Sweat Variant describes the collaborative practice of Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born. We are partners in our work and our lives. Since 1996, we have been working at the intersection of dance, theater, and visual art to make challenging and rigorous work that reaffirms that which has been deemed marginal as the true center through the exploration of Black interiority.

We are interested in building a spectacle of radical intimacy, where both performers and audience are acknowledged as being locked in a mutual gaze. We build gestural vocabularies and narrative frameworks that are concerned with the problem of memory in the inherent instability of the construction of a persona.

We hope to activate a space that allows the audience to question who they are looking at and how they are looking. We hope this creates a critical space of wonderment, of uncertainty, and of mystery. It is in this space that we believe we can see each other anew. 

Okwui Okpokwasili (she/her) is a performing artist, choreographer, and writer. The child of immigrants from Nigeria, Okpokwasili was born and raised in the Bronx, and the histories of these places and the girls and women who inhabit them feature prominently in her work. After graduating from Yale College of Arts and Sciences in 1996, Okpokwasili moved to New York City to continue performing. In 1998, she trained in Butoh dance with Min Tanaka at the Body Weather Farm in Hakushu, Japan. Soon afterwards, she began a series of collaborations with choreographer and director Ralph Lemon. Their work together includes How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere?; Come Home, Charley Patton; a duet performed at The Museum of Modern Art as part of On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century; and Scaffold Room. During this period, she also performed in many downtown New York theater works, including Nora Chipaumire’s Miriam; Kristin Marting’s SOUNDING; Young Jean Lee’s LEAR; Richard Foreman’s Maria Del Bosco; Richard Maxwell’s Cowboys and Indians, and Joan Dark.  

In 2008, she and her longtime collaborator and husband, Peter Born, began presenting their own work in New York City. It has since been staged throughout the United States and internationally. Their work blends dance, visual arts, and text to create productions and participatory practices that have been shown in theaters, galleries, museums, and public spaces. Their productions include, among others, pent-up: a revenge dance; Bronx Gothic; poor people’s tv room; poor people’s tv room solo; when I return who will receive me; Adaku’s revolt; adaku, part 1: the road opens; let slip, hold sway; and my tongue is a blade. Participatory practices include sitting on a man’s head and procession. Their album day pulls down the sky was released in 2020.

Okpokwasili and Born’s work has been exhibited in museum and gallery installations internationally, including at the New Museum in New York; The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles; the Kunsthall Trondheim in Trondheim, Norway; Nottingham Contemporary in Nottingham, UK; Hauser & Wirth in Los Angeles; and at the Venice Biennale. Their work poor people’s tv room (solo) installation (2021) is in the permanent collections of the Hammer Museum and the Whitney Museum. In 2020, Okpokwasili co-curated the Danspace Project Platform Utterances from the Chorus, which brought together performing artists around a central question, “How do we weave a collective song?”

Okpokwasili’s work extends into film and music videos, including Julie Taymor’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Stephan Littger’s Malorie’s Final Score, Knut Åsdam’s ABYSS, Sydney Pollack’s The Interpreter, Lasse Hallström’s The Hoax, Francis Lawrence’s I Am Legend; and the video for Jay-Z’s song 4:44, directed by Arthur Jafa. She has also worked with many renowned film and theater directors, including Carrie Mae Weems, Terence Nance, Camille A. Brown, Josephine Decker, Charlotte Brathwaite, Jim Findlay, and Annie Dorsen. She played a principal role in Mika Rottenberg and Mahyad Tousi’s 2021 feature film Remote, as well as the titular character in Jaume Collet-Sera’s 2025 film The Woman in the Yard.

Okpokwasili has received commissions from the Institute for Contemporary Arts/Boston; The High Line; the French Institute Alliance Française; Danspace Project; Jacob’s Pillow; the Brooklyn Academy of Music; the American Dance Institute; Walker Art Center; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; Performance Space 122; Le Mallion in Strasbourg; Théâtre de Gennevilliers in Paris; Theatre Garonne in Toulouse; Zagrebačko Kazalište Mladih (ZKM), and the Zagreb Youth Theatre.

Okpokwasili’s awards include New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards for pent-up: a revenge dance (2009) and Bronx Gothic (2014) as well as for her performance in Ralph Lemon’s Come Home, Charley Patton (2005). In 2018, she received the Herb Alpert Award in Dance, a Doris Duke Award, a Princeton University Hodder Fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship. She received an inaugural Antonyo Award in 2020 for Best Featured Actor in the Public Theater’s production of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/when the rainbow is enuf. In 2025, she received an Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

She has received numerous fellowships and residencies from institutions including The French American Cultural Exchange (2006-2007); Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (2012); Baryshnikov Arts Center (2013); New York Live Arts Studio Series (2013); Under Construction at the Park Avenue Armory (2013); New York Foundation for the Arts (2013); Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Extended Life Program (2014-17, 2019-20); ICPP at Wesleyan University (2015), The Foundation for Contemporary Arts’s Artist Grant in Dance (2014); BRIClab (2015); Columbia University (2015); the Rauschenberg Foundation (2015); and Carolina Performing Arts, UNC-Chapel Hill (2019-2022). Okpokwasili was the 2015-2017 Randjelovic/Stryker New York Live Arts Resident Commissioned Artist. In 2019, she was a Movement Research Resident Artist supported by the Rosin Fund. In 2022, she was the inaugural artist for the Kravis Studio Residency program at the Museum of Modern Art. She was an artist in residence at the Brown Arts Institute in 2023. Okpokwasili currently lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband, Peter Born, and their daughter Umechi.

Peter Born is a director, composer and visual designer who works at the intersection of dance, performance and installation.  He has created work at MoMA, the Young Vic, the Berlin Biennial, the Doris Duke Foundation, the High Line, the New Museum, the Wiener Festwochen, the Tate Modern and the Loophole of Retreat at the Venice Biennial.  In collaboration with the artist Okwui Okpokwasili, he founded the company Sweat Variant which has created multiple performance works, including most recently “my tongue is a blade” (2025) at the Irish Museum of Modern Art), “let slip, hold sway” (2025) at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and “adaku, part 1: the road opens” (2023) at  Brooklyn Academy of Music, ICA Boston and REDCAT. Previous work includes “Sitting on a Man’s Head” (2019), “Adaku’s Revolt” (2019), “at the anterior edge” (2018), “when I return, who will receive me” (2016), “Bronx Gothic (The Oval)” (2014).

Four of Peter’s collaborations have garnered New York Dance Performance “Bessie” Awards, “pent up, a revenge dance” (2009), “Bronx Gothic” (2013),“Poor People’s TV Room” (2017) and “he his own mythical beast” (2018) with David Thomson.  Additional work as a set and lighting designer includes “The Venus Knot” (2017), “Chimera” (2017), and “Vessel” (2023) with David Thomson, and “rite/riot” (2014) and “El Capitan Kinglady” (2016) with Nora Chipaumire.  

Peter’s work as a commercial art director and prop stylist has been featured in video and photo projects with Vogue, Estee Lauder, Barney’s Co-op, Bloomingdales, Old Navy, “25” magazine, The Wall Street Journal and No Strings Puppet Productions. He is a former New York public high school teacher, itinerant floral designer, corporate actor-facilitator, video maker and furniture designer.  He’s a proud dad. 

Collaborative visual artworks by Born and Okpokwasili have been featured in exhibitions around the world and are in private and institutional collections, including the Whitney Museum and the Hammer Museum.  In 2019, they released an album featuring songs from their performance work entitled “day pulls down the sky”, executive produced by Danspace Project. Through their company Sweat Variant, Born and Okpokwasili are creating a network of mutual support among artists, through programs such as their Threading Residency and their ASAP funding program.  This work has been recognized with institutional support from the Mellon Foundation.

David Thomson is an interdisciplinary artist who has worked extensively across the fields of dance, music, performance, and theater for over 40 years, working and collaborating with a wide range of artists including Bebe Miller, Trisha Brown (1987-1993), Ralph Lemon, Sekou Sundiata, Marina Abramović, Yvonne Rainer, Maria Hassabi, and Matthew Barney among many others. Thomson’s work has been recognized with awards and fellowships from United States Artists[Ford], New York Foundation for the Arts, Yaddo, MacDowell, Rauschenberg, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the Alpert Award.  He was honored with a Bessie for Sustained Achievement (2001) and for Outstanding Production for he his own mythical beast (2018).

Thomson initiated the Artist Sustainability Project with Kate Watson-Wallace in 2017, as an ongoing platform that seeks to expand the discourse and ideas of financial, artistic, and personal empowerment in the arts community. In 2024, he and Emily Waters developed YoungArts’ Artist Resource Collective (ARC), a financial wellness and professional development program.

Joan Jonas (b. 1936, New York, NY) is a world-renowned artist whose work encompasses a wide range of media including video, performance, installation, sound, text, and sculpture. Jonas’ experiments and productions in the late 1960s and early 1970s continue to be crucial to the development of many contemporary art genres, from performance and video to conceptual art and theatre. Since 1968, her practice has explored ways of seeing, the rhythms of rituals, and the authority of objects and gestures.

Jonas has exhibited and performed extensively around the world. Her notable exhibition history includes Documenta 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, and 13; the 28th Sao Paolo Biennial; the 5th Kochi-Muziris Biennale; and the 13th Shanghai Biennale. She has recently presented solo exhibitions at the United States Pavilion for the 56th Edition of the Venice Biennial; Tate Modern, London; Museu Serralves, Porto; Pinacoteca de São Paulo; Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; Dia Beacon; Haus der Kunst, Munich; The Drawing Center, New York, Gladstone Gallery, New York and Galerie Gisela Capitain, Naples, Italy. The Museum of Modern Art in New York hosted a retrospective of Jonas’s work in 2024.

Jonas is the recipient of many awards including The Whitechapel Gallery Art Icon (2016); the Maya Deren Award given by the American Film Institute (1989); and the Lifetime Achievement Award given by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (2009). In 2018, Jonas was awarded the prestigious Kyoto Prize, given to those individuals who have contributed significantly to the scientific, cultural and spiritual betterment of mankind, and in 2024 she was presented with the Nam June Paik Prize, awarded to artists who have contributed to the development of contemporary art, mutual understanding, and world peace. In 2025 Jonas was selected as a medalist in the inaugural Art Basel Awards and received their distinguished Icon Award.

Victoria Lynn Awkward is a multi-hyphenate creator, administrator, educator and the Director of VLA DANCE. She pursued her multiple interests at Goucher College and graduated with high honors in Dance, Visual Art and Secondary Education. As the Director of VLA DANCE she is researching how to lead with joy, pleasure, and breath in and outside of art making practices. This work is guided through the lineage of Black and queer liberation practitioners. She is currently directing projects: “For Nina” – a multidisciplinary show celebrating the lineage of Nina Simone, “In The Space Between” – a production where dance, textile, and audio bring audiences into a world of queer imagination, and “Harnessing our Gardens” – an interview series in audio and text celebrating Black femme movement artists.

Alongside directing VLA DANCE, Victoria is a freelance artist, who most recently choreographed for Huntington Theater, Company One Theatre, Boston Lyric Opera, and Commonwealth Shakespeare. As a performer she has worked for Jasmine Hearn, Shura Baryshnikov, Jenna Pollack, and others. Victoria is also an educator who has worked at Salem State University, Brown University, West End House, Middlesex School, and Urbanity Dance. She continues to deepen her teaching practices as a mentee with Midday Movement Series. Notably, Victoria is a Brother Thomas Fellow, a recipient of the Next Steps for Boston Grant Dance Program, as well as a recipient of the Queer (Re)public Theater Offensive Residency. Through her work she aims to inspire people to pause and reflect on their actions towards themselves, their community and their environment.

Jasmine Hearn, born and raised on occupied Akokisa lands (Houston, TX), is an interdisciplinary artist, teacher, doula, performer, and organizer. Named one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” (2025), Jasmine is a recipient of a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award (2023), a Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon Polsky Rome Prize in Design with Athena Kokoronis of DPA (2023), a Jerome Foundation Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship (2019), and two NY Dance and Performance Bessie Awards for Outstanding Performer (2021, 2017* with the cast of skeleton architecture).

Jasmine has collaborated with Dream the Combine, Bill T. Jones, Saul Williams, Solange Knowles, Alisha B. Wormsley, okwui okpokwasili, Marjani Forté-Saunders, Tsedaye Makonnen, Holly Bass, Bebe Miller, and with dance companies, Urban Bush Women, and David Dorfman Dance, performing choreographic works at the Metropolitan Museum, Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York Live Arts, Guggenheim Museum, Getty Center, Venice Biennale, Ford Foundation, Kelly Strayhorn Theater, Danspace Project, and the Hobby Center for Performing Arts.

Jasmine is currently leading an archive and performance project, Memory Fleet, which has been awarded a Creative Capital Award (2022), a Creation Fund Award from National Performance Network (2022), and a National Dance Production Grant from New England Foundation of the Arts (2023). With its premiere Houston, TX as part of DiverseWorks Spring 2024 season, Memory Fleet continues to deepen and will be presented at Kelly Strayhorn Theater in April 2026 and New York Live Arts in June 2026.

Myssi Robinson (she / her) is a Bessie award winning performer, multi-disciplinary maker and caregiver raised on and returned to Powhatan lands (Richmond, VA). She has interpreted many dances and dances through many interpretations.  Her practice quilts together imaginative archiving and mixed-media marking beside experiments in improvisation, ritual and spatial design.  Intuition and empathy play with maximalist instinct to give life to what comes. Gratitude to Carolyn, Darrin and all that is unseen for her life and abilities to create freely within it.

Stacy Matthew Spence is a New York City based choreographer, dancer, and teacher. Stacyʼs choreography has been commissioned by Danspace Project, New York Live Arts: Live Artery, The High Line with visual artist Ronny Quevedo, The New School, Ishmael Houston-Jones’s Platform 2012: Parallels for Danspace Project and Tisch School of the Arts. Stacy has performed in co/motion directed by Margaret Peak as part of Jason Moranʼs Whitney Biennial: Bleed, in Deborah Hayʼs Blues as part of Ralph Lemonʼs One Fine Day at The Museum of Modern Art NY, Joanna Kotze’s BIG BEATS, as well as Vespers Reimagined (2025) and Indifferent Forest with Bebe Miller. Stacy danced with The Trisha Brown Dance Company from 1997-2006, was Education Director 2018-2021 and continues collaborating with the company through teaching and re-staging Trisha’s work. He has also taught nationally and internationally at institutions such as The New School, Juilliard, Barnard College, Tisch School of the Arts, Manhattan Marymount College, London Contemporary Dance School, Centre National de Danse Contemporaine, and Movement Research. Stacy is currently an instructor at The New School in New York City.

Grants and residencies include New York State Council on the Arts Support for Artists Grant 2026, Gibney Dance in Process (DiP) Resident Artist 2022-23, Movement Research Artist Parent Residency; Workspace Artist-in-Residence, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council NY; Manhattan Community Fund, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, NY; New York Live Arts Studio Series Residency; Artist Residency at Centre National de Danse Contemporaine in Angers, France; Movement Research Artist-in-Residence.