Conversations Without Walls: Jaamil Olawale Kosoko & Larissa Velez-Jackson
April 2, 2021
Closed captions are available by clicking the “CC” button on the video.
An accessible PDF transcript of the conversation is linked here.
This Conversation Without Walls (CWW) was recorded on Monday, March 15, 2021 and first broadcasted on YouTube on Friday, March 26, 2021.
In this CWW, performance artist & poet, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, and choreographer, interdisciplinary artist & movement educator, Larissa Velez-Jackson, reconnect three months following their Fall 2020 Research Group Fellowship together at Danspace.
At a moment when the pandemic remains far from over, Jaamil and Larissa both find themselves leaning into kinship, intimacy, and rest as politics to devise theater, while de-centering liveness and stagecraft. They have been slowing down to embrace a different kind of artist’s hustle, one that uplifts healing, self-love and spirituality. Larissa and Jaamil discuss how these intentional shifts have become central to each artist’s personal “internal audit.” This CWW is facilitated by Danspace’s Program Director & Associate Curator Benjamin Akio Kimitch.
Included in this CWW
Creative, Somatic, and Spiritual Practices
- Improvisational movement practices
- Biodynamic Craniosacral therapy
- Reiki
Collaborative Processes
- Chameleon: Jaamil Olawale Kosoko’s current project, Chameleon, is a multimedia living digital art work that explores the fugitive realities and shapeshifting demands of surviving at the fatal intersection of Blackness, gender fluidity, and queerness in contemporary America. www.jaamil.com
- Star Pû Method and Star Crap Method: Larissa Velez-Jackson’s improvisational performance methodology. “Star Crap Method” premiered in 2014, at Chocolate Factory Theater, after three years of research both in the study and on stage. A demonstration of Star Crap Method was set in May 2018 on students of The New School’s Lang Contemporary Dance department. Since directly researching the concept of healing and body-energetic practice with LVJ Performance Co. members between 2018 and 2021, the name has been altered to Star Pû Method. This new work has been workshopped widely in NYC during this period of research and will premiere in 2021 at The Chocolate Factory Theater. www.larissavelez.com
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- “Star Crap Method Injury Edition: A place for healing”, Directed and conceived by Larissa Velez-Jackson, Performed by Kris Seto and Larissa Velez-Jackson, Reiki session by Kris Seto, Sound design by Larissa Velez-Jackson. Movement Research Spring Festival 2017: Inside Out / Upside Down, C’Mon Everybody in Brooklyn, NY Thursday June 1, 2017. Curated by Laurie Berg, Monstah Black, and Amy Koshbin.
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“Response time with help her out /take 357″ By Hilary Clark and Larissa Velez-Jackson. American Chameleons, Painted Bride Arts Center, Philadelphia, PA, January, 2011. Curated by Jaamil Olawale Kosoko.