Mike Kelley, Anita Pace, Stephen Prina, Beat of the Traps 
With Abbott Alexander, Jon Baldwin, Freeda Electra, M.B. Gordy, and Butch Norton 
Friday, September 18, 2026 at 7:30pm
Saturday, September 19, 2026 at 7:30pm
Sunday, September 20, 2026 at 4:30pm
Tickets: $12 ($10 MOCA Members)
Location: WAREHOUSE at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA

Beat of the Traps, (1992) is a multidisciplinary performance created by Mike Kelley, Anita Pace, and Stephen Prina. Presented in Los Angeles for the first time since its debut in 1992, this collaborative work assembles a dance performance, a percussion recital, a rock drum solo, a music fanatic’s vaudevillian monologue about rock star excess, and the number one song on Billboard’s Hot 100 at the time of the performance.

MOCA 2026 Cast & Production Credits:
Directors: Anita Pace, Stephen Prina
Librettist: Mike Kelley
Choreographer: Anita Pace
Music composer: Stephen Prina
Voice and Guitar: Stephen Prina
Actor: Abbott Alexander
Dancers: Jon Baldwin, Freeda Electra
Percussionists: M.B. Gordy, Jonathan "Butch" Norton

1992 Cast & Production Credits:
Directors: Mike Kelley, Anita Pace, Stephen Prina
Cast: Alan Abelew, Carl Burkley,  M.B. Gordy, Anita Pace, Jonathan “Butch” Norton, and Stephen Prina

Previous performances: The Remise, Vienna Austria (premiere), 1992; The Gindi Auditorium, American Jewish University, Los Angeles, CA, 1992; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, 2025

Mike Kelley (b. Detroit, 1954; d. Los Angeles, 2012) is widely regarded as one of the most influential artists of his generation. Irreverent yet deeply informed, topical yet visionary, Kelley worked across a startling array of genres and media, including performance, installation, drawing, painting, video, photography, sound, text, and sculpture—producing a profoundly innovative body of work that mined American popular culture and both modernist and alternative traditions. He also curated exhibitions, collaborated with artists, musicians, and performers, and left a formidable body of critical and creative writing.

Kelley’s work has been the subject of numerous international exhibitions, including the recent Mike Kelley: Ghost and Spirit, organized by Tate Modern and presented from 2023–2025 at Bourse de Commerce–Pinault Collection, Paris; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf; Tate Modern, London; and Moderna Museet, Stockholm. He was a founding member of Destroy All Monsters, an improvisational noise band and art collective featuring Cary Loren, Jim Shaw, and others. Kelley published several influential volumes of writing, including Foul Perfection: Essays and Criticism (2002), Minor Histories: Statements,Conversations, Proposals (2004), and Mike Kelley: Interviews, Conversations, and Chit-Chat (2005). He established the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts in 2007 to further his philanthropic vision. Today, the Foundation supports artists and arts organizations while preserving and advancing his artistic legacy.

Anita Pace (b. 1957, Provo, Utah) is a choreographer, videographer, and performer based in Los Angeles. She has presented works in Europe, Asia, Mexico, and the U.S. and has collaborated with numerous visual artists, composers, and writers, including Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, Christian Marclay, Tony Oursler, Stephen Prina, Carl Stone, Kevin Stultz, Mayo Thompson, and Benjamin Weissman.

Pace studied at the University of California, Santa Cruz and CalArts, Valencia, CA; joined the Marinaccio Ballet Company and co-founded Dance Theater of Hollywood and was Director of Dance/LA and the Kinetikos foundation. She has performed with Donald Byrd, Albert Reid, Kelly Holt, and d’Warf, Bill Evans, Ruth Solomon, Tandy Beal, David Gordon, Bill Coleman and Kate Foley.

Major influences on the development of her work include musician/composer Betty Walberg, John Cage, choreographers Donald Byrd, Trisha Brown, Merce Cunningham, Lois Fuller, and Yvonne Rainer. The work ranges from the examination of popular and counterculture, to closely focused dialogues with specific texts, drawings or other visual forms and deep engagement with different musical idioms to the use of the materials and forms of technologies as creative support.

Stephen Prina (b. 1954, Galesburg, Illinois) is an artist, musician, and composer based in Los Angeles. Prina received his BFA from Northern Illinois University and an MFA from California Institute of the Arts. He is Professor Emeritus Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies, Harvard University.

Prina is associated with post-conceptualism, which emerged in the early 1980s, with practices rooted in a wide range of culture that offer analysis and reconsideration of aesthetic, social and institutional systems and how they function.  He works in a variety of media including musical performances. Prina has described his work as being a relay race, with underlying structural relationships linking one project  to subsequent ones.  Elements of these projects are extracted and re-arranged to create alternative exhibition and associative contexts.   Recent solo exhibitions include Stephen Prina: A Lick and a Promise, MoMA, New York (2025), English for Foreigners, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2020) and Museo Madre, Naples (2017); galesburg, illinois+, Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles, and Petzel, New York  (2018), Museum Kurhaus Kleve (2016), and Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen (2015);  and As He Remembered It, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles (2013) and secession, Vienna, (2011). Prina’s work is in major collections across the US and Europe, including MOCA’s.

Organizational and Funding Credits 

Wonmi’s WAREHOUSE Programs is organized by Alex Sloane, Associate Curator, and is produced by Amelia Charter, Producer of Performance and Programs, The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles.

Mike Kelley, Anita Pace, and Stephen Prina. Beat of the Traps (1992). 2025 reconstruction commissioned and produced by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, on the occasion of the exhibition Stephen Prina: A Lick and a Promise.

Major support for Mike Kelley, Anita Pace, and Stephen Prina. Beat of the Traps is provided by Karen Hillenburg.

Generous support is provided by the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, Arison Arts Foundation, and Helene Winer.

Additional support is provided by Jill and Peter Kraus, Janelle Reiring, Luis Pardo and Kourosh Larizadeh, and an anonymous donor.

This performance is made possible by generous endowment support from Wonmi & Kihong Kwon and Family.

Performances at MOCA are supported by the MOCA Fund for Performance with generous funding provided by Betsy Greenberg and The Lenore S. and Bernard A. Greenberg Fund.

Wonmi's WAREHOUSE Programs is founded by Wonmi & Kihong Kwon and Family.