No Exit: An illusion
Premiere 2027

This work is supported, in part, by CPR – Center for Performance Research’s Artist-in-Residence Program, which is made possible, in part, by The Harkness Foundation for Dance, Howard Gilman Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs.

This work was supported by the Dancing Futures Residency project produced by Pepatián: Bronx Arts ColLABorative in partnership with BAAD!/Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance.

This work was supported by the Dancing While Black Fellowship (2026), produced by Venza Dance in partnership with BAAD! (Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance).

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No Exit: An Illusion is an evening-length dance-theatre work examining dreams and desires across past, present, and imagined futures. Centered on the forces that hold us in place memory, expectation, comfort, fear, and loyalty, the work asks what keeps us where we are and what it means to imagine a way out. The “exit” becomes both psychological and illusory, proposing that liberation may not be an external door, but a shift in perception.

The work unfolds within a single interior environment that functions as both a room and a state of mind. Guided by a narrator who presents himself as a valet, a small ensemble of performers cycles through encounters that blur the boundaries between recollection, present negotiation, and imagined futures. Through a series of solos, duets, and ensemble patterns, the choreography traces the subtle negotiations between dependence and autonomy.

Movement exists in dialogue with fragments of spoken and projected text, silence, and recorded sound. These elements operate in counterpoint rather than explanation, allowing thoughts, memories, and imagined conversations to surface without resolving into a single narrative. The audience experiences the work less as a linear story and more as a passage through layered emotional and psychological landscapes. Drawing from Exit: An Illusion by Marita Bonner, No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre, and Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, the work reimagines existential confinement through contemporary dance and theatrical abstraction. These influences are paired with personal histories that shape the emotional core of the project, particularly the immigrant journeys of my parents. My mother’s path from Saint Lucia to the United States, finding a way forward after being told certain opportunities were impossible, and my father’s years working in hotels before moving toward new possibilities inform the work’s reflection on perseverance, agency, and transformation. Their experiences of creating pathways not only for themselves but also for others have become a powerful source of inspiration within the piece. Rather than presenting escape as a dramatic breakthrough, the piece investigates quieter thresholds of awareness. In doing so, it frames the arts not only as entertainment but also as a source of information, access, freedom, and reflection. The audience is invited to consider how perception shapes possibility, suggesting that the most profound exit may begin not with leaving a room, but with seeing it differently.

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Quaba V. Ernest / Venza Dance

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