Delicateness in Times of Brutality is 50-minute work by movement artists Wendy Jehlen (US) and DAKEI (Japan). Delicateness in Times of Brutality is intended to occur in non-traditional spaces and is highly flexible. Movement combines Deaf theater and poetry, Butoh, and elements of Capoeira and Contact Improvisation. Live music is improvised by Nobunaga Ken (percussion), MORIO (guitar) and Yoshiko Honda (voice). The result is an immersive environment that hovers between the eternal and the ephemeral.

Delicateness in Times of Brutality was inspired by a performance protest of the same title (Delicadeza em Tempos da Brutalidade) that took place in São Paulo, Brazil in May 2015 in response to the bureaucratic coup that resulted in the dismantling of human rights and arts and cultural institutions in that country, part of a world wide shift to the extreme right. Delicateness in Times of Brutality is our response as artists.

Delicateness in Times of Brutality is a study in opposites: solitude and togetherness, silence and sound, the eternal and the ephemeral, delicateness in response to brutality. It is a commitment to keep dancing, to keep making art together when the world is crashing down around us. It is a refusal to see boundaries when our governments want to close us in, to shut the world out.

Delicateness in Times of Brutality has been supported by grants from the New England Foundation for the Arts, Association of Performing Arts Presenters, the Japan Foundation, and the Network of Ensemble Theaters.