Caltech Hosts Octavia Butler in ‘Parable of the Pathmakers’ with Grant D. Venerable

In March, “Parable of the Pathmakers,” an Afrofuturist multimedia dance performance, opened a portal into the minds and legacies of Pasadena-born science-fiction author Octavia Butler and Caltech’s first Black graduate, Grant D. Venerable (BS ’32) on Caltech’s campus.

The performance by SiriusShapeShifters—a creative collaboration between grimes, a dancer, choreographer, and professor at USC’s Kaufman School of Dance, and Meena Murugesan, a video and dance artist—combined video projection, dance, and audio-collage in a lush multisensory experience. The event marked part of a yearlong celebration of Venerable at Caltech led by curator jill moniz, which began with a community conversation in October 2023 that brought together Caltech students and the Venerable family.

“After the community conversation, I wanted to try something different,” says moniz of the event series. “I was deeply moved by the way the students spoke of Venerable House and their community, so I wanted to take the opportunity to stop talking and tap into a different kind of logic.

“What SiriusShapeShifters does is channel—through Butler—this Afrofuturist possibility. And when I think about Venerable moving through this space, that’s what he was doing. He was making space for these possibilities. I thought this performance would be the most profound, visceral, and emotional way that I could tap into his experiences and share them with the community.”

“Parable of the Pathmakers” is part of a series of Octavia Butler-inspired performances by SiriusShapeShifters called Parable of Portals. During the show, grimes and Murugesan live-mixed audio and video from behind a DJ booth onstage alongside three large video projections. grimes stepped out from behind the booth and moved fluidly through roles: emceeing, singing, performing spoken-word poetry, and dancing. He was joined onstage by dancer Brianna Mims.