Ave Arts, Pike/Pine Room]

4 – 8 PM Touch Library [Seattle Theosophy Library]

7 PM Communion [Volunteer Park]

7 – 10 PM Primordial [Volunteer Park]

9 PM Carpet Womb (Disco Version) [Volunteer Park]

Mon, SEP 4

3 PM Carpet Womb [Volunteer Park]

4 – 8 PM Touch Library [Seattle Theosophy Library]

7 PM Communion [Volunteer Park]

7 – 10 PM Primordial [Volunteer Park]