LIVESTREAM: Conversations Without Walls: Ishmael Houston-Jones & Carol Mullins
This conversation now lives permanently on our journal.
Livestream: Saturday, August 29 at 12pm (ET)
Moderated by Judy Hussie-Taylor
This conversation was recorded in May 2020.
Choreographer and curator, Ishmael Houston-Jones and lighting designer, Carol Mullins have long and formative histories at Danspace Project. In this talk the two discuss the 1978 fire at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, the aftermath of that tragedy, and the architectural and programmatic reconstruction of Danspace Project and its shared home in the Sanctuary.
Houston-Jones recalls his humble introduction to Danspace which soon evolved into his curating the 1982 groundbreaking series, Parallels, which included works lit by Mullins. The conversation concludes with a live screening of Relatives (Super-8, short, 1989) directed by Julie Dash and filmed by Arthur Jafa. Relatives bears witness to a Black mother sharing space and stories of family history with her son as they attend to the tasks of their performance, his choreography cradling them in time.
Initiated in 2011 by Judy Hussie-Taylor and Jenn Joy, Conversations Without Walls (CWW) are long-form, Saturday afternoon, roundtable discussions that provide context and insight into the work of Danspace Project’s artists and Platforms. The nearly decade-long series facilitates intergenerational conversations between writers, scholars, choreographers, and audiences. In this time when our physical doors remain closed and in person gathering is limited we are reimagining the CWW series as a digital program. Each episode of the CWW digital series will be broadcast live on YouTube and ultimately archived for the public on the Danspace Project online Journal.
This program will be captioned.
More about the Conversations Without Walls series
Questions or issues with the livestream? Contact severine@danspaceproject.org
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 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 3 Bessie Awards.