BitterSuite

BitterSuite is a multi-media solo performance and collaboration with Areytos Co-Founder and visual artist José Ortiz, that addresses identity, human rights, and race in the Dominican diaspora. BitterSuite calls into question the rationale for historical and current scape-goating of Haitians and Dominican-Haitians, and the fearful, often contradictory attitudes towards Vodun. The performance incorporates the music and dance of Gagá, an African based, Dominican-Haitian vodun religious practice prominent on the batey, a sugarcane plantation company town. In 2005, Frederick began ethnographic research in the Dominican Republic, where her father’s family originated. She and Ortiz have incorporated this audio and visual material into the solo with Isadora, an interactive video processing program. (22 min)