[Image Description: Alexa Dexa’s dream map graphic score for soak features a crayon drawing of waters rippling in blues and shimmers of pink and purple. Glitched out portions of waters are faded out and textured in whites, a dissipation.]
SOAK
Created and Led by Alexa Dexa
soak is an accessibility-centered, virtual, and immersive electroacoustic toy opera by a sick + mad + disabled non-binary babe soaking in a bathtub co-created with and for sick + mad + disabled folx in bathtubs/shower chairs/showers/wash basins/sponge baths/kiddie pools/sitz baths/foot baths/areas of cozy and enveloping rest and ease/in, with, or near any body of water big or very small (an ocean, lake, river, creek/rain, snow, steam, or ice/a glass of water/our own bodies), real or imagined (because who is the arbiter of what is real anyway?).
soak is a communal crip ritual for nourishing our sick + mad + disabled bodyminds, for sinking into ease and effortlessness, for soaking until the ache dissipates into lull.
A small journey in a small space where the expanse is within you, the story is yours. a crip ritual soak that moves beyond cure to ask what would feel healing for you, for right now?
The sound world of soak is shaped by Alexa Dexa soaking in a bathtub filling, filled with, and drained of water and epsom salts; their vocals; live electronic processing in Alexa Dexa’s dream patch in MaxMSP; pre-programmed electronic sequences crafted by Alexa Dexa in Reason; and the glacially timeshifted sounds of Alexa Dexa’s toychestra (toy piano, toy chimes, toy harp, alto xylophone, toy glockenspiel, desk bells, kalimba) in collaboration with the sounds of you and your body of water, soaking.
Accessibility Features
Access artistry for soak includes American Sign Language and song-signing, open creative captioning, open audio description, open sound description, and access doulas.
Everyone joining is welcome to use the chat freely, to keep their video on or off as they like, to come and go as they need.
A recording and transcript of soak will be shared with crip ritual participants only as a form of asynchronous access for those of us operating on crip time. Our documentation will remain available for 90 days following our crip ritual soak.
For any questions and/or any access requests for soak, please contact Alexa Dexa at [email protected].
Vision
There are two main interdependent components to soak: The first is a live performance by Alexa Dexa soaking in a bathtub, leading the audience through a ritual soak which Alexa centers their days around for weathering a flare of their chronic illness. The second is a score for the audience, who actively shape the sound world of soak through their own experience of soaking, right along with Alexa.
Alexa Dexa
Alexa Dexa is a xXgrandmacoreXx, queer, femme non-binary, and Disabled composer-performer and sound witch creating crip* rituals that honor Disabled brilliance and belonging. Alexa is a crafter and caster of songspells, which they define as intentions holding space for dream possibilities that manifest transformation as we listen. Alexa’s songspells focus on deconstructing the messaging of systemic oppression that says our Disabled body-minds are less than/disposable. They replace that messaging with recognition of our inherent value and serious self-trust.
To craft songspells, Alexa translates the words of a given intention into music with their own chance-based procedures. Using music as a tool of transformative care, they cast songspells with their voice, their beloved toychestra to rival a playpen, pre-programmed electronic sequences, live electronic processing in MaxMSP, and live coding in TidalCycles. Composed to uphold folx through trauma, Alexa’s musical oracle readings with their self-published Sacrosanct Oracle//Composition Deck offer space to assess, access, cultivate, claim, and share resources as we forge our own paths forward.
Pre-pandemic, Alexa spent 4-6 months out of the year touring the world with their toy piano, pitched desk bells, and a strong do-it-yourself ethos. Their 14 previous self-booked tours have taken them throughout North America, Europe, Oceania, and Asia. They have performed their compositions as part of Omaha Under the Radar’s Generator Series (2019), National Sawdust’s Summer Labs Series (2018), at Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art (2017), and at Warsaw’s Palace of Culture and Science (2016). Festival appearances include New Music Gathering (2021); NYC Electroacoustic Improvisation Summit (2021); London’s Tete a Tete Opera Festival (2019); Omaha Under the Radar (2018); NYC’s UnCaged Toy Piano Festival (2017 & 2013); New Zealand’s Future City Festival (2017); Croatia’s Fairy Tale Festival (2016); and Germany’s Fusion Festival (2014).
*Alexa uses the term “crip” to describe their Disabled identity/culture. Crip is a reclaiming of the ableist slur “cripple”. Some, but not all, members of the Disability community choose to reclaim this word as a form of Disabled pride.