DANSPACE PROJECT PRESENTS DraftWork Anna Thérèse Witenberg + Dominica Greene Saturday, April 5 | 3PM Join us after the performances for food & drinks and a conversation between the artists.
Choreography and Direction: Anna Thérèse Witenberg
Danced by: Rachel Gill, Anna Thérèse Witenberg
Live Music Composed by: Sergei Rachmaninoff, “Prelude in C Sharp Minor”
Recorded Music Composed by: Jack Whitescarver, “Balta”
Voice: Bella Litsa, Jack Whitescarver
Anna Thérèse Witenberg is a dancer and choreographer. Her first evening length choreographic work, Heat, was presented this fall at Pageant, Kestrels, and excerpts shown at Canada Gallery. Her collaboration with Shade Théret called “Mal Intent” was presented by the Lament series and staged at the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin. For the last eight years she has worked as a freelance dancer for choreographers in New York City. She recently toured in Eastern Europe in Anna Maria Häkkinen’s work.
Rachel Gill (she/her) is a dancer and Pilates instructor based in New York City. rachel-gill.comJack Whitescarver is a musician and artist. Since 2020 he has written and performed in the experimental rock band Amiture Music. He has composed music for video works by artists such as Peggy Ahwesh and Cyrus Duff, as well as directed his own video work. He composed the music for Anna Thérèse Witenberg’s dance performance Heat.
Bella Litsa, Boston-born Isabella Komodromos, is a full time singer and composer living in Brooklyn, NY. She was trained classically in voice and piano since she was 6. Breaking free of that mold and being able to experiment with her instruments is at the forefront of her creativity, whilst still honoring both technique and harmony.
Thank you Jack for leading me here, from J.W. Goethe, Volume 12 Part IV:
“Sitting on the shore of an island, on the bank of a canal, or on the side of a boat, a gondolier will sing away with a loud penetrating voice,—the multitude admire force above everything,—anxious only to be heard as far as possible. Over the silent mirror it travels far. Another in the distance, who is acquainted with the melody, and knows the words, takes it up, and answers with the next verse, and then the first replies; so that the one is, as it were, the echo of the other.”
Concept & Performance: Dominica Greene
Dominica Greene is a body-based conceptual artist residing on the unceded lands of the Munsee Lenape people. Harnessing the elements, spirit, and womanness into an existence rooted in love, community, and regeneration, her work seeks to reflect nature –human and otherwise– as a way of highlighting humanity, the stark similarities in our differences, and dance as a unifying energetic entity.
dominicagreene.com / @draminica
Many thanks to TRIBE/Shamel Pitts for your in-kind support of this process; I love you. Thank you to DraftWork, Ishmael Houston-Jones, and the Danspace team for having me! Thank you to every person who extended energy into the space today.
Catch the next iteration of this offering at Crossroads, curated by Pioneers Go East Collective, on June 6 at Socrates Sculpture Park!
Ishmael Houston-Jones (DraftWork curator) is an award winning choreographer, author, performer, teacher, and curator. His improvised dance and text work has been performed in New York, across the US, and in Europe, Canada, Australia, and Latin America. Drawn to collaborations as a way to move beyond boundaries and the known, Houston-Jones celebrates the political aspect of cooperation. Houston-Jones and Fred Holland shared a 1984 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Cowboys, Dreams and Ladders, which reintroduced the erased narrative of the Black cowboy back into the mythology of the American west. He was awarded his second “Bessie” Award for the 2010 revival of THEM, his 1985/86 collaboration with writer Dennis Cooper and composer Chris Cochrane. In 2017 he received a third “Bessie” for Variations on Themes from Lost and Found: Scenes from a Life and other Works by John Bernd presented by Danspace Project. In 2020 he received a fourth “Bessie” for Service to the Field of Dance. Houston-Jones is the DraftWork curator for works-in-progress at Danspace Project in New York. He has curated Platform 2012: Parallels which focused on choreographers from the African diaspora and postmodernism and co-curated with Will Rawls Platform 2016: Lost & Found, Dance, New York, HIV/AIDS, Then and Now both at Danspace Project. As an author Houston-Jones’ essays, fiction, interviews, and performance texts have been published in several anthologies and in numerous journals and magazines. His FAT and Other Stories: Some Writing About Sex was published in June 2018 by Yonkers International Press.
Danspace Project pays respect to Lenape peoples. We acknowledge that this work is situated on the Lenape island of Manhattan (Mannahatta) in Lenapehoking, the Lenape homeland. We pay respect to Lenape land, water, and ancestors past, present and future.
FUNDING FOR DRAFTWORK DraftWork is presented, in part, with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
For information on our funders, visit danspaceproject.org/support
ABOUT DANSPACE PROJECT
Danspace Project presents new work in dance, supports a diverse range of choreographers in developing their work, encourages experimentation, and connects artists to audiences. For 50 years, Danspace Project has supported a vital community of contemporary dance artists in an environment unlike any other in the United States. Located in the historic St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, Danspace shares its facility with the Church, The Poetry Project, and New York Theatre Ballet. Danspace Project’s Commissioning Initiative has commissioned nearly 600 new works since its inception in 1994. More about our staff, our mission, and values FOLLOW US @danspaceproject danspaceproject.org