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nora chipaumire
#PUNK
Co-Presented by Abrons Arts Center & Gibney Dance
Thursday, January 11: 8:30pm
Friday, January 12, 10:00pm
Saturday, January 13, 10:00pm
Run Time: 60 minutes
Abrons Arts Center, Playhouse, 466 Grand Street, Manhattan
Single Tickets $25 / Abrons Festival Pass $20
Patti Smith declares in her iconic song, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Nigger,” “I haven’t fucked much with the past, but I fuck plenty with the future.” Spurred by this daring proclamation in making her current work #PUNK, nora chipaumire declares herself to be an “African nigger”—the sort who fucks with the past, and fucks even harder with the present and the future.
#PUNK is chipaumire’s first statement in a multi-part song cycle inspired by her formation, growing up in 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s Zimbabwe. Part of a tryptic titled #PUNK 100% POP*NIGGA (verbalized as “Hashtag Punk, One hundred percent Pop Star NIGGA”), these works confront and celebrate the bodies and aesthetics of iconic women: Patti Smith (#PUNK), Grace Jones (100% POP), and Rit Nzele (*NIGGA).
Born with inherited historic and political contradictions, chipaumire’s work questions how status and power are experienced and presented through the body. The human body for her, and for those born without property, name or class, possesses a possible salvation as a vehicle for the manifestation of self-invention and self-determination.
#PUNK 100%POP *NIGGA is commissioned by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts with the support of by Brooklyn Academy of Music, Miami Light Project, ICA Live Art Festival (Cape Town), University of Richmond, Crossing the Line Festival/French Institute Alliance Française and company nora chipaumire.
Photo by Jesus Robisco
Mariana Valencia
ALBUM
Co-Presented by Abrons Arts Center & Gibney Dance
Thursday, January 11, 7:00pm
Friday, January 12, 8:30pm
Saturday, January 13, 5:30pm
Sunday, January 14, 2:30pm
Monday, January 15, 7:00pm
Run Time: 60 minutes
Abrons Arts Center, Underground Theater, 466 Grand Street, Manhattan
Single Tickets $25 / Abrons Festival Pass $20 / AbronsArtsCenter.org
A solo performance where text, song and dance come together in choreographic methods, ALBUM researches herstory from a tableaux of personal narratives that encompass ethnography, memoir, and observations of cross-cultural identifiers. The otherness of herstory is pronounced as central while Valencia upholds and juxtaposes urban experience with suburbia, the countryside, and the imaginary plane. Through factual, humorous and grave observations, a frame of self-identification is established and charged with the task to archive and perform a self herstory as an album in image and song. Informing the viewer about the who and why of Valencia’s selfhood, we traffic through urbanity, vampires, love, and marginality in a performance as an altar for her body.
ALBUM was created, in part, through the Artist in Residence Program at BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Jerome Robbins Foundation and the Jerome Foundation. Residency support for ALBUM was provided by The School for Contemporary Dance & Thought in Northampton, MA., and the Movement Research GPS program in collaboration with Station in Belgrade, Serbia and Perform(a) Festival in Skopje, R. Macedonia.
Image by Alex Escalante
Mariana Valencia from Gibney Dance on Vimeo.
Created by Mariana Valencia
Performed by Mariana Valencia
Directed by credit to Lilleth Glimcher
Costumed by Mariana Valencia
Original Music: “Smoke Here”, “You are my Sky”, “Does it Come with Rice” by Mariana Valencia
Other Songs: “Conga” by Miami Sound Machine, “Don’t Think Twice it’s Alright” by Joan Baez
Mariana Valencia is a Brooklyn based dance artist, her choreography has been presented at Dixon Place, Brazil, Roulette, Center for Performance Research, Movement Research at the Judson Church, AUNTS, The Flea and Danspace Project. Her performance/lectures have been presented at The New Museum, Communities of Practice, The New School, The Women and Performance Journal, Sunday Process Labs, Lec/Dem, Ugly Duckling Presse and at BAM Fischer. In New York, Valencia has held residencies at Chez Bushwick AIR (2013), New York Live Arts Studio Series (2013-14), AUNTScamp (2015), ISSUE Project Room AIR (2015) and Brooklyn Arts Exchange AIR (2016-18). Internationally, she has held creative residencies in Serbia and R.Macedonia. Valencia has performed with musician Jules Gimbrone; in videos by Elizabeth Orr, Kate Brandt, and AK Burns, and in dances by robbinschilds, Kim Brandt and MPA. Her projects in costume direction include works by Vanessa Anspaugh, Lauren Bakst and Juliana May. Valencia is a founding member of the No Total reading group, a member of Crit Group and she’s been a co-editor of Movement Research’s Critical Correspondence (2016-17). Valencia is a Jerome Travel and Study Grant recipient (2014-15), a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant recipient (2015), a Center for Performance Research Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Artist in Residence Program recipient (2014-15), and a Yellow House Fund of the Tides Foundation grant recipient (2010-13). Valencia holds a BA from Hampshire College in Amherst, MA (2006) with a concentration in dance and ethnography. www.marianavalencia.work
“The choreographer Mariana Valencia has been thinking about her personal history — or, as she calls it, herstory. In her new work, “Album” — a compilation of dance, monologue and song — she approaches making performance as assembling notes for a future biographer. Dance is often romanticized for its ephemerality, but Ms. Valencia, shaping her own narrative, intends to leave a record.”
– Siobhan Burke, The New York Times
Ishmael Houston-Jones & Miguel Gutierrez with Nick Hallett and Jennifer Monson
Variations on Themes from Lost and Found: Scenes from a Life and other works by John Bernd
Co-Presented by Danspace Project and Gibney Dance
2017 NEW YORK DANCE AND PERFORMANCE “BESSIE” AWARD
Tuesday, January 9, 8:00pm
Thursday, January 11, 7:00pm
Friday, January 12, 7:00pm
Saturday, January 13, 3:00pm & 7:00pm
Run Time: 70 minutes
Danspace Project, 131 East 10th Street, Manhattan
Advance Tickets $22 / Danspace Project Members $15 / Door Tickets $25
Variations on Themes from Lost and Found: Scenes From a Life and Other Works by John Bernd is a re-construction and re-imagining of the work by choreographer John Bernd. Bernd was a pivotal figure in the 1980’s downtown NYC dance scene who made several semi-autobiographical solos and ensemble pieces. Bernd was one of the first artists in that community to be diagnosed with HIV (before the virus had even been named). Throughout his life he created a significant body of interdisciplinary work dealing with themes of mortality, spirituality and queer intimacy right up until his death at 35 in 1988 from AIDS complications. In this piece, conceived by Ishmael Houston-Jones, who danced in all three of Bernd’s series Lost and Found: Scenes from a Life, and co-directed by Houston-Jones and Miguel Gutierrez, excerpts from the last seven pieces that Bernd made are re-configured to create a new vision of his work that captures the vitality of his vision, demonstrates how his influence lives in work we see today, and serves a blueprint for what his work might have become. Bernd’s original music compositions are reimagined and enhanced by composer Nick Hallett. With consultation by Jennifer Monson.
Variations on Themes from Lost and Found: Scenes From a Life and Other Works by John Bernd premiered at Danspace Project in 2016 as part of Platform 2016: Lost & Found.
Performances of Variations on Themes from Lost and Found: Scenes from a Life and other works by John Bernd for American Realness 2018 are made possible with support from Danspace Project and Gibney Dance.
The creation of Variations on Themes from Lost and Found: Scenes from a Life and other works by John Bernd was made possible, in part, by the Danspace Project 2016-2017 Commissioning Initiative and a Production Residency, with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; and by Lambent Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, the James E. Robison Foundation and an Emergency Grant from Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Additional residency support was provided by the New York State DanceForce in partnership with Kaatsbaan International Dance Center, with support from the New York State Council on the Arts.
Photo by Ian Douglas
Ishmael Houston-Jones & Miguel Gutierrez from Gibney Dance on Vimeo.
Support Variations on Themes from Lost and Found: Scenes from a Life and other works by John Bernd
on Kickstarter TODAY!
Conceived by Ishmael Houston-Jones
Co-directed by Ishmael Houston-Jones and Miguel Gutierrez
Choreography by John Bernd
Text by John Bernd
Music Compositions by John Bernd, arranged and re-mixed by Nick Hallett
Consultation by Jennifer Monson
Lights by Carol Mullins
Drawings by John Bernd
Video Design by Alvaro Gonzalez
Performed by Tony Carlson, Talya Epstein, Alvaro Gonzalez, Charles Gowin, Madison Krekel, Johnnie Cruise Mercer, and Alex Rodabaugh
John Bernd (1953-1988), one of the first persons with AIDS in the Downtown Dance scene, was a “Bessie” Award-winning choreographer, performer, and “ethical guiding light.” He performed his work at PS 122, Danspace Project and Dance Theater Workshop. He died in New York on August 28, 1988 of AIDS-related complications, at the age of 35.
Ishmael Houston-Jones is a curator, author, choreographer, and teacher. He was the curator for Platform 2012: Parallels and Platform 2016: Lost and Found, and curates the DraftWork series, both at Danspace Project. He has received three New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards, as well as Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Doris Duke, and Herb Alpert Awards.
Nick Hallett is a composer, vocalist, and cultural producer. His work has recently been presented by the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, The Kitchen, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and The Public Theater / Joe’s Pub, among others.
Jennifer Monson met John Bernd in 1982 when he was taking part in an exhibit of performance artists at Sarah Lawrence College curated by Tony Whitfield. She danced with John until his death, performing in PS 122 Benefits, Be Good to Me (1985) and Two on The Loose (1988).
Miguel Gutierrez, a 2016 Doris Duke Artists, lives in Brooklyn and makes performances, music and poetry. His recently created a commission for Ballet de Lorraine in France. His next project, This Bridge Called My Ass, premieres in late 2018. He runs Gibney Dance Center’s LANDING, an educational and mentoring initiative. www.miguelgutierrez.org
“The dancers performing at Danspace Project over the weekend were too young to have known John Bernd, the choreographer whose work they were interpreting. Yet in “Variations on Themes From Lost and Found: Scenes From a Life and Other Works by John Bernd,” which opened on Thursday, they seemed to be communing with the spirit of an old friend, coaxing him into the room, so that everyone there could know him…. With the choreographer Miguel Gutierrez and the composer Nick Hallett, Mr. Houston-Jones, who danced with Mr. Bernd in the ’80s, has woven material from seven of Mr. Bernd’s pieces, created during the last six years of his life, into a fresh, funny and profoundly poignant new work for seven dancers. The collaborators, who also included the choreographer Jennifer Monson and the lighting designer Carol Mullins, treat Mr. Bernd’s legacy lovingly but not too preciously, imparting a roughness that suggests it could keep evolving forever.”
-Siobhan Burke, The New York Times
Moriah Evans
Figuring
Presented by SculptureCenter
WORLD PREMIERE
Tuesday, January 9, 5:30pm
Wednesday, January 10, 5:30pm
Friday, January 12, 5:30pm
Saturday, January 13, 5:30pm
Sunday, January 14, 5:30pm
Run Time: 90 minutes
SculptureCenter, 44-19 Purves St, Long Island City
Single Tickets $25 / Gibney Festival Pass $20
Originating from internal physical processes, Moriah Evans’ Figuring takes micro movements as method. Through the engagement of energies, reactions, and interactions, three female performers make visible and audible internal systems in order to pitch them against the external forces of space and other. Control and loss of control become the borders that the performers traverse in a series of measured movements that attempt to reconfigure the perceived cohesiveness and stability of the human form. Through pacing and scale, physical gestures make malleable the inner qualities of the body, as well as the sensation of time. Figuring brings forth the unseen, yet felt, world of bodies and space.
Figuring is commissioned by SculptureCenter and is presented by SculptureCenter in partnership with American Realness.
Figuring was partially developed through a residency at MoMA PS1. The piece was also researched and honed through financial, administrative, and residency support provided by the Dance in Process program at Gibney Dance with funds provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Photo by Derek Schultz courtesy of MoMA PS1
Choreography and performance: Moriah Evans with Lizzie Feidelson, Nicole Mannarino and Sarah Beth Percival
Lights: Kathy Kaufmann
Styled by: Strauss Bourque-LaFrance
Sound: Ka Baird
Moriah Evans is an artist working in and on the form of dance—as artifact, object and culture with its histories, protocols, default production mechanisms, modes of staging and viewing—and the capacity of the public to read dance. Her choreographies navigate utopic and dystopic potentials and tendencies within dance, approached as a fleshy and matriarchal form sliding between minimalism and excess.
Evans’s notable works include “Out of and Into (8/8): STUFF” (2012); “Another Performance” (2013); “Social Dance 1-8: Index” (2015); “Social Dance 9-12: Encounter” (2015); “Be my Muse” (2016); and “Out of and Into: Contain” (2016). Her choreographic work has been commissioned and presented in New York by Danspace Project; MoMA PS1; Issue Project Room; Movement Research at Judson Church; and the American Realness festival; in California at CalIT2; as well as internationally at Kampnagel (Hamburg, Germany); Theatre de l’Usine (Geneva, Switzerland); Villa Empain (Brussels, Belgium); and Atelier de Paris Carolyn Carlson (Paris, France).
Evans was an Artist-in-Residence at Movement Research (2011-2013); The New Museum (2012); Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (2013, 2014); Issue Project Room (2014); Studio Series at New York Live Arts (2015); and MoMA/PS1 (2016). She was nominated for the New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Emerging Choreographer for her work Social Dance 1-8 Index (2015). During her residency at Movement Research, she initiated The Bureau for the Future of Choreography, a collective apparatus involved in research processes and practices to investigate participatory images of performance and systems of choreography.
Evans received her B.A. in Art History and English Literature from Wellesley College and her M.A. in Art History, Theory, and Criticism from the University of California, San Diego. She is Editor-in-Chief of the Movement Research Performance Journal.
Antonija Livingstone & Nadia Lauro
les études (heresies 1-7)
Presented by Gibney Dance
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
Wednesday, January 10, 7:00pm
Thursday, January 11, 7:00pm
Friday, January 12, 7:00pm
Saturday, January 13, 2:00pm
Run Time: 70 minutes
Gibney Dance, Studio E, 280 Broadway (Entrance at 53A Chambers Street), Manhattan
Single Tickets $25 / Gibney Festival Pass $20
Via the intersection of performance and plastic arts practice, Antonija Livingstone & Nadia Lauro stage a queer symposium for rare presence and endangered practice. From these social gatherings emerge a score for a series of études. A visit to a chimeric library who choreographs her caretaker kin. For the duration of a storm, we take refuge together in a fabricated nomadic habitat. This wyrd assembly of friends, guest artists and local newcomers join forces to practice and reflect on the dissident potential of the slow, the careful and other unfashionable polyphonic gestures.
“Polyphony speaks of the coexistence of a plurality of voices and sounds that can also be understood in a text or in an extra textual situation. The vitality of polyphony as a phenomenon is that the voices do not fuse into a single consciousness or drone but exist on different registers generating a dynamism among themselves. It is not merely a heterogeneity but some other angle at which voices are juxtaposed and counter-posed which generates something beyond themselves. Each one of these voices exists in an indirect dialogue with other voices, allowing other voices to add to a preexisting entity, a polyphony of reciprocal, celebratory and displaced voices, exchanges wherein all the interlocutors involved may become changed in their meeting.”—Mikhaïl Bhaktin
Performances of les études (heresies 1-7) for American Realness 2018 are made possible with support from Gibney Dance, Canada Council for the Arts Touring Fund and Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York. Produced by A.Livingstone Collaborations
les études (heresies 1-7) was commissioned by Festival D’Autumn, for Menagerie de Verre ,Paris produced by Extrapole 2016-2017 with co-production support from CDN Montpellier, Arsenic, Theatre Garonne, Festival Actorale, Usine C, and Canada Council for the Arts.
Photo by
Created and Performed by Antonija Livingstone & Nadia Lauro
in collaboration with Kennis Hawkins, Stephen Thompson
Guest Artist: An Thorne and Tobaron Waxman
Storm Design: Brendan Dougherty
Costume Design: A. Livingstone
Technical Assistance: Rodolfe Martin
Production: Livingstone
Special thanks to: Canada Council for the Arts, Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, Jennifer Lacey, Fanny Virelizier
The prototype team: Scottish Basket Weavers Circle, Shape Note Singers The Pearce Institute and Contemporary Performance Practice Glasgow School of Art Students, Glasgow Scotland
This project of mobile choreographic hospitality was made via intensive queer somatic symposium in a few days as part of an ongoing process for diverse material and immaterial études in seven different contemporary arts contexts over 2016-2018.
SNAIL SEX
Workshop with Antonija Livingstone and Nadia Lauro
Monday – Tuesday, January 8-9, 10:00am-12:00pm
Gibney Dance, Studio E, 280 Broadway (Enter at 53A Chambers Street)
$50, Register at MovementResearch.org
A workshop for those curious about and who wish to deepen physical contemplative practice and an introduction to the ideas and methods for a variety of luminous and slimey choral activities. Dance-maker Antonija Livingstone and scenographer Nadia Lauro offer a series of guided scores to build together an immersive habitat of queer somatics, optics, and polyphony.
Participants are invited to learn the practices as applied in the piece les études (hérésies 1-7). There is the option for 10 participants to continue the practice in the evenings January 8-10 from 6-9pm and to perform in the installation as presented by American Realness at Gibney Dance January 11-13, 2018.
keyon gaskin
[a swatch of lavender]: a self portrait
Commissioned and presented by Gibney Dance in partnership with Participant Inc.
WORLD PREMIERE
Thursday, January 11, 5:30pm
Friday, January 12, 8:30pm
Saturday, January 13, 4:00pm
Sunday, January 14, 4:00pm
Run Time: 60 minutes
Participant Inc., 253 East Houston Street, Manhattan
Single Tickets $25 / Gibney Festival Pass $20
Performed by a rotating cast of local artists: Hilary Clark, NIC Kay, Will Rawls, Hayley Silverman, and others. Also featuring a book created in collaboration with sidony oneal, Litia Perta, and Sharita Towne.
full moon in Taurus: of the body, for the body
reading as the invisible act i “do” in my head
but always is embodied or else i could not hold a book
the book as a dance, as a set of steps and gestures that my fingertips can hold:
i page, i palm, i point—i
touch my mouth (this is the book too)
then close myself, shelve it away.
like the dance, it is no more and it can never be again. ephemeral.
which i know i should find comforting but which is, instead, for me, disconcerting. out of concert. i did not agree to
this. like so many things.
the body, an object—I object, I say no…there is a blood mystery and although I can be weighed, measured, prodded, counted, discounted—the Thing is,
I is also a dance
a set of steps,
gestures,
a make-you-feel
and then I’m over.
[a swatch of lavender]: a self portrait is commissioned by Gibney Dance for American Realness 2018 and presented in partnership with Participant Inc.
[a swatch of lavender]: a self portrait is a National Performance Network/Visual Artists Network (NPN/VAN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by Gibney Dance for American Realness in partnership with Portland Institute for Contemporary Arts, On the Boards and NPN. The Creation & Development Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). For more information: www.npnweb.org
Image by keyon gaskin
SNAIL SEX
Workshop with Antonija Livingstone and Nadia Lauro
Monday – Tuesday, January 8-9, 10:00am-12:00pm
Gibney Dance, Studio E, 280 Broadway (Enter at 53A Chambers Street)
$50, Register at MovementResearch.org
A workshop for those curious about and who wish to deepen physical contemplative practice and an introduction to the ideas and methods for a variety of luminous and slimey choral activities. Dance-maker Antonija Livingstone and scenographer Nadia Lauro offer a series of guided scores to build together an immersive habitat of queer somatics, optics, and polyphony.
Participants are invited to learn the practices as applied in the piece les études (hérésies 1-7). There is the option for 10 participants to continue the practice in the evenings January 8-10 from 6-9pm and to perform in the installation as presented by American Realness at Gibney Dance January 11-13, 2018.
jumatatu m. poe & Donte Beacham
Let ‘im Move You: A Study (2013/2016) and Let ‘im Move You: This Is a Success (2016)
Friday, June 8, 9:30pm
Saturday, June 9, 9:30pm
Run Time: 60 minutes
Hollins University, Theater
Roanoke, Virginia
FREE
Let ‘im Move You is a series of works choreographed by jumatatu m. poe & Jermone “Donte” Beacham that stem from the artists’ seven-year research into J-Sette performance, the performance of joy and the conundrum of Black joy. The series currently consists of three live performance works and an installation.
A Study uses J-Sette movement and performance structures as jumping-off points for experimentation with the role of strategy in collaborative creation and presentation. Rhythm, pattern, and attention become mechanisms for the artists to situate themselves in play, and to frame a movement conversation with primarily White audiences.
This Is a Success explores J-Sette in relation to notions of African-American exceptionalism as expressed through middle class, Black American values reiterated within the J-Sette form. The work continues the artists’ research of rhythm as a vehicle into both subversion and satisfaction.
A Study was first developed in a residency through Kultursekretariat’s Tanzrecherche NRW program at Kulturforum Alte Post in Neuss, Germany. The Let ‘im Move You body of work to date has been made possible through a residency at the 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica with support from a Pew Center for Arts & Heritage Fellowship in the Arts.
Photo by Theo Cote
SNAIL SEX
Workshop with Antonija Livingstone and Nadia Lauro
Monday – Tuesday, January 8-9, 10:00am-12:00pm
Gibney Dance, Studio E, 280 Broadway (Enter at 53A Chambers Street)
$50, Register at MovementResearch.org
A workshop for those curious about and who wish to deepen physical contemplative practice and an introduction to the ideas and methods for a variety of luminous and slimey choral activities. Dance-maker Antonija Livingstone and scenographer Nadia Lauro offer a series of guided scores to build together an immersive habitat of queer somatics, optics, and polyphony.
Participants are invited to learn the practices as applied in the piece les études (hérésies 1-7). There is the option for 10 participants to continue the practice in the evenings January 8-10 from 6-9pm and to perform in the installation as presented by American Realness at Gibney Dance January 11-13, 2018.
NIC Kay
lil BLK
Co-Presented by Abrons Arts Center & Gibney Dance
NYC PREMIERE
Friday, January 12, 5:30pm
Saturday, January 13, 2:30pm
Sunday, January 14, 8:30pm
Tuesday, January 16, 10:00pm
Run Time: 60 minutes
Abrons Arts Center, Underground Theater, 466 Grand Street, Manhattan
Single Tickets $25 / Abrons Festival Pass $20
lil BLK is an experimental solo performance. Influenced by New York City gay/queer ballroom culture, live punk shows, butoh and praise dance, lil BLK is a story about a fairy boi, child of god, little black girl, performer, and activist. The story plays out through a series of biographical moments that are equal parts narrative and dream.
lil BLK was made possible with support from Chances Dances, Links Hall, opentv and DCASE.
Photo by Nana Adusei-Poku
NIC Kay_1 from Gibney Dance on Vimeo.
Created & Performed by NIC Kay
Costume Design by Compton Quashie
Original Sound Mixing by Jared Brown + Joel Mercedes
Original Lighting Design by Giau Truong
NIC Kay is from the Bronx. Currently occupying several liminal spaces. They are a person who makes performances and creates/organizes performative spaces. They are obsessed with the act and process of moving the change of place, production of space, position, and the clarity/meaning gleaned from shifting of perspective. NIC’s current transdisciplinary projects explore movement as a place of reclamation.
NIC has shown work, spoken on panels and hosted workshops at numerous venues throughout the United States and International. In 2016 they developed a web series called the Bronx Cunt Tour around their debut solo performance lil BLK for Open TV, which premiered in April 2016. NIC Kay is currently a 2017 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence Van Lier Fellow in New York City.
SNAIL SEX
Workshop with Antonija Livingstone and Nadia Lauro
Monday – Tuesday, January 8-9, 10:00am-12:00pm
Gibney Dance, Studio E, 280 Broadway (Enter at 53A Chambers Street)
$50, Register at MovementResearch.org
A workshop for those curious about and who wish to deepen physical contemplative practice and an introduction to the ideas and methods for a variety of luminous and slimey choral activities. Dance-maker Antonija Livingstone and scenographer Nadia Lauro offer a series of guided scores to build together an immersive habitat of queer somatics, optics, and polyphony.
Participants are invited to learn the practices as applied in the piece les études (hérésies 1-7). There is the option for 10 participants to continue the practice in the evenings January 8-10 from 6-9pm and to perform in the installation as presented by American Realness at Gibney Dance January 11-13, 2018.
Simone Aughterlony & Jen Rosenblit with Miguel Gutierrez & Colin Self
Everything Fits In The Room
Presented by Gibney Dance with support from Pro Helvetia and Goethe Institut New York
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
Friday, January 12, 9:00pm
Saturday, January 13, 9:00pm
Sunday, January 14, 2:00pm
Run Time: 75 minutes
Industria, 39 South 5th Street, Brooklyn
Single Tickets $25 / Gibney Festival Pass $20
Inside the room, dungeon-esque encounters and ordinary domestic lingering exercise a politic that comes with care-taking, danger and amnesia. Aughterlony & Rosenblit, alongside Gutierrez and Self on sound, maintain a complicated relationship to order that encourages cracks and leaks inside architectures for gathering. A free-standing wall, a roaming kitchen island and decaying bodies are part of a disruptive ecology that needs constant adjustment. Rhythmic sorcery drives the effort despite the un-governability of ingredients. Is this a construction site or a cooking show? The room offers an expanded horizon, no longer obliged to rid oneself of the things that supposedly suspend progress. With local guest performer Niall Noel Jones.
Performances of Everything Fits In The Room for American Realness 2018 are supported by Pro Helvetia, Goethe Institut New York and Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.
Everything Fits In The Room is a production of Verein für allgemeines Wohl, co-produced by Gessnerallee Zürich, Arsenic–Lausanne. Additional support has been provided by the City of Zurich, Canton of Zurich Fachstelle Kultur und Pro Helvetia–Swiss Cultural Foundation, Tanzhaus Zurich, ImpulsTanz Wien, Ernst Göhner Stiftung, Fête de la Danse–Genev, Tanzhaus Zurich, George and Jenny Bloch Foundation. Created in the frame of “Utopian Realities”, a co-production of HAU Hebbel am Ufer and Haus der Kulturen der Welt as part of “100 Years of Now”, curated by HAU Hebbel am Ufer. Funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media of Germany.
Photo by Jorge León
Simone Aughterlony & Jen Rosenblit with Miguel Gutierrez & Colin Self from Gibney Dance on Vimeo.
Teaser_Everything Fits In The Room from Simone Aughterlony on Vimeo.
Concept/ Performance: Simone Aughterlony, Jen Rosenblit
Composition / Soundbody: Miguel Gutierrez, Colin Self
Guest Performer: Niall Noel Jones
Light Installation: Florian Bach
Music Kitchen Sculpture: Nik Emch
Dramaturgical advice: Jorge León, Joshua Lubin-Levy, Anna Mülter, Saša Bozic
Technical Director: Marie Prédour
Technical manager NYC: Hugo Cahn
Technical assistant: Kris Pourzal
Production Management: Sina Kießling
Administration: Karin Erdmann
Diffusion: Alexandra Wellensiek
Early Sound Research: Tami T
Catering by Lucien Zayan #lucienchefambition
Thanks to: Thanks to: Rosie Management, Uferstudios Berlin, Sandrine Ligabue (Deputy Head / Cultural Department of Consulate General of Switzerland in New York), Risa Shoup and Brian Rogers, Studio 301 NYC
Simone Aughterlony is an independent artist based and supported in Zurich and Berlin, working predominantly in dance and performance contexts. Simone approaches the performance genre as a world building practice where she and collaborators navigate the contradiction between the domination of desire alongside the agency of all elements. Her choreographic works playfully compose with representation and its saturation, seeping into and embracing the phenomenology of mis-recognition and the absurd. Recent works include Supernatural (2015) a collaboration with Hahn Rowe and Antonija Livingstone which toured extensively in Europe and USA. Uni *Form (2015) a collaboration with Jorge León that premiered at Zuercher Theater Spektakel. In the same year she received the Swiss dance award for outstanding performer. She is currently collaborating and touring with Jen Rosenblit on the project, «Everything Fits In The Room» (2017) a commission from HAU Hebbel am Ufer and Haus der Kulturen der Welt.
Jen Rosenblit makes performance concerning ideas, architectures and bodies locating the impossibilities of togetherness. Her recent works Clap Hands (2016) and Swivel Spot (2017) have lead her on an inquiry toward the uncanny and maintenance of care. Rosenblit has collaborated with artists including Young Jean Lee, Ryan McNamara, Yvonne Meier, Sasa Asentic, A.K. Burns and Miguel Gutierrez. Her collaboration with Simone Aughterlony, Everything Fits In The Room, (2017) is currently on tour. Rosenblit’s new work, Stand In, is a co-production of Sophiensaele(DE) and The Chocolate Factory(NYC, USA).
SNAIL SEX
Workshop with Antonija Livingstone and Nadia Lauro
Monday – Tuesday, January 8-9, 10:00am-12:00pm
Gibney Dance, Studio E, 280 Broadway (Enter at 53A Chambers Street)
$50, Register at MovementResearch.org
A workshop for those curious about and who wish to deepen physical contemplative practice and an introduction to the ideas and methods for a variety of luminous and slimey choral activities. Dance-maker Antonija Livingstone and scenographer Nadia Lauro offer a series of guided scores to build together an immersive habitat of queer somatics, optics, and polyphony.
Participants are invited to learn the practices as applied in the piece les études (hérésies 1-7). There is the option for 10 participants to continue the practice in the evenings January 8-10 from 6-9pm and to perform in the installation as presented by American Realness at Gibney Dance January 11-13, 2018.
Jaamil Olawale Kosoko
Séancers
Co-Presented by Abrons Arts Center & Gibney Dance
Saturday, January 13, 2:30pm with special guest M. Lamar
Sunday, January 14, 8:30pm with special guest Che Gossett
Monday, January 15, 7:00pm with special guest M. Lamar
Tuesday, January 16, 10:00pm with special guest Che Gossett
Run Time: 60 minutes
Abrons Arts Center, Experimental Theater, 466 Grand Street, Manhattan
Single Tickets $25 / Abrons Festival Pass $20
“What does it mean to defend the dead? To tend to the Black dead and dying: to tend to the Black person, to Black people, always living in the push toward our death?” — Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being
Setting the fugitive experience afforded Black people on fire with majesty, opulence, and agency, Séancers is a nonlinear examination of how the American racialized body uses psychic, spiritual, and theoretical strategies to shapeshift through socio-politically charged fields of loss and oppression. The work collapses lyrical poetry, psychic movement forms and strategies of discursive performance to investigate concepts of grief, resurrection and paranormal activity. Interrogating issues related to American history and colonialism, Séancers journeys into the surreal and fantastical states of the Black imagination to traverse the “fatal” axis of abstraction, illegibility and gender complexity.
Séancers was created with commission support from Abrons Arts Center and Danspace Project with additional funding support from MAP Fund, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, the Princeton Arts Fellowship, the Jerome Foundation, and independent donors and friends of Jaamil Olawale Kosoko. Residency support for Séancers was provided by Abrons Art Center, Bennington College, Casa Na Ilha Art Residence in Brazil, FringeArts, pOnderosa Movement and Discovery, and Haverford College.
Photo by Andrew Amorim
Creation, Concept, and Installation Design: Jaamil Olawale Kosoko
Dramaturg: Emily Reilly
Séancers: Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, with Special Guest
Video Installation Performers: Imma Asher and Jaamil Olawale Kosoko
Sound Design, Engineering, Technical Support, and Performance: Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste
Special Guest Séancers: M. Lamar & Che Gossett
Performance Doulas: Imma Asher, M. Lamar, Jennifer Kidwell
Poetry & Text: ‘Power’ by Audre Lorde, ‘Heelz On’ and ‘Entertainer’ by Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, Ruby Sales’s monologue from ‘Where Does It Hurt’, On Being with Krista Tippett
Mylar Backdrop Construction: Devin N. Morris
Associate Costume Design and Fabrication: Simone Duff
Wardrobe, Make-up & Costume Support: SaVonne Whitfield, M.A.
Lighting Design: Serena Wong with Megan Lang
Lighting Supervisors: Megan Lang, Amanda Jensen and Kate McGee
Video Installation Editor and Director: Andrew Amorim
Projects Manager: Kimya Imani Jackson
Grants Specialist: Ling Elizabeth Yang
Research Assistant and Assistant Stage Manager: Alyssa Gersony
Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, originally from Detroit, MI, is a Nigerian-American curator, author, and performance artist. He is a 2017 Princeton Arts Fellow, a 2017 Jerome Artists in Residence at Abrons Arts Center, a 2017 APAP Leadership Fellow, and a 2017 Cave Canem Poetry Fellow. He is a 2016 Gibney Dance boo-koo resident artist and a recipient of a 2017 and 2016 USArtists International Award from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation. His work has been presented throughout Europe and the United States. He has created original roles in the performance works of visual artist Nick Cave, Pig Iron Theatre Company, Keely Garfield Dance, Miguel Gutierrez and The Powerful People, Headlong Dance Theater, among others. Kosoko’s poems, interviews, and essays can be found published in The American Poetry Review, Poems Against War, The Dunes Review, Silo, Detroit Research v2, Dance Journal (PHL), the Broad Street Review (PHL), Movement Research Performance Journal, and Critical Correspondence (NYC). He lectures, speaks, and performs internationally. His previous work #negrophobia has toured throughout Europe having appeared in major festivals including Moving in November (Finland), TakeMeSomewhere (UK), SICK! (UK), Tanz im August (Berlin), Oslo Internasjonale Teaterfestival (Norway), Zurich MOVES! (Switzerland), Beursschouwburg (Belgium) and Spielart Festival (Munich). Visit Jaamil.com or philadiction.org for more information.
Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste is a Bessie-nominated composer, designer and performer, living and working in Brooklyn, NY. A current Issue Project Room Artist-In-Residence, his work, through the lens of precarious labor, complicates notions of industry, identity, and environment and the implications of the intersections of such phenomena. He is a founding member of performance collective, Wildcat!, and frequently collaborates with performers and fine artists, including Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, André M. Zachery, and Yanira Castro/a canary torsi. He has presented at the Brooklyn Museum, Newark Museum, Under The Radar at The Public Theater, The Studio Museum In Harlem, National Sawdust, The Jam Handy (Detroit), Tanz Im August at Hau3 (Berlin), American Realness at Abrons, Knockdown Center, Gibney Dance, FringeArts (Philadelphia), Judson Church, Stoa Cultural Center (Helsinki), MIT, Arts East New York, JACK, Painted Bride Art Center (Philadelphia), University Settlement, Harlem Stage, as well as on Dazed Digital, Complex, and Boiler Room.
Serena Wong is a Brooklyn-based freelance lighting designer for theater, opera, and dance. Her designs have been seen at the Joyce, New York Live Arts, Danspace, REDCAT, and Jacob’s Pillow. She is the lighting supervisor for Dorrance Dance and and enjoys beekeeping and breadbaking.
Emily Reilly is British/Irish performance maker working across a number of different disciplines. She has created live art events in the U.S. and internationally at a variety of venues and found spaces including (selected): The Project Arts Centre, Dublin; The Samuel Beckett Theatre, Dublin; The Tron Theatre, Glasgow; The Invisible Dog Art Center; The Baryshnikov Arts Center, and The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural Center in NYC. In 2011 her production of Minute After Midday was awarded a prestigious Fringe First Award at The Edinburgh Festival. She is part of the team that organizes and curates CATCH performance series. She is also an alumna of the Urban Bush Women’s Summer Leadership Institute. M.F.A, The Yale School of Drama.
M. Lamar is a composer who works across opera, metal, performance, video, sculpture and installation to craft sprawling narratives of radical becomings. Born May 29th 1984, Lamar holds a BFA from The San Francisco Art Institute and attended the Yale School of Art, sculpture program, before dropping out to pursue music. Lamar’s work has been presented internationally, most recently at National Sawdust New York, The Kitchen New York, MoMa PS1’s Greater New York, Merkin Hall, New York, Issue Project Room New York, The Walter and McBean Galleries, San Francisco; Human resources, Los Angeles;Wesleyan University; Participant Inc., New York; New Museum, New York; Södra Teatern, Stockholm; Warehouse9, Copenhagen; WWDIS Fest, Gothenburg and Stockholm; The International Theater Festival, Donzdorf, Germany; Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York; Performance Space 122, New York; and African American Art & Culture Complex, San Francisco; among others.
Che Gossett is a trans femme writer cruising in the end times. Most recently, they received a Palestinian American Research Center grant and are currently serving as a 2017-2018 Queer Arts Mentor.
“In some ways Séancers is a continuation of his last evening-length show, #negrophobia, presented at Abrons in 2016 as part of the American Realness festival. That work, a more explicit reckoning with his brother’s death and violence against black men in the United States, has toured Europe over the past two years.”
– Siobhan Burke,The New York Times, December 2017
“A foray into the dramatic and vulnerable elements of identity”
– Effie Bowen, Interview Magazine
‘a bold and bounding work…”
– Aurin Squire, New York Theatre Review
“challenging, necessary and entirely relevant”
– Andrew Edwards, Exeunt Magazine, Glasgow
SNAIL SEX
Workshop with Antonija Livingstone and Nadia Lauro
Monday – Tuesday, January 8-9, 10:00am-12:00pm
Gibney Dance, Studio E, 280 Broadway (Enter at 53A Chambers Street)
$50, Register at MovementResearch.org
A workshop for those curious about and who wish to deepen physical contemplative practice and an introduction to the ideas and methods for a variety of luminous and slimey choral activities. Dance-maker Antonija Livingstone and scenographer Nadia Lauro offer a series of guided scores to build together an immersive habitat of queer somatics, optics, and polyphony.
Participants are invited to learn the practices as applied in the piece les études (hérésies 1-7). There is the option for 10 participants to continue the practice in the evenings January 8-10 from 6-9pm and to perform in the installation as presented by American Realness at Gibney Dance January 11-13, 2018.