Conceived and Performed by Ankita Sharma, with Danny Archibald and 3issa
September 18-20 | 7:30PM
About the show
It’s high noon in the Wild West and a young cowboy is galloping through the American expanse. The wind at his back, he heads for a blustery ridge. Upon arrival, he glances at the purple mountains ahead, before taking out his phone and scrolling TikTok till the sun goes down…
Ankita Sharma returns to The Barn after their 2024 residency with Even Cowboys Get the Blues: a piece of dance-theater examining rurality, social media, and American mythology. Performed by a denim-clad cast of puppets and humans, Even Cowboys is a rodeo ride of minute-long choreographic etudes through the digital wreckage of Manifest Destiny.
About the Artists
Ankita Sharma is an experimental movement-based artist invested in story-telling where content dictates genre and betrays expectation. They create to think critically, unpacking systems and symptoms of power from a queer, punk solidarity-based lens that rehearses freedom in the body and mind. In aesthetic, their work is a character-based, grungy, cheeky work of primal spirit, with physical practices rooted in Contemporary dance, Dance-Theater, and forms from both the South Asian and the African diaspora. For Ankita, audiences are agentive, sitting with and challenging discomfort in environments where sophistication and blasphemy collide.
Ankita is currently based in Brooklyn. They hold degrees in both Dance and Anthropology and have had their work performed throughout the US, including at: Denver Art Museum, Abrons Art Center, Dixon Place, The Tank, BASE, JACK, Ormao, Movement Research, The Basement, and University Settlement. They have received residencies and support from Art Omi (2025), Kalakeli Movement Arts (2025), NYSCA (2025), Brooklyn Arts Council (2025), The Barn (2024-2025), BASE (2024), GALLIM (2024), Performance Project (2022-23), MNE (2022-23), LEIMAY (2022), and Crown Goodman (2021). Ankita has also taught and presented film work internationally. In their spare time, they manage several award-winning dance-theater companies, previously including Punchdrunk's Sleep No More.
Danny Archibald is a lighting designer, stage manager, puppeteer, and multimedia craftsman from Durham, NC. He was the lightning designer and technical director for Colorado College’s Dance Workshop for three seasons. Most recently, he was behind the stage as master electrician for the American Dance Festival season, and as stage manager for Baye and Asa’s 4|2|3.
Inspired by his hometown puppet theatre group, Paperhand Puppet Intervention, he has started his journey into the realm of puppets with his first play The Vultures and the Sycamore, a modern fable. Hot off the presses is the puppet construction for this new work created by long time co-collaborator Ankita Sharma. In addition to the stage, he is a musician, woodworker, baker, and aspiring luthier.
3issa is a multidisciplinary performance artist, and community organizer invested in cosmopolitan, countercultural storytelling and magnifying the cracks left in dominant cultural and political values. Miami-reared, Brooklyn-based, 3issa roots his work in the Earth, faith systems, and the mythologies of undocumented ancestors.
TICKETS
All seating is General Admission. GA tickets start at $20, with a $125 Pay-It-Forward option for patrons with the means to support a fledgling theater org. The Barn at Lee also offers subsidized tickets for audience members with valid EBT/WIC/CC cards through the Card to Culture program, which provides free admission to all our shows. That being said, no one will be turned away for lack of funds. If you have any questions please email info@thebarnatlee.org.
SPECIAL NYC x LEE SATURDAY PERFORMANCE:
We’re bringing you something new this season, wooo! On Saturday, September 20th, we’re getting a bus from NYC to Lee. For $65, you can take our bus from NYC and arrive in Lee just in time for a cookout at the barn before the show. After the performance, the bus will take you straight back to NYC. Your ticket includes transportation to and from Lee, food, and a General Admission ticket to the show. Yes, yes, all in one day.
Pickup will be around 3pm in Upper Manhattan (location TBD, but likely Upper East or Upper West Side), with drop-off back in the same spot around midnight.
To purchase that ticket, please select the option NYC to Lee (SATURDAY ONLY) in the ticketing page. For more information or questions, please email info@thebarnatlee.org.
This project was supported, in part, by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.