FROM OUR FRIENDS
KINDLING ARTS FESTIVAL 2025:
Fortunes & Fates
July 24-27
OZ Arts is proud to be a venue partner for Kindling Arts Festival 2025. Taking over multiple West Nashville venues, the Fortunes & Fates-themed lineup features a spellbinding array of 19 original performance projects by some of the city’s most daring artists. OZ will host three of this year’s offerings including an irreverent electro-pop musical and two vibrant showcases of new works from beloved local dance, theater, and spoken word artists.
Learn more about the events at OZ below and explore the full festival line-up at kindlingarts.com. Individual tickets and all-access Festival Passes are on sale now — including a VIP option for reserved seating at some of the most in-demand events.
PERFORMANCES AT OZ ARTS NASHVILLE
I Saw Goody Proctor With the Devil
Amm Skellars
Friday & Saturday, July 25 & 26 at 8:30PM
Sunday, July 27 at 7:30PM
The irresistible, world-renowned arena spectacle I Saw Goody Proctor With The Devil arrives at OZ Arts Nashville for 3 nights only with its illustrious stars, the singular girl group Amm Skellars. This bombastic, electro-pop musical brings a bratty twist to the Salem Witch Trials, sure to make more than one playwright roll over in his grave. Among the danceable bops, audiences are guaranteed to lose themselves in stadium-pop favorites like “Because It Is My Name,” “Good Girl,” and “How You Like Me Now?” performed in the Amms purely irreverent style. Complete with kitschy choreography and large-scale projections, this take-down of the patriarchy turns this infamous story into a feminist triumph. Who’s ready for a #SalemSummer?
Seekers
New works by Eboné Amos, Phylicia Roybal, and Jennifer Whitcomb-Oliva
Thursday, July 24 at 8PM
Three of Nashville’s most dynamic performance-makers share timely new short-form works seeking to honor where we’ve come from, savor the joy of the present moment, and cast a vision of the future. Theater legend Jennifer Whitcomb-Oliva’s latest performance art creation, “Effluvia,” mixes original soundscape, spoken word, movement, and her unmistakable stage presence to highlight spiritual healing and self-love for Black women, even in a world that often discards them or reduces them to a stereotype. Acclaimed dance artist Phylicia Roybal mines her personal history and Spanish and Indigenous ancestry to explore the body as a sacred vessel for memory and expression in her fresh solo work, “Altitude.” Powerful choreographer Eboné Amos closes the program with a large group work, “piece/peace,” in which 10 dancers center Black joy and offer resilience as an act of resistance in a world clouded in hopelessness. This compelling trio of original performance projects from these unmissable artists kicks off the 2025 Festival for one-night-only at OZ Arts Nashville.
Life Force: Expressions of Power
New works by Friends Life Community featuring Ciona Rouse, Nocturne Dance, and Shabaz Ujima / Shackled Feet Dance & Juba Dance Ensemble
Sunday, July 27 at 3PM
Join some of the city’s most charismatic stage performers for an event that centers expressions of personal power and celebration. Friends Life Community joins forces with radiant poet Ciona Rouse to present a remix of their “Threads of Power” performance series, including new spoken word sections and deeply personal movement sequences. Rising choreographer Delaine Kylynn / Nocturne Dance shares her original dance work “Lady Lazarus” featuring half a dozen local dancers, diving into portrayals of authority figures and the ways young women can unlock the power to gain autonomy and reinvent themselves. Community leader, Shabaz Ujima, choreographs a collaboration with his company, Shackled Feet Dance, and the Chattanooga-based Juba Dance Ensemble inspired by the Haitian snake god and “sky father” Damballa, uncovering layers of masculine expression, vulnerability, and strength. Combined, these performances showcase a wide array of Nashville’s talented artistic community and provide inspiration for ways each of us can unlock our own personal power.