Join DiverseWorks for the regional premiere of Portland, Oregon-based choreographer Takahiro Yamamoto’s new dance work, Direct Path to Detour, in Matchbox 2 at the MATCH.

Tickets: Pay What You Wish

Performance is 60 minutes; Friday and Saturday performances are followed by an audience talkback with Yamamoto.

Co-commissioned by DiverseWorks, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, and the National Performance Network, Direct Path to Detour began as a personal exploration of the physical and emotional effects of Yamamoto’s lived experience as a queer, Japanese immigrant in the United States.

Grounded in the idea that a sense of who we are is rooted in our embodied experiences, this contemporary dance presents the personal experiences of Yamamoto and his four collaborators—Julian Barnett, Crystal Jiko Sasaki, sidony o’neal, and Jesse Mejía—in various physical and mental states as they explore their relationships with various value systems, spiritual beliefs, and social pressures while pushing beyond the limited categories of identity. The performance is structured as a combination of solo moments, several duets, trios of abstracted gestural movement, and a physically rigorous group score. Through light, sound, and movement, Direct Path to Detour envelops the performers in a poetic, visceral experience of resistance, surrender, sincerity, and fiction.