CRANE & MAN is a devised experimental performance by Anna Ialeggio and Robyn O’Dell. It explores the potentiality of transpecies connection through a tragi-fantastical narrative of scientist-to-bird bonding. It is inspired by a true story: “Tex,” the crane protagonist, enters into a long-term trans-species kinship with middle-aged “George” Archibald — an ornithologist who is committed to preserving her unique genetic line. Triangulating between dance, theater, clowning, and ecology, the multimedia performance offers itself as a vivid textual site for the potency of transformative queer empathy in a time of global ecosystem collapse. Friday, January 24 8:30pm Highways Performance Space @18th St. Arts Center 1651 18th St. Santa Monica, CA 90404 1/2 block north of Olympic Blvd. tickets at highwaysperformance.org _ Anna Ialeggio makes sculpture, video, and performance on a slippery slope between wildness and infrastructure. Ialeggio has performed and presented with the International Crane Foundation, Mars Desert Research Station, Wave Farm 103.9FM, Human Resources LA, The Wexner Center for the Arts, Kunstradio, The Hammer Museum, Van AbbeMuseum, Mass MOCA, Philadelphia Mural Arts, and the Philadelphia Arts Alliance. She received an MFA from the University of California, Irvine in Studio Art in 2019. aialeggio.net Robyn O’Dell’s choreographic interests exist between theatre and dance. Her projects explore liminal spaces where physical and psychological texts collide and co-mingle with abstraction and the real. O’Dell has performed with Intersect Theatre, B Dunn Movement, The Idiot Workshop, and Brockus Project Studios. She received an MFA from the University of California, Irvine in in Dance Studies in 2019. robynodell.com