capeforce v, Times Square, New York City. 2026

Presented as part of Offering Series at the Church of St Mary the Virgin. Curated by Ethan Philbrick

Capeforce is a site specific series of performances by Jordan Deal, staged as a shapeshifting opera. This work aims to test how speculative realities—emerging through sonic and physical interventions—might dramatize hauntological contradictions throughout site-specific architectures and contested spaces.

Expanding upon a movement toward a guerrilla manifesto and proposition, the work uses rupture and collision as improvisational and choreographic devices—embodying the pull of “black oil”, its devouring and anomalous gravity that rescores the compositions of architecture, participants, and witnesses caught within its force.

This performance research was supported by the MAPFund grant

Credits

Direction, Choreography , Musical Direction, Performance: Jordan Deal

Performance with: Niall Jones, Kris Lee, rocío sánchez, C. Spencer Yeh, Anthime Miller, Glenna Cureton, Kwami Winfield, & Vernon Jordan III

Sound design: Jordan Deal

Sound: Donna Summer’s I Feel Love

Sound equipment apparatus for car: loan from Icebox Project Space Television

Planning and Logistical team: Jordan Deal, Ethan Philbrick,