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Conversations Without Walls: Ishmael Houston-Jones & Carol Mullins with Judy Hussie-Taylor

September 3, 2020

Closed captions are available by clicking the “CC” button on the video.

A PDF transcript of the conversation is linked here.

This conversation was recorded on May 19, 2020 and first broadcasted on YouTube Live Saturday, August 29, 2020

The first of the 2020 Conversations Without Walls (CWW) digital series features award-winning choreographer, Ishmael Houston-Jones, and award-winning lighting designer, Carol Mullins, and facilitated by Danspace Project Executive Director & Chief Curator, Judy Hussie-Taylor. These three old friends discuss over four decades of history at Danspace Project, the reconstruction of the St. Mark’s church after the 1978 fire, Houston-Jones’ groundbreaking 1982 series, Parallels, unfinished trilogies, the evocative smell of mothballs, and a mother’s improvisational story telling. The conversation concludes with a screening of Houston-Jones’ work Relatives (Super-8, short, 1989), film by Julie Dash and Arthur Jafa.

Included in this CWW

1978 fire at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery
The Founding of Danspace Project (1974) and co-founder Larry Fagin
The Natural History of the American Dancer by Carmen Beuchat, Suzanne Harris, Cynthia Hedstrom, Rachel Lew, Barbara Lloyd (Dilley), and Judy Padow (Danspace Project, 1974)
Get Wreck by Andy de Groat (Danspace Project, 1978)
Judson Dance Theater Reconstructions organized by Cynthia Hedstrom and Wendy Perron (Danspace Project, 1982)
Reverend William Norman Guthrie ( Rector of the St. Mark’s Church from 1911 – 1937)
Dancer and choreographer, John Bernd (May 8, 1953 – August 28, 1988)
Allen Ginsberg and Robert Lowell
Relatives by Ishmael Houston-Jones: Part II: Relatives by Ishmael Houston-Jones (Danspace Project, 1982), Relatives, (Super-8, short, 1989): Ishmael Houston-Jones, Director: Julie Dash, Cinematographer: Arthur Jafa, Sound: Steve Coleman. Performed with Pauline Jones. Commissioned by Alive From Off Center Television.
Parallels series (Danspace Project, 1982): Gus Solomons jr., Rrata Christine Jones, Blondell Cummings, Fred Holland, Ralph Lemon, Bebe Miller, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar (added to the series for the European tour).
Parallels in Black tour to Paris, Geneva and London (1987)
PLATFORM 2012: Parallels (Danspace Project, 2012)
Archives of the New York Public Library for The Performing Arts.

Learn more about the Conversations Without Walls 2020 digital series

Ishmael Houston-Jones is choreographer, author, performer, teacher, and curator. His improvised dance and text work has been performed world-wide. He has received three New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards for collaborations with writer Dennis Cooper, choreographers Miguel Gutierrez and Fred Holland and composers Chris Cochrane and Nick Hallett. Houston-Jones curated Danspace Project’s Platform 2012: Parallels, which concentrated on choreographers from the African diaspora and postmodernism and co-curated with Will Rawls Platform 2016: Lost & Found. Houston-Jones’ work has been supported by The Herb Alpert Foundation, The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts and The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.

Carol Mullins first designed lighting at Danspace Project for Andy de Groat in 1978 and 42 years later is still there designing for many choreographers. She co-edited a book of Danspace Project history with Douglas Dunn. And co-curated 3 weeks of the Silver Series with Dan Froot and Cynthia Hedstrom for Danspace’s 25th Anniversary. She has designed in many other venues here in NYC, around the U.S. and also in France, Russia, Brazil, Helsinki, Estonia and elsewhere. She
received an Obie for lighting The Talking Band’s PAINTED SNAKE ON A PAINTED CHAIR, and has received 3 Bessie Awards.

Tags: Carol Mullins, Conversations Without Walls, CWW, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Judy Hussie-Taylor, Parallels