Phoenix City is a collaborative performance by Jimmy Joyner, Mingyong Cheng, and Sean Nguyen-Hilton that draws on Atlanta’s former queer spaces, including the Atlanta Eagle on Ponce, Charlie Brown’s Cabaret, Outwrite Bookstore, and the Ansley Mall movie theater. Connecting these lost sites with Atlanta’s enduring phoenix symbolism, the work explores passing, portals, collective memory, and transformation.

​

Using dance, costume, puppetry, live sound design and a body-mapping system created with TouchDesigner, the performers attempt to confuse and move beyond the technology tracking them. By making the body unreadable to systems of capture, Phoenix City asks how queering the body might create new possibilities for passage, connection, and collective safety. At its center is a fundamental question: What is a body?

​

Jimmy Joyner - Concept, Performer

Mingyong Cheng - Creative Technologist

Sean Ngyuen-Hilton - Sound Artist

Nicole Johnson - Dramaturgy

Scott Wheet - Lighting Designer

Nathan Griswold - Technical Director

Christina Massad - Photo + Video

Taber Lathrop - Technical Assist

​

Special Thanks - Zetao Yu, Helen Hale, The Anchor, Candice Tabbs, Yayoi Kambara, Vesper Theatre, Nicolas Goodly, Connor Trace, Fly on a Wall Board Members, The City of Atlanta, The Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs, Fulton County Arts and Culture, Fulton County Community Service Programs, The Imlay Foundation, Georgia Council for the Arts.

 

*A very special thank you to the Goat Farm for supporting this production. The dedication and attention that the Goat Farm Staff has to the artists they support is a gift. Allie Bashuk, Parks Miller, Catherine Rush, Taber Lathrop are just a few of the amazing artists that dedicate their time and energy towards making important art happen in Atlanta. 

 

*A very special thank you to Fly on a Wall for their dedication to supporting artists where they are and always responding with the contemporary. 

 

This work moves with a citational landscape that can not be clearly defined. We gather together to create a temporary matrix of time, space, energy, and bodies that are both in the “here and now” and also in the beyond. Like anything, Phoenix City is a performance that has a history and that is supported by other events. A few of the histories that support this work are Jimmy Joyner’s previous performances of HOPE and Red Tethers, the old Atlanta Eagle, Charlie Brown’s Cabaret, Ansley Mall Mini Cinema, The Women’s Choir of Plovdiv, Bronski Beat, Sacred Harp Singers, Air, the dance floor, and the dark rooms.