Events – Danspace Project
Photo by Christopher Wormald

Elliot Reed: Profanity Only Upsets The Living

Thursday, October 2 | 7:30PM
Friday, October 3 | 7:30PM
Saturday, October 4 | 7:30PM

Elliot Reed (he/they) is a director, performer, and visual artist whose art starts from the body, making a choreographic language through objects, installation, and sound. They have previously shown work-in-development in Danspace’s DraftWork series. 

Performed by Nadira Foster-Williams, Reed’s new commission Profanity Only Upsets The Living is a world-premiere solo that celebrates the gift of mourning—the universal yet profoundly isolating experience. Reed writes, “No word will take us there but I’m willing to try.”

Accessibility: American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation will be provided on Thursday, October 2nd.


Tickets

$10 Members
$20 Regular Price
$30 A little extra
$40 A little more!
$50 Celebrating 50 years!
$100 Here’s to the next 50!

BUY TICKETS


Before you visit:

Accessibility at Danspace Project
Covid Safety at Danspace Project

Elliot Reed is an artist, based in New York working across video, dance, performance, and sculpture. He received his MA in Choreography from Master EXERCE ICI-CCN in Montpellier, France, and is a member of The Whitney Museum ISP 23-24 cohort.

Elliot is a 2019 danceWEB scholar, 2019–20 Artist in Residence at the prestigious Studio Museum in Harlem and part of the museum’s permanent collection. Reed was also the recipient of the 2019 Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant. Recent gallery and museum exhibitions include Kinshasa Glarus, Lucerne Festival with JACK Quartet, Metro Pictures, MoMA PS1, OCD Chinatown, The Getty Center, Hammer Museum, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, The Broad, and performances in Tokyo, Osaka, London, Mexico City, Vienna, and Hamburg.

Photo by Stefan Pavlovic

Symara Sarai: The LOVE piece

Thursday, October 16 | 7:30PM
Friday, October 17 | 7:30PM
Saturday, October 18 | 7:30PM

Open Dress Rehearsal*
Tuesday, October 14 | 7:30PM

To RSVP for Open Dress Rehearsal, Click Here

Named Dance Magazines’ 2025 “Top 25 to Watch” and a 2023 Bessie Winner for Breakout Choreographer, Symara Sarai (she/they) has immersed herself in interdisciplinary and choreographic studies globally with deep recognition. They have previously shown work-in-development in Danspace’s DraftWork series and performed their solo I want it to rain inside as part of Live Artery 2025.

In a new evening length solo this fall, Sarai is engaging in a love study; exploring ideas around romantic love, first love, and self love.

Accessibility: American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation will be provided on Thursday, October 16th.

 

*About Open Dress Rehearsal: Tuesday evening’s dress rehearsal will be free with RSVP and open to the public at limited-capacity. Open dress rehearsals are a mask-required, community-minded program prioritizing our immunocompromised and low-income audiences. Staff and audiences will be required to wear masks (N95 or KN95) and performing artists (if unmasked) will be  required to test for COVID-19 (rapid tests provided by Danspace Project). This is a first-come-first-served event. Danspace will not hold late seating or a waitlist during Open Dress Rehearsals. Thank you for your understanding.


Tickets

$10 Members
$20 Regular Price
$30 A little extra
$40 A little more!
$50 Celebrating 50 years!
$100 Here’s to the next 50!

BUY TICKETS


Before you visit:

Accessibility at Danspace Project
Covid Safety at Danspace Project

Symara Sarai, a Portland, Oregon native currently residing in Brooklyn, has immersed herself in interdisciplinary and choreographic studies globally with deep recognition. Named Dance Magazines’ 2025 “Top 25 to Watch,” a 2023 Bessie Winner for Breakout Choreographer, and a recipient of the Dai Ailian Foundation Scholarship based in Trinidad and Tobago, she is known to be a courageously committed performer and maker.  Sarai is a 2019 graduate of SUNY Purchase’s Conservatory of Dance Program and a 2015 graduate of the Beijing Dance Academy.  They are currently a 24-26 Movement Research Artist in Residence and a 24-26 Abrons Arts Center Performance AIRspace Resident. They have presented work at New York Live Arts, The Clarice at UMD, The LGBT Center in NY, Judson Church, BAAD, Kestrels, and other venues throughout the United States, China, and Germany. She is currently an Urban Bush Women company member. She has also notably worked with Jasmine Hearn, Ogemdi Ude, Pioneers Go East Collective, Kevin Wynn, Joanna Kotze, Nattie Trogdon+Hollis Bartlett, and Slowdanger, among others.

Photo of Annie MingHao Wang by Yuan Liu | Photo of Dorchel Haqq by Steven Pisano

DraftWork: Annie MingHao Wang + Dorchel Haqq

Saturday, October 25 | 3PM

Curated by Ishmael Houston-Jones, Danspace Project’s DraftWork series hosts free, informal showings of new works in varying stages of development. This afternoon features performances by Annie MingHaoWang and Dorchel Haqq.

Showings are followed by a reception, conversation, and Q&A between the artists.


RSVP HERE


Before you visit:

Accessibility at Danspace Project
Covid Safety at Danspace Project

Annie MingHao Wang (she/they) is a choreographer/dancer based in New York. They are a 2025 Fellow of the Bogliasco Center and have held residencies at Movement Research, Topaz Arts, Marble House Project. Leimay Foundation, BRIC, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Their work has been awarded grants by LMCC (Manhattan Arts Grant) and Brooklyn Arts Council and been presented by Pioneers Go East at the 2024 Out-FRONT! festival, Movement Research @Judson, Leimay’s OUTSIGHT series, BRIC, Five Myles, and the Exponential Festival. Annie currently dances for Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group, Maho Ogawa’s 水素co., Huiwang Zhang, Sugar Vendil, and Marie Lloyd Paspé.


Raised in Harlem, Dorchel Haqq began her journey embodying history at LaRocque Bey School of Dance Theatre and the Dance Theater of Harlem. She studied at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts and received her BFA from the Conservatory of Dance at Purchase College, SUNY. While at Purchase, she studied abroad at the Korea National School of Arts and at B12 in Berlin, which broadened her perspective in her field. These following organizations have supported Dorchel in find herself again and again through singular and collaborative investigations: Springboard Danse and the Springboard Danse curated Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation Founder’s Residency (inaugural resident), Gallim Moving Artist(inaugural resident), Leimay Incubator AIR 2021, Center for Performance Research AIR 2024, Baryshnikov Arts Center AIR 2024, Triskelion Arts 2019+2026, Beyond the Black Box 2021+2023, Black Aesthetics Judson Commons 2024, MADE BY WOMAN Festival 2023, Estrogenius Festival 2025, Arts On Site 2019+2021, ART CAKE 2021, Movement Research Van Lier Arist of Color Fellow 2025, DraftWork by Danspace Project 2025, Battery Dance Festival 2020+2025, FRESH TRACKS NYLA 2025/2026, City Artist Corps Grant 2021, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant 2024.

Dorchel has performed in works by AIM by Kyle Abraham, Kayla Farrish, Loni Landon, Vanessa Goodman, Maya Lee-Parritz, Stefanie Batten Bland, Johannes Wieland, Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More Shanghai, and Emursive’s Life and Trust. Dorchel is in her first season with David Dorfman Dance. She is an adjunct lecturer at Purchase College, where her work has also been commissioned. Through her Movement Research Van Lier Artist of Color Fellowship, she is mentored by Nora Chipaumire.

Dorchel is a world builder who creates work with attention to intention. Her practice is physical theater with the emphasis on black futurism. Her work serves as a vessel through which she and her collaborators navigate the complexities of identity and existence, often drawing inspiration from narratives embedded within both personal experiences and broader societal contexts, and always centered in community. As a Reiki practitioner, Dorchel’s process shapes memories to create stories that explore time, space, and form within the nervous system. Dorchel cultivates her movement language by exploring the reflections of fantasy while abstracting the echoes of transgenerational trauma through her body.

Photo by Ian Douglas

Yvonne Meier: Strega Nona

Thursday, November 20 | 7:30PM
Friday, November 21 | 7:30PM
Saturday, November 22 | 7:30PM

Originally from Zurich, Switzerland, Yvonne Meier has been choreographing and performing her work since 1980. She has received Bessie’s Awards for her work, which span anywhere from solos to large-scale post-modern spectacles. Over the years, Meier has developed a high-risk movement vocabulary that takes the audience through transformation by exhaustion. 

Meier, known for her physical wit and dark humor, creates Strega Nonaa work about lovers brought together by a matchmaker called Strega Nona. The dance that follows, she writes, “is brutal…erotic, and tender.” Dancers Osamni Tellez and Lisa Kusanagi perform scores of Meier and Ishmael Houston-Jones’ love duet Tell me, which they danced in New York in the ’90s, set to music by composer Ran Bagno.


Tickets

$10 Members
$20 Regular Price
$30 A little extra
$40 A little more!
$50 Celebrating 50 years!
$100 Here’s to the next 50!

BUY TICKETS


Before you visit:

Accessibility at Danspace Project
Covid Safety at Danspace Project

Yvonne Meier, originally from Zurich, Switzerland, began choreographing and performing her work in 1980. She has since created countless solos, 14 large-scale evening length pieces as well as a deep investigation into the art of improvisation. 

She has been awarded a three year studies grant (1979), three Project Grant from the Swiss Foundation, Pro Helvetia (1986, 1993, 2004), three Choreography Fellowships from National Endowments for the Arts (1987, 1988, 19991), two NEA Inter-Arts Project Grants (1990, 1992), three New York Foundation for the Arts Choreography Fellowships (1988, 1994, 2006), a Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art (1994), and has received choreography commissions from The New York State Council for the Arts, the American Master Grant from the NEA, and Lambent Foundation. In 1993, Yvonne Meier was awarded a New York Dance and Performance Award (Bessie) for her interactive dance/performance installation, “The Shining.” She received another Bessie Award for “Stolen” in 2010, a Guggenheim Fellowship (2016), Doro the Tanning award from FCA (200), a Creative Capital grant (2023), and a NYSCA grant (2025). 

In New York, Yvonne Meier’s work has been produced by Performance Space 122, The Dia Foundation, The Kitchen, The Dancspace Project, P.S.1, Franklin Furnace, Movement Research’s Judson Church, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Swiss Institute, and Creative Time. Her work was also produced by The Painted Bride (Philadelphia), Sushi (San Diego), Project Artaud (San Francisco), Wesleyan University, and Upper Catskill Council for the Arts. In Switzerland Ms. Meier has performed at Kunsthaus Zurich, Tanzhaus (Zurich), Seefeld Tanzprojekt (Zurich), Tanzwerkstatt (Zurich), Rote Fabrik (Zurich), Rote Fabrik (Zurich), Kunsthalle (Basel), Kunsthalle St. Gallen, Roxi (Basel), Belouard (Fribourg). She has toured extensively in France, Germany, England, and Holland. Over the past thirty years she has taught Releasing Technique, Authentic Movement, and “Scores” at Movement Research, ADF American Dance Festival, Hollins College, Tanzhaus Zurich, the Center for New Dance Development in Arnehem, Holland, Chisenhale, London, Parts and Rosas, Brussels, the Meg Stuart Company, Zurich, Switzerland, etc. 

Yvonne Meier has also developed improvisation early childhood technique. She taught those in NYC public schools and at “`Little Missionary” early childhood school. Her work has been published in the books: Caught in the Act by Dana McAdams, Footnotes by Elina Alexander, and The Danspace Project 25 Years. In the past few years Yvonne Meier has developed new solos for herself in shows at American Realness and “Invisible Dog.”

Over the years Ms. Meier has developed a high-risk movement vocabulary that takes the audience through transformation by exhaustion. Her evening length group pieces are wild, anarchic and provocative post-modern spectacles, featuring maze-like installations of hundreds of cardboard refrigerator boxes and collapsible shelves bearing thousands of china dinner plates. Her excessive use for oversized props creates an environment in which the dancers are exposed to high-speed, complex and eccentric movement scores-combining elements of dancer and total physical commitment. Yvonne Meier created 2 site specific short dance films named “Kokpito” and “Hidden” plus an animation film “Butter Babies.”

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