THE PROVENANCE OF BEAUTY is a poetic travelogue performed on a bus touring the South Bronx. As we travel the streets of this neighborhood, Rankine's evocative text points out and reflects upon the sites that pass by outside the windows. Views that to an outsider might go by unnoticed – a factory dressed up as townhouses, the theatre where La Lupe held court that is now a church – complicated places that ask what creates a neighborhood in a city in a country in this world.

The audience boards the bus in Spanish Harlem, puts on headphones and for 90 minutes eavesdrops on the voice – both live and recorded -- of this historic place. PROVENANCE is experience that both responds to and redoubles the landscape -- its sites, history, present and future – mapping out a poetic cartography of a neighborhood – of any neighborhood – in its eternal state of evolution.