DraftWork: Maxi Hawkeye Canion + Kris Lee & Lauren Bakst
Saturday, December 20 | 3PM
Curated by Ishmael Houston-Jones, Danspace Project’s DraftWork series hosts free, informal showings of new works in varying stages of development. This afternoon features performances by Maxi Hawkeye Canion and Kris Lee & Lauren Bakst.
Showings are followed by a reception, conversation, and Q&A between the artists.
Before you visit:
Accessibility at Danspace Project
Covid Safety at Danspace Project
Maxi Hawkeye Canion (they/she) is a Brooklyn based Performance Artist. As a Black Trans/Queer artist, they distill their life experiences through movement focused installations, experimenting with text, format, sculpture, sound, and garment. With an emphasis on improvisation, they create low-stakes, high-integrity containers that prioritize research, play, and spontaneity. Their works illustrate nuances of intimacy, failure, femininity, the grotesque, ephemerality, and domesticity within metaphysical dystopias. Compositionally, she leans into a maximalist approach influenced by cinematic framing and post genre aesthetics while focusing on surreal autobiographical narratives. Each work is “solo play” anchored by eclectic personas serving as metaphorical embodiments of her socio-political stances and currently present as “mascots of doom/disperceptive realities”. These entities, along with the immersive contextual environments she devises, reference nostalgic 00’s anime/manga, immersive gaming, YouTube video essays, the Black avant garde, punk, nihilistic memes and current viral trends, deconstructed fashion and drag, and ambient horror.
Kris Lee (she/they) is a New York-based dance artist, performer, and DJ. Most recently they have performed in works by Julie Tolentino, Kevin Beasley, Moriah Evans, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Ralph Lemon, Miguel Gutierrez, Andros Zins-Browne, Jonathan González, Okwui Okpokwasili, and Shamel Pitts (TRIBE). They were a recipient of a 2024 danceWEB scholarship at ImPulsTanz under the mentorship of Isabel Lewis. Kris has shown work at Judson Memorial Church as part of Black Aesthetics and Cathy Weis Projects’ Sundays on Broadway. In 2025, she had the pleasure to be part of OO-GA-LA, the reimagining of Fred Holland and Ishmael Houston-Jones’ 1983 Untitled Duet at Danspace Project.
Lauren Bakst is a scholar and artist working across experimental performance and queer studies. She is completing a PhD in English at the University of Pennsylvania where her dissertation focuses on lesbian erotic lifeworlds through a constellation of performance, film, and scenes of social life. Her research and writing on the Clit Club is forthcoming in TDR/The Drama Review. Lauren organizes and curates The School for Temporary Liveness, a para-site for collective study and dissonant communion. She currently teaches seminars in contemporary art at Rutgers University.