CHERIE DRE

by Sacha Yanow
Danspace Project

NYC-based performance artist and actor Sacha Yanow’s new solo performance is a meditation on desire, belonging, and matrilineal legacy. A fraught romance between showgirl Cherie Dre and Yanow’s grandmother, Shirley, unfolds alongside the rise and fall of the legendary Concord Resort Hotel in Upstate New York.

Through movement, text, and music, Yanow creates an intimate history of the Jewish Borscht Belt, mental illness, cultural assimilation, political repression, and gender trouble, from the Bronx to the Catskills.

Written and performed by Sacha Yanow
Directed by Caitlin Sullivan
Choreography by Faye Driscoll
Set by Cate McCrea
Lighting by Alejandro Fajardo
Costumes by Ásta Bennie Hostetter
Video by Sasha Wortzel
Voice and Sound by Holland Andrews
Outside Eyes: Morgan Bassichis
Creative Producer: Melissa Levin

Photos by Ian Douglas

The creation of Cherie Dre was made possible, in part, by the Danspace Project 2018-19 Commissioning Initiative, with support from the Jerome Foundation.Development support for Cherie Dre was provided by BAC Space residency (Spring 2018), CPR Technical Residency (Spring 2018), Denniston Hill (Summer 2018 & 2017), Hurleyville Arts Centre (Summer 2018 & 2017), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Process Space Residency (March, 2016), and by a residency-based exhibition at the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College (September 9–October 9, 2016), curated by Stephanie Snyder. 

PRESS FOR CHERIE DRE:

“Sacha is an embodied dimmer switch who fluidly oscillates between the physicalities and timbres of two women she knows so deeply yet incompletely…Sacha’s tetherdness to Shirley and Cherie Dre is tabanca as I understand it: the practice of learning to love through the prism of loss.”- Ali Rosa-Salas, BAC Stories

Sacred Ruins - A conversation with artist Sasha Wortzel, October 2018