Photo of Glenn Potter-Takata by Rachel Keane | Photo of Jade Manns by Chika Kobari

Jade Manns + Glenn Potter-Takata

A shared evening

Thursday, December 12 | 7:30PM
Friday, December 13 | 7:30PM
Saturday, December 14 | 7:30PM

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the open dress rehearsal* of a shared evening with Jade Manns and Glenn Potter-Takata (Tuesday, December 10th) is cancelled.

A shared evening of work by choreographers Glenn Potter-Takata and Jade Manns, who, like Ayano Elson and Wendell Gray II, have both recently shown work-in-development through Danspace’s DraftWork series.

Glenn Potter-Takata is a Japanese-American artist utilizing in butoh, improvisation, found materials, and consumer products to create performances around the body as a historical site in post-Internment America. “I’m really interested in the delineation between notions of emptiness and nothingness, emphasizing materiality or material quality, and the non-self,” the artist explains. A continuation of the in-process work he showed at DraftWork, Immaterial Supreme is a collaboration with dancer Kimiko Tanabe and musician Chris Ryan Williams that expounds on notions of the self, Buddhist concepts of emptiness, and the material. Using contact microphones and butoh, Potter-Takata juxtaposes synthetic materials with the natural or organic to create a sonic and visual landscape that pursues a dissolution of the permanent self.

A co-founder of the artist-run performance space PAGEANT, Jade Manns has performed in the work of choreographers and artists including Ayano Elson, Alexa West, and Jordan Demetrius Lloyd. Her new dance, Kingdom, is a dense panorama of rapidly shifting images and sounds. Together with collaborators Kalliope Piersol, Owen Prum, Noa Rui-Piin Weiss, Isa Spector, and Zo Williams (performance), Derek Baron (sound), and Kate Williams (costumes), Manns entangles tableaus of the artificial, the natural, and the divine.

*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).

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Tickets
support Danspace’s 50th anniversary!

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

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Before you visit:

Accessibility at Danspace Project
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Glenn Potter-Takata is a Bronx-based dance maker, media designer, and artist working in performance. Originally from Los Angeles, Glenn relocated to New York to study multimedia performance at Sarah Lawrence College, earning his MFA and where he is currently a teacher of sound and projection design for live performance. Glenn’s performance works have been seen at Mabou Mines, PAGEANT, Cannonball, Grace Exhibition Space, Movement Research at Judson Church, Center for Performance Research, New Dance Alliance’s Performance Mix, WestFest, and with Pioneers Go East. He is a recipient of the MAP Fund Award, Bronx Dance Fund Award, Bronx Cultural Visions Award, and has been awarded residencies through Movement Research, Rogers Art Loft, Gibney Dance Center, and CUNY Dance Initiative/Lehman College. His first solo gallery exhibition opened in January of 2023 at Rogers Studio Gallery in Las Vegas.

Jade Manns is a dancer, choreographer and co-founder of the artist-run performance space PAGEANT in New York. Her work has been shown at Draftwork at Danspace Project, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Sundays on Broadway at Weis Acres, New Dance Alliance Performance Mix Festival and PAGEANT among others. Jade has received support from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, NYU Artist Development Program for Dance and Kino Saito Arts Center. She is a 2024/2025 NYLA Fresh Tracks Artist.

The first-ever performance at Danspace Project. Carmen Beuchat (front) and Barbara Lloyd Dilley (background), The Natural History of American Dancer, St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, 1974. Photo: Cosmos. Published in Danspace Project’s 25th Anniversary publication, 1999.

Danspace’s 50th Anniversary at NYPL

Monday, December 16

Celebrating Danspace’s 50th Anniversary

The Natural History of the American Dancer collective has been largely forgotten, but this improvisational ensemble of women, founded in 1971 by Barbara (Lloyd) Dilley and others, were the first performers at Danspace Project in 1974. Poet Larry Fagin told The New Yorker in 1999 that their performance birthed St. Mark’s Danspace Project in 1974. On the 50th anniversary of Danspace Project, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts celebrates the seminal and iconic dance presenting organization with a discussion on archival footage featuring Danspace’s co-founders: Barbara Dilley and Mary Overlie, plus the other members of the Natural History of the American Dancer—Cynthia Hedstrom, Carmen Beuchat, Judy Padow, Suzanne Harris, and Rachel Wood (Lew). This panel will feature Cynthia Hedstrom, Wendy Perron, Judy Hussie-Taylor, Ishmael Houston-Jones, and Carol Mullins.

More info to be announced.

Before you visit:

Accessibility at Danspace Project
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Photo of Symara Sarai by Elyse Mertz | Photo of Anh Vo by Keshis Eugene

DraftWork: Symara Sarai + Anh Vo

Saturday, December 21 | 3PM

Danspace Project’s DraftWork series hosts free, informal showings of new works in varying stages of development. This afternoon features performances by two NYC-based artists: Symara Sarai and Anh Vo.

Showings are followed by a reception, conversation, and Q&A between the artists and DraftWork curator, Ishmael Houston-Jones.

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Before you visit:

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Symara Sarai, a Portland, Oregon native currently residing in Brooklyn, has immersed herself in interdisciplinary and choreographic studies globally. A 2023 Bessie Winner for Breakout Choreographer, Symara is also a recipient of the Dai Ailian Foundation Scholarship based in Trinidad and Tobago. The scholarship led her to Beijing, China where she spent two years gaining an associate degree in modern choreography at the renowned Beijing Dance Academy. Symara is a 2019 graduate of SUNY Purchase’s Conservatory of Dance Program. She was a resident artist for Bearnstow, Gibney 6.2 Work Up, Gallim’s 2022 Moving Artist’s Residency, BAX’s Fall 2022 Space Grant Program, Center for Performance Research’s 2022 AIR Program, New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks Artist 23/24 as well as a 23/24 Women in Motion Commissioned artist. They are currently a Abrons Arts Center Performance AIRspace Resident. Their work as a performer and maker has been reviewed and featured in the NY Times, Dance Enthusiast, Fjord, as well as promoted through Forbes. She has had multiple film works commissioned by Berlin-based choreographer Christoph Winkler. 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. For more visit symarasarai.com

Anh Vo (They/He) is a Vietnamese choreographer and writer working primarily in New York City, with a second base in Hanoi. Their practice fleshes out the body as a vessel for apparitional forces. Their work is situated in the unlikely lineage convergences between Downtown New York experimental dance, queer and feminist performance art, and Vietnamese folk ritual practices. Their formal training is in Performance Studies, studying with theorists and practitioners at Brown University (BA) and New York University (MA).

Photo by Elyssa Goodman

Stacy Matthew Spence: I am, here; Here with us; Where we find ourselves

Friday, January 10 | 7:30PM
Saturday, January 11 | 4PM
Saturday, January 11 | 7:30PM

Co-presented with Live Artery | New York Live Arts

Stacy Matthew Spence’s new dance in triptych form, I am, here (a solo for Spence), Here with us (a duet), Where we find ourselves (a quartet) explores ideas of self, impulse, and sharing. I am, here; Here with us; Where we find ourselves is created in collaboration with dance artists Tim Bendernagel, Joanna Kotze, Hsiao-jou Tang, singer/musician Charlotte Jacobs, percussionist Raf Vertessen, and costumer Athena Kokoronis.

A longtime member of Trisha Brown Dance Company (1997-2006), an educator, and performer, Stacy Matthew Spence’s dance work often explores the exchange between person and environment. This involves playful interactions and movement generated in response to the places he finds himself – studio, home, and in public spaces.

Presently, he brings his attention to the internal space of “me”– as a personal environment to be outwardly created, expressed, occupied, and shared.

For this work, “I asked my collaborators to take a journey from their internal finding, to the external expression and wondered how we would bump up against, allow for and possibly join/accommodate/revel in each other’s individual selves,” Spence explains. “How do we find ourselves? How do we find our place? How do we find each other?”

A forthcoming film version of Spence’s solo I am, here, a collaboration with videographer Iki Nakagawa, has been made in tandem with the live work. “The filmed solo, placed in different locations around New York City, is a conversation between myself and my history, the place and its history and the physicality of being in the present.”

“How do we find ourselves? How do we find our place? How do we find each other?”

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Before you visit:

Accessibility at Danspace Project
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New York Live Arts, guided by the leadership of visionary artist Bill T. Jones, collaborates with boundary pushing artists, advocates for their vision, and fortifies a creative future. The annual Live Artery Festival provides a space for artists to network and share their work with the general public and presenters from around the world alike, which leads to commissions, tours and the building of long-term relationships.

Stacy Matthew Spence is a New York City based choreographer, dancer, and teacher. He was born in Lake Charles, LA. and received an M.F.A. from New York University Tisch School of the Arts. Stacy’s choreography has been commissioned by The High Line, Vega as North Star (El Norte es Sur) 2019 collaborating with visual artist Ronny Quevedo; The New School, This is how we got here 2017; Danspace Project, This home is us 2017, and Eden as we recall 2012; Tisch School of the Arts, among the scapes and fields 2009; Edge at London Contemporary Dance School, I just wanted to be close to you 2006; The University of New Mexico, Adjusted Space 2007; and the OtherShore Dance Company, small earthquakes along the way 2008. His work has been included in Ishmael Houston-Jones’s Platform 2012: Parallels for Danspace Project, and in co/motion directed by Margeret Peak as part of Jason Moran’s Whitney Biennial: Bleed. As well Stacy has performed with Joanna Kotze’s BIG BEATS 2021, at The Museum of Modern Art, NY in Deborah Hay’s Blues, as part of Ralph Lemon’s Some Sweet Day 2012; and in Polly Motley and Molly Davies’ Critical State at The Helen Day Arts Center, VT. His most recent work I am, here; Here with us; Where we find ourselves, premiered at Danspace in March 2024.

Stacy has received grants and residencies that include Gibney Dance in Process Residency (DIP) 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.

Stacy danced with The Trisha Brown Dance Company from 1997-2006, was Education Director 2018-2021 and he continues to be involved with the company through teaching and the re-staging of 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.

Danspace
Project

December

12–14