HOT! Festival and New Museum Presents bring you an evening of music from the outer limits.

World-famous thereminist Armen Ra debuts METAL, a multimedia cycle of five arias selected from the repertoire of Maria Callas. Special guests narrate the content of the arias while the theremin voices the melodies, set against a backdrop of metallic black-and-white footage of Callas, projected in extreme slow motion so that every micro-expression in her face becomes apparent, simultaneously revealing a woman of great pride and profound vulnerability, creating a portrait that is both hauntingly mythological and painfully human.

Bora Yoon presents ( (( PHONATION )) ), an exploration of the point at which sound connects to the subliminal through the timbre languages of the voice, found sounds, new and antiquated instruments, and electronic devices. Using a sound designer’s approach to performance composition steered by a penchant for a song, ( (( PHONATION )) ) engages with music as music, and not as part of a genre. ( (( PHONATION )) ) takes the means to one end, and uses it for another to form new utterances and the beginnings of a new sonic language, within its spatial and architectural context. In every case, a particular sonic geography is evoked that might be inspired by a simple, found sound in the world, or an expression of a sonic paradox bouncing around only in the mind.

Launched in 1991 as an initiative of Dixon Place, HOT! Festival (July 1-August 1) is a pioneering festival of queer performance and culture. In fact, it’s the longest running festival of its kind. 2009 sees a dynamic expansion of the festival with the new, state-of-the-art Dixon Place theater complex at the heart of five weeks of performance, literary events, and humanities programming. Dixon Place is located at 161A Christie St. (between Rivington and Delanc