Witness

Misha Penton, singer-composer, cast member of Testimony: a new dance and music work premiering at MATCH in Houston September 25-28 2025. Photo: Raul Casares

Testimony is a dance and music performance inspired in Shahzia Sikander’s sculpture ‘Witness’ and its vandalism on the University of Houston campus.

The sculpture is an imposing, radiant figure. The work honors the feminine force of justice and agency. In Testimony, I embody this sculpture: as an archetype, as a character, and as myself. The sculpture-in-performance becomes a voice awakened—an avatar of reclamation and a figure that is part Eve and part Every Woman.

Giving Voice
When I encountered Sikander’s sculpture, ‘Witness,’ I felt her as an ancestral portal and a call to remember. As a vocalist-composer, I (re)imagine the work as the liberated female body, carrying a voice that rises through centuries of oppression. My voice in ‘Testimony' is an invocation—a sonorous embodiment of Eve remade as the bearer of choice, creation, and cosmic agency. Rooted in solo voice work, my composition evolved through a live exchange of sound and movement with dancer Shelby Craze. Our process began as improvisation and through rehearsal, coalesced into a shared sonic-kinetic world: voice and movement shaped in real time. Some of my vocal phrases arise from ancient breath: glossolalia, chant, and cry, while others emerge as melody, whispers, gasps, and wails. In this dynamic vocal realm, Sikander’s inspiring work comes alive to testify, endure, and ascend. In singing my own music live as well as Heathco’s recorded, I straddle the worlds of interpretive and generative artist, becoming a metaphor for women’s containment and liberation.

Testimony
Midtown Arts Theatre Center Houston
September 25-28, 2025. A collaboration between 6 Degrees Dance / Toni Valle, Composer George Heathco, and Singer-Composer Misha Penton.
Details here.

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