Jupiter Short Edit – Next Wave Festival 2018 from Joshua Pether on Vimeo.

Performer: Joshua Pether
Live sound design: Daniel Jenatsch
Producer: Cameron Lansdown-Goodman

With special thanks to PICA, Next Wave Festival, Humphrey Bower, Shona Erskine, Romey Cresswell and Neil Berrick.

Joshua Pether is of Kalkadoon heritage but lives and works on Noongar country in Western Australia. He is a performance artist, dancer and choreographer of movement, temporary ritual and imagined realties. His practice is influenced by his two cultural histories- indigeneity and disability and the hybridization of the two with particular interest in the aesthetics of the disabled body and also that of the colonized body.

His work and practice have been supported through the Australia Council and local and state funding. He has been the recipient of two emerging artist grants (JUMP and Art Start) by the Australia Council where, working with mentor Dan Daw, his practice focused on integrated dance and the role it played within the broader dance community. He has also travelled extensively overseas engaging with companies such as Skanes Dans Teatre, SPIN Dance Company, Candoco Dance Company, STOP Gap Dance Company and Independen-Dance. As an independent artist he has had work shown in Perth, Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney and has performed in festivals and events such as the Undercover Artist Festival, Yirramboi Festival, Next Wave, APAM 2018, Short Cuts and the MoveMe Festival. He is the creator of two solo works, ‘Monster’ and ‘Jupiter Orbiting’ both of which are part of a trilogy of works titled the ‘Isolation Trilogy’.

As a dancer he has worked for companies such as LINK Dance Company, Ochre Contemporary Dance Company and Touch Compass (NZ) and has performed both nationally and internationally. He has been supported by organisations such as Critical Path, Performing Lines, Access Arts and Blakdance, where with Blakdance he is currently profiled by them as part of the Next Gen of Blak choreographers. In addition he has spoken on panels related to disability and transformative practice at ISPA and Arts Activated NSW.

Daniel Jenatsch (Sound Design/Musician) makes multidisciplinary work that explores the interstices between affect and information. His work combines hyper detailed soundscapes, music and video to create multi-media documentaries, installations, radio and experimental opera. Through artistic research projects that focus’s on subjects of historical interest, Daniel explores the social construction of subjectivity, concerned mostly with the ways in which forms of knowledge and power construct experience.

His works have been presented in Kustenfestivaldesarts, the Athens Biennale, NextWave Festival, ACMI, Liquid Architecture, the MCA Sydney and the MousonTurm, Frankfurt.

As a composer, Daniel has extensively produced scores for contemporary dance working in collaboration with choreographers such as Jefta Van Dinther, DD Dorvillier, Irina Muller, Frank Willens, Jan Burkhardt, Frederick Gies, Philip Adams, Atlanta Eke and Joshua Pether.

As a musician, instrument and sound designer Daniel has worked with artists such as Jonathan Bepler, Matthew Barney, KimSooja, Ross Manning, Silvana and Gabriella Mangano and Claire Lambe.

Cameron Lansdown-Goodman (Producer) is an independent producer based in Perth, Western Australia. Mainly focused on the production of interdisciplinary and contemporary dance, Cameron has been developing networks made through working as a dancer and arts manager. Having both a BA in Dance and Arts Management, Cameron has worked on many performance projects.

In 2015-16 he worked as a company dancer for Touch Compass where he was involved in the development of existing and new works by Catherine Chappell, Marc Brew and Otto Ramstad and Olive Beiringa. In 2016 he choreographed and produced his own work titled ‘Brainchild’ for the Perth Fringe Festival, which won the WA award for dance and physical theatre and subsequently toured to both Melbourne and Sydney.

Outside his own projects, Cameron has worked on events for other artists and companies in a production and supporting role including more recently Jupiter Orbiting as part of the Next Wave Festival and the MoveMe Festival with Ausdance WA. Over his work in the arts he has worked in arts organisations including Murmuration Dance Company, Ochre Contemporary Dance Company, Ausdance WA and PAC Australia (formerly APACA). As part of Ochre, Cameron assisted in the change over to new artistic leadership of Mark Howett and Phil Thompson, assisted with applications and production of the LNG conference 2016 and the first work by Mark Howett as director of the company (KAYA). At Murmuration Cameron worked on the development of the company’s first full-length work ‘Days like these’ by artistic director Sarah-Vyne Vassallo and Dan Daw. Cameron has also spent considerable time at Ausdance WA working on their community engagement program, utilizing his knowledge as a dancer to assist the organization.

Most recently he was involved with PAC Australia, where he worked on the International Arts Associations Congress (IAAC) and Performing Arts Exchange. The IAAC was a large event that took place in Perth in January 2018, where Cameron was part of a team to coordinate the event and acted as personal point of call to the arts leaders that attended. He was also part of the team that helped deliver the Performing Arts Exchange and Marketing Space conference in Karratha, Western Australia.

‘Pether positions himself at the centre of the work, but his relationship to the subjectivity to the piece is complex. Jupiter Orbiting involves an audience in the mental experience of dissociation and a reliving and reprocessing of trauma. This causes them to enter a mental landscape which is framed by Pether’s, but which the performer Pether does not appear to be himself currently occupying.’
Cera Maree Brown – Theatrepeople

‘With Jupiter Orbiting, Pether takes his suffering and offers an insight into his own situation, thus creating an engrossing and emotional work of art through his pain’
Myron My – MyMelbourneArts

coming soon…

Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group is a Brooklyn-based dance company that investigates the intersections of cultural anthropology and movement practices and believes in the potential of the body as a valid means for knowing. Its performance work is a continued manifestation of the rhythm languages of the body provoked by the spiritual and the mundane traditions of Africa and its Diaspora, including the Blues, Slave and Gospel idioms. The group has received support from major foundations and corporations and has performed at notable venues in the United States and abroad.

Reggie Wilson (Executive and Artistic Director, Choreographer, Performer) founded his company, Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group, in 1989. Wilson draws from the cultures of Africans in the Americas and combines them with post-modern elements and his own personal movement style to create what he often calls “post-African/Neo-HooDoo Modern dances.”

His work has been presented nationally and internationally at venues such as Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York Live Arts, and Summerstage (NYC), Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival (Lee, MA), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), UCLA Live, and Redcat (Los Angeles), VSA NM (New Mexico), Myrna Loy (Helena, MT), The Flynn (Burlington, VT), Contemporary Arts Center (New Orleans), Dance Umbrella (Austin, TX), Linkfest and Festival e’Nkundleni (Zimbabwe), Dance Factory (South Africa), Danças na Cidade (Portugal), Festival Kaay Fecc (Senegal), The Politics of Ecstasy, and Tanzkongress 2013 (Germany).

Wilson is a graduate of New York University, Tisch School of the Arts (1988, Larry Rhodes, Chair). He has studied composition and been mentored by Phyllis Lamhut; Performed and toured with Ohad Naharin before forming Fist and Heel. He has lectured, taught and conducted workshops and community projects throughout the US, Africa, Europe and the Caribbean. He has traveled extensively: to the Mississippi Delta to research secular and religious aspects of life there; to Trinidad and Tobago to research the Spiritual Baptists and the Shangoists; and also, to Southern, Central, West and East Africa to work with dance/performance groups as well as diverse religious communities. He has served as visiting faculty at several universities including Yale, Princeton and Wesleyan. Mr. Wilson is the recipient of the Minnesota Dance Alliance’s McKnight National Fellowship (2000-2001). Wilson is also a 2002 BESSIE-New York Dance and Performance Award recipient for his work The Tie-tongued Goat and the Lightning Bug Who Tried to Put Her Foot Down and a 2002 John Simon Guggenheim Fellow. He has been an artist advisor for the National Dance Project and Board Member of Dance Theater Workshop. In recognition of his creative contributions to the field, Mr. Wilson was named a 2009 United States Artists Prudential Fellow and is a 2009 recipient of the Herb Alpert Award in Dance. His evening-length work The Good Dance–dakar/brooklyn had its World premiere at the Walker Art Center and NY premiere on the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 2009 Next Wave Festival. In 2012, New York Live Arts presented a concert of selected Wilson works, theRevisitation, to critical acclaim and the same year he was named a Wesleyan University’s Creative Campus Fellow, received the 2012 Joyce Foundation Award for his new work Moses(es), and was named a Doris Duke Performing Artist. Moses(es) premiered in 2013 and his recent work CITIZEN premiered in 2016, both on BAM’s Next Wave Festival; both works continue to tour. Wilson was curator of Danspace Project’s Dancing Platform Praying Grounds: Blackness, Churches, and Downtown Dance (Platform 2018) and created the commissioned work “…they stood shaking while others began to shout” specifically for the space at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery. His newest work in creation is titled POWER.

Jonathan Belcher (Lighting Design and Technical Director) was born in Rochester, NY and now lives in Brooklyn. He is Lighting Director, Set Designer and Studio Manager for City University of New York Television. Previously, he was resident Lighting Designer at the Kitchen, The Harkness Dance Festival 2001, The University of Michigan Musical Society, SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance, Dance Theater Workshop and The Yard. Jonathan’s career has most recently been distinguished with a Bessie Award winning performance of Exhausting Love at Danspace Project by Luciana Achugar; One of 3 Lighting Designers featured in the 2009 New York Times article by Roslyn Sulcas entitled Lighting Designers Illuminate Ballet; a Bessie Award; and designing a number of projects with Amanda Loulaki, Bill Young, Luciana Achugar, Blk Market Membership, Dean Moss, Maria Hassabi, Jill Sigman, Jeremy Wade, Sara Michelson and most notably Mr. Reggie Wilson. Mr. Belcher’s guiding principal in lighting design is, “look at things differently, if for no other reason than it’s a lot more fun that way.”

Adrienne McDonald (Late costume designer) born in Atlanta raised in Washington, DC. She began her arts journey studying fashion design at the prestigious Duke Ellington School of the Arts and attended college at the Art Institute of Chicago (majoring in textile design), where she along with fellow students launched Gallerie Garb. She relocated to New York with dreams of creating clothing for entertainers. Those dreams were realized with work done for Maya Angelou, Bill Cosby, Judith Jamison and Prince. When she began collaborating on theatrical productions, Adrienne would create miniature costumes rather than sketch out her ideas. The hand-made miniatures were called “Urban Faeries”; they are now collectibles and exhibited as works of art. Fist and Heel is thankful to have worked with Miss Adrienne.

Enver Chakartash (Costume Designer) is a costume designer and stylist for theatre and film. He is a company member of The Wooster Group where he has designed costumes for Early Shaker Spirituals and Early Plays (directed by Richard Maxwell). In addition, Enver is a frequent collaborator with Tina Satter’s Half Straddle. With Half Straddle credits include costume design for Ghost Rings, Ancient Lives, House of Dance and Seagull (Thinking of You). Enver most recently designed costumes for Tony Oursler’s 5D feature film, Imponderable, currently screening at MoMA, New York. With Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company he designed costumes for Straight White Men, presented at The Public, and the short film; A Meaning Full Life, screened at BAM.

“Mr. Wilson, 50, who grew up in Milwaukee and founded the company Fist & Heel Performance Group in 1989, has long explored spiritual traditions in his own work, particularly within African and African-American cultures. He said his dances are guided by two lines of inquiry: “What is the relationship between postmodern dance and African diasporic culture? And what is the relationship between Protestant Christianity and African diasporic religions? Even if the piece seems like it has nothing to do with either of those, they creep back in there.”
– Siobhan Burke, The New York Times

“With a blend of postmodern and black aesthetics, Reggie Wilson’s work explores connections between secular and spiritual cultures of the African diaspora in the Americas. Audiences are drawn to his unique synergy of formal rigor, playfulness and depth.”
– Eva Yaa Asantewaa, Dance Magazine

Dance in Process: Jack Ferver from Gibney on Vimeo.

Written and Choreographed by Jack Ferver
Performed by Reid Bartelme, Jack Ferver, Lloyd Knight, Garen Scribner, and James Whiteside
Set by Jeremy Jacob​​
Costumes by ​Reid and Harriet Design

JACK FERVER ​​is a New York based writer, choreographer, and director. His works have been presented in New York City at the New Museum; The Kitchen; The French Institute Alliance Française, as part of Crossing the Line; Abrons Arts Center; Gibney Dance; Performance Space 122; the Museum of Arts and Design, as part of Performa 11; Danspace Project; and Dixon Place. Domestically and internationally, Ferver has been presented by the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College (NY); American Dance Institute (MD); Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (IL); Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (OR); the Institute of Contemporary Art at MECA (ME); the Institute of Contemporary Art (MA); Diverse Works in collaboration with the Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston (TX); and Théâtre de Vanves (France).

Ferver has received residencies and fellowships from the Maggie Allesee National Center of Choreography at Florida State (2012); Baryshnikov Arts Center (2013); the Watermill Center (2014); the Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art (2014); Live Arts Bard, the commissioning and residency program of The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College (2014); and Abrons Art Center (2014-2015). He is a 2016 recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant. Ferver teaches at Bard College and is guest faculty at NYU. He has also taught at SUNY Purchase and has set choreography at The Juilliard School. As an actor he has appeared in numerous films and television series.

REID BARTELME ​​began his professional life as a dancer. He worked for ballet companies throughout North America and Canada and later in his career for modern dance companies in New York including Shen Wei Dance Arts and the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company. He frequently works with Jack Ferver and has also danced for Liz Santoro, Burr Johnson, Douglas Dunn, Christopher Williams, Ryan McNamara, and Kyle Abraham. He graduated from the fashion design program at the Fashion Institute of Technology and works as a freelance costume designer. Bartelme has designed costumes most notably for Christopher Wheeldon, Lar Lubovitch, Pam Tanowitz, Trey McIntyre, Jack Ferver, and Liz Santoro.

LLOYD KNIGHT​​ was born in England and reared in Miami. Knight joined the Martha Graham Company in 2005, was promoted to soloist in 2009, and became a principal dancer in 2014. He has performed works choreographed by Nacho Duato, Andonis Foniadakis, Larry Keigwin, Doug Varone, Lar Lubovitch, Kyle Abraham, Liz Gerring, Michelle Dorrance, Anne Bogart, Pontus Linberg, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, and Mats Ek. He partnered the Graham duets “Moon Duet” and “Letter to the World” with New York City Ballet Principal Wendy Whelan and American Ballet Theatre Principal Misty Copeland, respectively. Knight holds a BFA from the New World School of the Arts. As a recipient of scholarships, he continued his training at the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance, Dance Theatre of Harlem School, and The Ailey School. Dance Magazine named Mr. Knight as one of the “Top 25 Dancers to Watch” in 2010 and named him Best Performer of 2015.

GAREN SCRIBNER​​ is an independent performing artist based in New York City. He starred as Jerry Mulligan in the Broadway and National Tour productions of An American in Paris. As a soloist with San Francisco Ballet and later with Nederlands Dans Theater I, he created and performed leading roles in works by Jiri Kylian, Lightfoot/Leon, Alexander Ekman, Marco Goecke, Christopher Wheeldon, William Forsythe, Wayne McGregor, Jorma Elo, Mark Morris, John Neumeier, Hans van Manen, and George Balanchine. He has toured extensively and performed and taught at engagements throughout the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Africa. Commercially, he has appeared with Deborah Cox, Les Twins, Santana, Michelle Branch, and Jennifer Lopez. Scribner has received awards from the NFAA and the Isadora Duncan Dance Awards. He is a co-founder of Dance For a Reason (​danceFAR.org​), which has produced its five annual benefit performances in San Francisco for the Cancer Prevention Institute of CA, raising over $500,000 for the organization since 2012.

JAMES WHITESIDE ​​was born in Fairfield, Connecticut. Whiteside is a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre. He joined ABT in 2012 as a soloist and was promoted to a principal one season later. Prior to ABT, he danced with Boston Ballet from 2002 – 2009, moving from apprentice to principal over the 10 year tenure. Throughout his professional career, he has performed the works of Balanchine, Cranko, Kylian, Macmillan, Ratmansky, Tudor, and Tharp, originating roles in Ratmansky’s latest ballet, “Serenade After Plato’s Symposium,” and “Chamber Symphony” for American Ballet Theatre. Whiteside’s dance training began at age nine studying jazz at the D’Valda & Sirico Dance Centre and, later, ballet training at the Virginia School of the Arts. James Whiteside is also known for his theatrical personas JbDubs, pop-dance artist, and Ühu Betch, part of the hilarious drag posse The Dairy Queens.

JEREMY JACOB​​ is an American artist known for his work exploring the nature of desire and its political effects. He currently lives and works in New York City as a production designer, art director, prop stylist, scenic and sound designer, and studio artist.

REID & HARRIET DESIGN ​​was founded in the Fall of 2011. Bartelme and Harriet Jung were classmates in the fashion design program at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Collaboratively, they have designed costumes for Jack Ferver, Justin Peck, Pontus Lidberg, Marcelo Gomes, Pam Tanowitz, Emery Lecrone, Kyle Abraham, Mauro Bigonzetti, and Doug Varone. They have costumed productions at American Ballet Theater, New York City Ballet, Miami City Ballet, and Pacific Northwest Ballet. Along with Justin Peck, they are featured in the documentary Ballet 422 which premiered at the 2014 TriBeCa

Film Festival.

“What do Martha Graham and My Little Pony have in common? For two dancers in Jack Ferver’s latest work, they were childhood idols. Everything Is Imaginable showcases five queer dancers whose early obsessions come to life in carefully crafted solos. It was born from Mr. Ferver’s fantasy: playing with friends. As a gay child growing up in Wisconsin, he didn’t have many. What he had was bullying, and it was incessant.”
– Gia Kourlas, The New York Times

“reaches a more vulnerable state, throwing into relief the human need for friends and heroes, real and imagined.”
– Siobhan Burke, The New York Times

Created by Miguel Gutierrez in collaboration with the performers
Performed by Alvaro Gonzalez, John Gutierrez, Miguel Gutierrez, Xandra Ibarra, Nibia Pastrana Santiago, Evelyn Sanchez Narvaez
Dramaturgy/Assistant Directing by Stephanie Acosta
Lighting Design by Tuçe Yasak
Set assistance/construction by Matthew Shalzi
Original music by Miguel Gutierrez
Text by Miguel Gutierrez, traditional tongue twisters, with selections from telenovelas including Maria la del Barrio, El extraño retorno de Diana Salazar, Marimar, and several others.

Miguel Gutierrez (choreographer, writer, composer, performer) is a Brooklyn based artist working in dance, performance, music and poetry. He has been called “one of our most provocative and necessary artistic voices” by Eva Yaa Asantewaa at Dance Magazine. His work addresses urgency and contingency, the weight of mortality and desire for meaning, how identity expresses content and form, and how the mundane commingles with the sublime. His work joins a legacy of process-focused experimental forms while drawing on influences such as endurance-based performance art, noise music, ecstatic experience in social and religious rituals, the study of mind-body somatic systems, and various histories of spectacle including Broadway and queer club performance.

His most recent work is Cela nous concerne tous (This concerns all of us), a 2017 commission for Ballet de Lorraine inspired by the social unrest movements of May 1968. From 2013 to 2015 creating Age & Beauty, a trilogy that places a queer lens on mortality, the representation of the dancer, the intersection of administration with art-making, and an ambivalence toward futurity.

Gutierrez is one of the few dance artists to have been selected for a Whitney Biennial (2014). His work has been presented in over fifty cities in the U.S. and around the world in venues such as the Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York Live Arts, The Kitchen, Danspace Project, AMERICAN REALNESS, Live Arts Bard, Walker Art Center, Flynn Center for Performing Arts, PICA’s TBA Festival, CounterPulse, Diverseworks, Fringe Arts, Centre National de Danse and Centre Pompidou in Paris, Les Subsistances in Lyon, L’Opera National de Lorraine, ImPulsTanz in Vienna, Kampnagel in Hamburg, BiPod Festival in Beirut, Festival Universitario in Colombia and many others.

He is a 2016 Doris Duke Artist. In 2010 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Choreography. That same year he also received a United States Artist Award and a Foundation for Contemporary Art Award. In addition he has received a Lambent Fellowship from the Tides Foundation (2006-2008), and Fellowships in Choreography from New York Foundation for the Arts in 2004 and 2008. He is the recipient of the 2016 Franky Award from Prelude Festival, and he has received four New York Dance and Performance Bessie Awards: one in 2001 for his work as a dancer with John Jasperse Company, two for his choreographic work (in 2006 for Retrospective Exhibitionist and Difficult Bodies and in 2010 for Last Meadow), and one in 2017 for Outstanding Revived Work with Ishmael Houston-Jones, Nick Hallett and Jennifer Monson for Variations on Themes from Lost and Found: Scenes From a Life and Other Works by John Bernd.

His work has been supported by New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, the NPN Commissioning Fund, MAP Fund, Jerome Foundation, Creative Capital, the Josephine Foundation and the NEA. He has been an artist in residence at Maggie Allessee National Center for Choreography, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Centre Choréographique National de Montpellier, Centre National du Danse Pantin, Baryshnikov Art Center, Gibney Dance and several universities.

He has choreographed and performed in music videos for Diane Cluck, Holcombe Waller and Le Tigre, has performed as a singer with Anohni, Nick Hallett, My Robot Friend, Justin Vivian Bond, Holcombe Waller, Vincent Segal and Kid Millions. He has created music for several of his works, for choreographer Antonio Ramos, and in collaboration with Colin Self for Jen Rosenblit and Simone Aughterlony’s Everything Fits in the Room. He has released two albums under the moniker The Belleville. Currently he performs a music project called SADONNA, where he takes upbeat Madonna songs and draws out the existential melancholy embedded in the lyrics.

His writing has appeared in handjob the zine, the Movement Research Journal, Emily Roysdon’s Uncounted, Shannon Jackson and Paula Marincola’s book In Terms of Performance, Rebecca Stenn’s book A Life In Dance,. His short essay “The Perfect Dance Critic” has been featured in several international publications. His book of performance texts WHEN YOU RISE UP is available from 53rd State Press and he is at work on a second book called THE THINGS YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE. His work is discussed in Jenn Joy’s book The Choreographic, published by MIT Press.

He is the program director of LANDING, a new education initiative at Gibney Dance. He leads workshops in his approach to creative practice all over the world and has taught at ImPuls Tanz in Vienna, CND in Paris, CNDC/Angers, American Dance Festival, Hollins University (BFA and MFA programs), School of the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA), Princeton University, Yale University (MFA program), Brown University, RISD, CalArts, Bennington College and in New York at New School/Eugene Lang, Hunter College, and Movement Research, among many other places. From 2007-2017 he led DEEP AEROBICS, an absurdist workout for the radical in all of us, in a variety of festivals and venues, including the Palais de Tokyo. It was also used as the warmup for The Knife’s “Shaking the Habitual” tour. He is a guild certified practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method®.

Stephanie Acosta (dramaturg/assistant director) is a multidisciplinary artist focused on the exploration of the experiential, incorporating concrete objects, created environments, solo and ensemble performances, along with experimental and documentary filmmaking as modes of inquiry. By placing the materiality of the ephemeral at the root of her practice, Acosta questions the making of immovable meanings in our manufactured limitations.

Based in NYC​, she works extensively with unseen histories, performance, experimental radio, and dance films. Recently: presenting I AM A POTTED PALM, an evolving solo, from her series Is This What You Wanted, issues of self tokenizing and the sanctity of sincerity in identity work, (IN>TIME2016, Miami Performance Fest ‘17) and the exhibition Aqui y Alla at Vox Populi in collaboration with J Soto. Joining forces with Miguel Gutierrez for the world premiere of Cela nous concerne tous (This concerns all of us) at the Ballet de Lorraine, in Nancy, France Fall ‘17, they now embark on a new work to premiere in NY January ‘19. Her first feature film (producer/art director), The Ladies Almanack, premiered at MCA Chicago October ’16 and is currently on tour throughout the world, based on the writing of Djuna Barnes. Continuing in it’s 3rd season, Acosta is Co-Founder and Programmer of Sunday Service, monthly performance/discourse series and joined American Realness as curator of the readings/writings in 2018. Acosta debuted the first volume of GOOD DAY GOD DAMN, an expansive scale performance, film, and installation in March ‘18, delving into cosmic pressure, sentient landscapes, domestic terror, and landlocked limitations at the Museum of Art and Design as an inaugural choreographer-in-residence.

Tuçe Yasak (lighting designer) graduated from the Department of Industrial Design at Middle East Technical University in Turkey in 2004. She worked for XXI Architecture and Design Magazine for five years as the Editor of Industrial Design. Following the magic of light, she moved from Istanbul to New York in November 2009. She designs for dance, theater and concerts. She is interested in site-specific performances and light installations. She has been to NOLA Fringe Festival with Enthusiast Theater Company’s site-specific piece ‘the Decay of the Cities” in November 2013. She has been involved with Lumensentient Projections since 2011 and has performed in “LAMP”, the urban light festival in New Haven in October 2013 and at MassBliss Festival in July, 2015. Also, she was a contributing participant in Gutai Card Box exhibited at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, NYC as a part of Gutai: Playground retrospective exhibition in February/March 2013. In August 2013, she was a resident at MANA Contemporary Art Center, NJ with choreographer Nikki Holck. She worked as a contributor writer ofPLSN Magazine and made interviews with lighting designers. She has been collaborating with choreographer Korhan Basaran since 2011 in both NYC and Istanbul (Gatherings, Untitled, RAU, DRT, RAU2, Unfold, Unsettled). She has also collaborated with Vicky Araico, actress and playwright from Mexico City, on her solo show “Juana in a Million” including the performance at the Yerba Buena Arts Center in San Francisco as a part of MEX I AM festival, in July 2014. The same year in August, she was a resident at the Bates Dance Festival with Korhan Basaran,where she got the opportunity to light “Unsettled”, a collaborative work by Korhan Basaran Dance Company and the David Dorfman Dance that was commissioned and produced by DanceMotionUS and BAM performed at Brooklyn Academy of Music, NYC in August, 2014. She has been a creative collaborator to choreographer Raja Feather Kelly of the Feather Theory in his recent works including Color Me Warhol in April,2015 and “37 Other Reasons to Cry” in October, 2015. She has been dancing tango since 2000 and she loves listening to jazz.

Alvaro Gonzalez Dupuy/EstadoFlotante (performer) is a Movement/Dance artist originally from Santiago de Chile where he studied Dance at UAHC (Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristiano) based in Ledeer/Laban technique, worked as a performer and as a teaching artist, and started to produce his own work. By interacting with sound and visual elements he explores the moving body from its internal and sensorial awareness in an attempt to unfold a vocabulary of the present that integrates and re structures the space and its narrative.

He moved to NYC in 2012 where he studied at Dance New Amsterdam. More recently he has had the pleasure to perform with Elizabeth Motley, Alex Romania, Miguel Gutierrez, Ishmael Houston, Antonio Ramos, Commons Choir/Daria Fain. His work has been performed at Dance New Amsterdam, Danny Studios, Bridge for Dance, Sample Festival, Green Space, Launch Pad, The Brick Theatre, House Fest, Freeman Space, Alvin Ailey City Group Theatre, open performance at Movement Research, Showdown at Gibney Dance Center, BAAD!Bronx, Binary Series, Center for Performance Research, and Movement Research at the Judson Church.

John Gutierrez (performer) is a multidisciplinary artist, creator, and performer originally from Washington Heights, a neighborhood in a densely populated small island known as Manhattan/New York City. Since finishing his BFA (in theater/drama) at NYU Tisch’s Experimental Theater Wing, John has ventured into various worlds of performance – working with directors and choreographers from around the world such as Big Dance Theater, Full Circle Souljahs, The Ridiculous Theater Company, MOTUS of Italy, Ivica Buljan of Croatia, Jesse Phillips-Fein, Culture Hub NYC, and many more, performing in venues all over the East Coast and Europe such as BAM, The Kennedy Center, La Mama, Dixon Place, Danspace, Dance Place DC, BAX, and many more. John’s personal work combines theater, movement, and original music ranging from artistic expressions based in everything from hip hop to postmodern and has been presented at The Rubin Museum, Gibney, Theater for The New City, HERE Arts, and TADA Theater to name a few. His work, typically collaborative based, often deals with current and historical interpersonal and systemic sociopolitical issues. John is currently finishing his training at The Terry Knickerbocker Studio which offers a two year acting conservatory in the Meisner technique/method. He is a proud member of the feath3r theory, BAIRA Movement Philosophy, and the Great Jones Rep Company of La Mama. He is excited to be currently working with Miguel Gutierrez, Parijat Desai, and touring internationally with the GJR and MOTUS.

Xandra Ibarra (performer) is an Oakland-based performance artist that integrates performance, sex acts, and burlesque with video, photography, and objects. Her practice uses hyperbolized modes of racialization and sexualization to test the boundaries between her own body and coloniality, compulsory whiteness, and Mexicanidad.

Ibarra’s work has been featured at El Museo de Arte Contemporañeo (Bogotá), The Broad Museum (LA), CITRU-Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (D.F.), Joe’s Pub (NYC) and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (SF) to name a few. She has been awarded the Art Matters Grant, NALAC Fund for the Arts, ReGen Artist Fund, and the Franklin Furnace Performance and Variable Media Award. Currently, Ibarra is co-curating a yearlong feminist performance art series entitled EN CUATRO PATAS with Nao Bustamante at The Broad Museum in Los Angeles.

Ibarra’s work has also been featured in several recent and forthcoming books. Juana Maria Rodriguez’s Sexual Futures, Queer Gestures, and Other Latina Longings features her performance “I am your Puppet” (2007) while Amber Jamilla Musser’s Brown Jouissance: Feminine Imaginings includes a chapter about Ibarra’s collaboration with performance artist Amber Hawk Swanson, “Untitled Fucking” (2013). Leticia Alvarado’s Abject Performances: Aesthetic Strategies in Latino Cultural Production features Ibarra’s “Skins” (2015) performance work on the cover.

nibia pastrana santiago (performer) Born in Caguas, Puerto Rico (1987). nibia obtained a BA in Dance / Women’s Studies from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, where she was a member of the dance company Hincapié, directed by Petra Bravo. She holds an MFA in Dance with a Minor in Latina/o Studies from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, US, and a Postmaster from a.pass, Brussels. During her time at Illinois she was awarded the Vannie Sheiry Memorial Dance Scholarship for Outstanding Performance, and the Wanda Nettl Prize for Choreography. nibia was awarded the 2011 Tinker Fellowship Summer Research in Latin America for The Border-Body: History of Panamanian Women as Choreography. She was part of the danceWEB Scholarship Program, ImPulsTanz #28 in Vienna, & was a fellow artist at La Práctica (2015-2016) Beta Local PR, where she published her first zine maniobra, bahía o el evento coreográfico. Based in Santurce, she co-directs LA ESPECTACULAR—Artists Residency with Gisela Rosario Ramos. nibia has performed in works by DD Dorvillier/Human Future Dance Corps, Nickels Sunshine, & Jennifer Monson/iLAND. Currently, she serves as the Academic Coordinator, Dance Program, Universidad del Sagrado Corazón & Escuela de Danza 21, the first of its kind on the island. During the past years, nibia has collaborated with David Bergé, Eduardo Rosario, Susan Homar, sculptor Elizabeth Robles, and curators Nelson Rivera and Sharmyn Cruz. Her work has been presented in PR, BXL, NYC, Chicago and Los Angeles.

Evelyn Sanchez Narvaez (performer) Raised on the west coast and now cultivating her artistry on the east, she/her/they/them is a Mexican American sun moon water child energetically queering the space around her. She is currently dancing with Abby Zbikowski’s Abby Z and the New Utility and Jill Sigman’s thinkdance while also working on her own projects separately with Elena Light and Caitlin Thurgood.
Evelyn is a 2018 Gibney Work Up 4.0 artist. Through this performance opportunity, they premiered, “okay, I’m gunna start now…” a solo collaged with humor, vulnerability, rigor, and ritual that creates a world within which they rewrite her lived narrative. Now she works with Elder Share The Arts (E.S.T.A) as a creative aging teaching artist at Hope Gardens, Brooklyn. They also had the privilege of being a 2017-2018 fall/winter teaching artist for Urban Art Beat, a hip hop pedagogy organization that created a program, Beats Beyond Bars, that teaches different mediums of art (music engineering, dance, journalism) to incarcerated youth at Rikers.