Kye Grant (Portland, OR): TIMES SQUARE LAS VEGAS
Theatre, Music, Dance
Alembic Artists in Performance June 26-29, 2025 Performance Works NorthWest Portland, Oregon © Chelsea Petrakis
PERFORMANCE SYNOPSIS
Come get the best. The world’s largest place inside a place inside a place inside a place— just 2 blocks west of Paradise! Bigger hotels, bigger gaming floors, bigger pools, bigger buffets, bigger fountains. Come see what you’ve been missing. TIMES SQUARE LAS VEGAS changes everything. And isn’t it time for everything to change?
BIO
Kye Grant is a Portland-based performer whose work has been described as “Madonna meets Hey Arnold meets Michael Alig meets Grace Jones meets infinity.” They are best known for their 9+ year musical performance persona, Jennifer Vanilla, an exploration of identity fantasy through live interactive performance, experiential conceptual events, dance ensembles, music videos, radio shows, DJ sets, a T-shirt line, a monthly neighborhood variety show and NYC public access television program, and original musical releases “harkening the sparkling precision of Ann Steel, the growling tenacity of Laurie Anderson and the wispy tenderness of Shelley Duvall in Faerie Tale Theatre” (René Kladzyk).
Spanning music, dance, vocal experimentation, participatory public projects, and collaborative social art, their work has taken the form of an open-invitation dance company in a dying Portland mall, performance interventions in Times Square, a pedestrian parade with fifth grade crossing guards, a durational dance performance inside a 6×6’ gallery, an Only Child support group, and a community newspaper about Lloyd Center Mall. They currently host and produce the genre-fluid queer + trans performance party CLUB ALIVE, which brings together Portland DJs, musical acts, dancers, interactive group experiments, live interviews, and a ritualistic mosh pit for an experimental talk show-slash-transcendent rave.
Grant spent 10 years as a vocalist, keyboardist, guitarist, and cowriter in NYC pop band Ava Luna, during which the group released seven records and toured internationally opening for Sharon Van Etten, Toro y Moi, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, John Spencer Blues Explosion, Cornelius, and Mr. Twin Sister.
www.kyealive.club IG: instagram.com/kyealive.com
CREDIT
Kye Grant – Creator and Performer