Samita Sinha by Shervin Lainez; Alice Sheppard by Beverlie Lord; Angie Pittman, photo courtesy of the artist; Larissa Velez-Jackson, photo courtesy of artist; devynn emory, photo courtesy of the artist; iele paloumpis by Adrien Weibgen; Jaamil Olawale Kosoko by Nile Harris; Asiya Wadud by Ian Douglas.

Danspace Project’s Winter 2021 Season

Danspace Project’s digital Winter 2021 season is here! Visit the calendar for more info on:

devynn emory‘s latest work, deadbird, which takes form as a virtual film, website, and a public grieving altar in outdoor locations. The film premieres on March 31 and will open with a live conversation between emory and Okwui Okpokwasili.

The return of Danspace Project’s DraftWork series, curated by Ishmael Houston-Jones, with work in development by J. Bouey, and other artists to-be-announced!

Sprawling and intimate conversations between our curatorial team and our 2020 Artist Research Fellows have led to critical reflection, dreaming, and deep connection. The Fellows: devynn emory, Larissa Velez-Jackson, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, iele paloumpis, Angie Pittman, and Alice Sheppard will return for this season’s digital Conversations Without Walls series.

Samita Sinha’s ongoing monthly vocal series, Breathing Room, continues with special guests Eiko Otake, Okwui Okpokwasili, and Ash Fure. Space is limited!

All events are FREE or sliding scale with RSVP!

Stay tuned to our Online Journal: Writer Asiya Wadud guest curates a series, one looped year but the lake for Danspace Project’s Online Journal with invited artists including: Jesse Darling, devynn emory, Tarik Kiswansan, Anaïs Maviel, and Angie Pittman.

MORE INFO ON THE CALENDAR!

Samita Sinha, Breathing Room session, 2020.

Samita Sinha: Breathing Room

This event will take place online via Zoom. A link will be sent to registrants approximately 30 minutes in advance of each session.

Space is limited! If a session is full, please check back on Tuesday, February 16 for waitlist information.

This month’s invited guest is Eiko Otake.

Admission: Sliding scale of $0-$20 per session. Participants are invited to choose what to pay based on your circumstances. We ask that you be honest with yourself and your financial situation. You are welcome to attend for FREE if that makes the most sense for you.

In this series, artist and composer Samita Sinha will lead participants in vocal practice, rooted in Indian tradition, that invites the wilderness of the body and opens connective channels of vibration. Each practice session will be followed by an in-depth conversation with participants and an invited guest artist.

Accessibility: Please email seta@danspaceproject.org to request CART live captioning or any other access requests. Requests should be submitted at least three weeks ahead of any one session.

Artist and composer Samita Sinha investigates origins of voice: quantum entanglement of listening and sounding, how voice emerges from body and consciousness, and how voice is claimed and rescued from voicelessness. She synthesizes training in Hindustani (North Indian) classical music, Bengali Baul tradition, and embodied energetic practices to create a decolonized, bodily, multivalent language of vibration and transformation.

Sinha’s sound and performance works have been commissioned by Asia Society, Performance Space 122 and Invisible Dog Art Center, Danspace, Rubin Museum, Queens Museum, and Gibney Dance, and presented by The Kitchen, Wexner Center for the Arts, REDCAT, PICA, National Sawdust and others. She has received awards from National Endowment for the Arts, Fulbright Foundation, National Performance Network, New York State Council on the Arts and the Ucross/Alpert Residency Prize, and collaborated across disciplines with artists including Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born, Ralph Lemon, Sunny Jain and Grey Mcmurray, Fiona Templeton, Daria Fain, Julia Ulehla, Robert Ashley, Dani Restack, Sunil Bald, and Aki Onda. Sinha teaches voice through many channels—in addition to private lessons and workshops, she has in recent years taught at Princeton University, Swarthmore College, Movement Research, Rubin Museum, Centro Nacional de las Artes (CENART) in Mexico City, and New York Asian Women’s Center.

devynn emory and Angie Pittman. Photos courtesy of the artists.

Conversations Without Walls: devynn emory & Angie Pittman

WATCH ON OUR JOURNAL HERE

This conversation will take place on YouTube. A link to view the conversation will be sent to registrants via email 30 minutes prior to the stream. RSVP is required for access to the stream!

DOWNLOAD THE PROGRAM

In Fall 2020, Danspace Project invited six Artist Research Fellows, devynn emory, Larissa Velez-Jackson, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, iele paloumpis, Angie Pittman, and Alice Sheppard to gather virtually with Danspace’s curatorial team. They responded to Danspace’s digital programming, the shifting landscape of dance, making and presenting, pedagogy, and programming. These sprawling and intimate conversations led to critical reflection, dreaming, and deep connection. Each of the Artist Research Fellows will return in our Winter 2021 digital Conversations Without Walls (CWW) series

In this CWW, dance artist, dance educator, and choreographer, Angie Pittman, and dance artist, choreographer, bodyworker, and acute care and hospice nurse, devynn emory, continue a conversation on acknowledging land and site. This conversation was first sparked by research emory and Pittman conducted as 2019-2020 Kin & Care Research Group Fellows that continued during their Fall 2020 Research Group Fellowship. Their crystallized research titled “Acknowledging Grief and Rage Through Land and Site” was read during the Platform 2020 Kin & Care event and will be published in the forthcoming Volume II of Danspace Project Platform 2020: Utterance From The Chorus catalogue.

Pittman (Black, African American) and emory (mixed race, Lenape/Blackfoot) center and invite Black and Indigenous healing. They are friends acknowledging land and site through storytelling, ritual, and ancestral connections through time and space. These artists ask us all to consider how we take responsibility for the spaces we occupy? Where have we come from and where are we going?

The CWW digital series are pre-recorded and will be streamed on YouTube and archived on Danspace Project’s online Journal at danspaceproject.org/journal.

More about the Conversations Without Walls series

Accessibility: This program will be captioned.

devynn emory is a mixed Lenape/Blackfoot transgender choreographer, dance artist, bodyworker, ceremonial guide, acute care and hospice nurse currently working as a COVID-19 nurse in NYC. emory’s performance company devynnemory/beastproductions draws from their multiple in-between states of being, holding space for liminal bodies bridging multiple planes of transition. Their formal dance training pulls on mathematical and mapped scores to support bodies decolonizing and bleeding human truths, opening peep holes and revelations for collective performers and audiences. They are currently working on a trilogy centering medical mannequins processing transitional mediumship. “deadbird” with it’s touring public altar can anyone help me hold this body will be first. Cindy Sessions and “boiling-rain” are to follow which are interactive storytelling projects with an elder mannequin holding a collection of grandmother wisdom. As a healer they have dual licenses in “western” and “eastern” bodywork and run a private practice sage-massage that offers end of life consultation, channeled counseling and hands on care modalities in conversation with thresholds. You can find their work at devynnemory.com and sage-massage.

Angie Pittman is a New York based Bessie award-winning dance artist. Her choreographic work has been performed at The Kitchen, Gibney Dance, BAAD!, Movement Research at Judson Church, Triskelion Arts, STooPS, The Domestic Performance Agency, The KnockDown Center, The Invisible Dog, and Danspace Project. Angie has had the pleasure of dancing in work by MBDance, Ralph Lemon, Tere O’Connor, Cynthia Oliver, Anna Sperber, Donna Uchizono Company, Jennifer Monson, Kim Brandt, Tess Dworman, Antonio Ramos and many others. Angie has also had the joy of being able to create collaboratively with Jasmine Hearn, Jonathan Gonzalez, Athena Kokoronis, and Anita Mullin. She holds a MFA in Dance and Choreography with a graduate minor in African American Studies, and is a M’Singha Wuti certified teacher of the Umfundalai technique. Angie’s work resides in a space that investigates how the body moves through ballad, groove, sparkle, spirit, spirituals, ancestry, vulnerability, and power.

Danspace
Project

Feb 2021

12–21