iele paloumpis: In place of catastrophe, a clear night sky (canceled)
For the health and safety of our community, this performance has been cancelled. We will seek to reschedule suspended performances and events when reasonably possible.
Thursday, May 21, 8pm
Friday, May 22, 8pm
Saturday, May 23, 8pm
Please note: blind and visually impaired audience members are invited to arrive early for a pre-show at 7pm. The box office for blind and visually impaired audience members will open at 6:30pm.
iele paloumpis is a dance artist, death doula, and intuitive space-holder. Their practice integrates kinesthetic awareness and ancestral healing within a trauma-informed framework that centers social justice. What vitality allowed our ancestors to survive generations of trauma, and what wisdoms have been passed down to us? What embodied magics are all our own? In place of catastrophe, a clear night sky traverses these questions through voice and movement, exploring transgenerational resilience within a disability justice framework.
Incorporating vocalization, audio description, and tactile set design, iele paloumpis creates an immersive, multi-sensory landscape that de-centers sight as a primary mode of experiencing dance, and invites audience members to inhabit nuanced forms of perception. A multi-disciplinary cast of artists moves through the work with varied relationships to disability, race, class, gender and sexuality, each embodying a unique history.
Challenging both what is perceptible in dance, and what can be known of our own histories, the piece invites visually impaired audience members into the poetics of movement and encourages all of us to expand our understanding of what it means to be “witnessed.”
Directed by iele paloumpis, in co-creation with the cast.
Collaborators: Marielys Burgos-Meléndez, Seta Morton, Alejandra Ospina, iele paloumpis, Monica Rodriguez, Ogemdi Ude, Krishna Washburn, Adrien Weibgen, and Marýa Wethers.
Set Designers: Nora Chavooshian, Lily Gold, and Marisa Prefer
Guest Vocalists: Rachel Kara Pérez and Samita Sinha
Make-up Design: Wo Chan
Accessibility Danspace Project’s main entrance is fully wheelchair accessible via ramp. A same-level restroom is available near Danspace Project’s main performance space in the church sanctuary.
iele paloumpis is a dance artist, death doula and intuitive space-holder. their practice integrates kinesthetic awareness and ancestral healing within a trauma-informed framework that centers social justice. As a visually impaired, queer, trans survivor from a working class background, iele empathizes across multiple axes of oppression and brings this awareness to their full body of work. Most recently, iele has been exploring the impact of intergenerational trauma resulting from the forced displacement and population exchange between Greece and Turkey, known to Greeks as “the Catastrophe.”
Choreographic works have been shown through the Chocolate Factory Theater, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, New York Live Arts, Dixon Place, the Flea Theater, Movement Research, Painted Bride Art Center, and Franklin Street Works, among others.
iele holds a BA from Hollins University and end of life doula certifications from Mount Sinai, Valley Hospice, and the Quality of Life Care, LLC Accompanying the Dying Program.