Photo of Lisa Nelson and Steve Paxton by Gil Grossi

Steve Paxton – a video amble

Friday, February 14 | 6:30PM

Organized and hosted by Lisa Nelson and Cathy Weis

This special evening marks the opening of Danspace 50th festival celebration and includes video and remembrances of the groundbreaking artist Steve Paxton (Jan 21, 1939 – Feb 20, 2024). Paxton was a singular, iconic dance artist who graced the sanctuary over many decades and whose influence spans five generations.

Choreographer, performer, and videographer Lisa Nelson, Paxton’s oft-collaborator and life companion, joins with choreographer and video artist Cathy Weis to share a selection of excerpts of rarely seen performance documents and video snapshots from his life at the Farm in Vermont. Interspersed with conversation, this viewing will give but a glimpse of the breadth of how, in Steve’s words, “dance is the art of taking place.”

Lisa writes “Prolific to a fare-thee-well, Steve’s thinking with the body’ left us a multiplex of paths to ponder. It would be hard to say which traces of his lifetime of giving dance will be most enduring—his writing, correspondence, talking, performing on and off stages, improvising, collaborating, composting, gardening, teaching, learning, playing, and hanging out. We are deeply grateful that video technology came of age close to the beginning of Steve’s adventure and we’ve had 50+ years to learn how to see through it.”

Paxton’s enormous influence on the dance field and on interdisciplinary artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Ralph Lemon, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Jennifer Monson and other luminaries in movement and art, is impossible to quantify. Ralph Lemon has written: “I didn’t know Steve until late in his life…but I had been in his audiences most of my art life, from his utterly wild, collectively exploratory Grand Union group days (Walker Art Center, 1975), the year I took my first dance class in Minneapolis and had no idea what I was looking at (I’m not even sure I was there, maybe I just heard about it); to his magnificent Goldberg Variations (Jacob’s Pillow, 1988), dancing that completely changed my dance thinking as the music in his body rivaled Gould and Bach; to Ash (Danspace Project, 1999)…to his longtime work with his longtime partner, Lisa Nelson, and their extraordinary intimacy.” –October Journal, 2024

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Lisa Nelson (US): choreographer, improvisational performer, collaborator, learner, editor-publisher of Contact Quarterly. Her practice of Tuning Scores is an approach to composition, real-time editing, and communication that touches the (extra)ordinary self-knowledge that animates our choices as beings and artists facing challenges together—a danceway to collectively reimagine the illusions of our wobbly world. She lives on a farm in Vermont she shared with longtime creative partner, Steve Paxton. Reflections through interviews can be accessed through sarma.be’s oralsite and Conversations in Vermont.

Cathy Weis arrived in New York in 1984 and immersed herself in New York’s avant-garde dance community by videotaping the concerts of most downtown choreographers working in that decade. In 1993, Weis premiered her first New York season with String of Lies, a meld of dance and video. Since then she has done twelve productions in New York and Europe integrating technology and dance in performance, redefining the boundaries of “live” performance. In 2014, Weis opened a performance space at 537 Broadway. Eleven years later Sundays on Broadway has grown into a valued performance venue for downtown artists.

Photo of Fred Holland and Ishmael Houston-Jones by Pamela Moore | Photo of Blondell Cummings by Kei Orihara | Photo of Steve Paxton and Lisa Nelson by Gil Grossi | Photo of Bebe Miller Company by Lila Hurwitz | Photo of Levi Gonzalez, Rebecca Cyr, and Hristoula Harakas by John Cyr

Danspace @ 50: The Work Is Never Done. Sanctuary Always Needed.

Danspace Project @ 50:
The Work Is Never Done. Sanctuary Always Needed.

a spring season festival weaving past, present, and future through the work of iconic, historic, and contemporary artists who all find sanctuary at Danspace Project.

Steve Paxton – a video amble with Lisa Nelson and Cathy Weis

Reimagined performances of landmark work from artists Donna Uchizono, Bebe Miller Company, Ishmael Houston Jones + the late Fred Holland

Dancers, Buildings and People in the Streets Reunion
with Claudia La Rocco, Rashaun Mitchell, Sara Mearns, Jodi Melnick, Silas Riener, Kaitlyn Gilliland, Troy Schumacher, Jillian Pena, Yve Laris Cohen, Emily Coates, Pam Tanowitz, and Howard Silver

Reggie Wilson: Some Reflections on Prayerful Platforms Film Screening and Conversation

Marjani Forté-Saunders performing Chicken Soup by the late Blondell Cummings

15 Years of Danspace Project’s Platform Series at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
with Judy Hussie-Taylor, Seta Morton, Okwui Okpokwasili, Eiko Otake, and Reggie Wilson

February 14 – June 9, 2025

Danspace Project continues its 50th birthday into spring 2025, celebrating this significant anniversary with programs that weave Danspace’s past, present, and future through the work of iconic, historic, and contemporary artists who find artistic sanctuary at Danspace Project. This year, artists, writers, and curators will explore Danspace’s archives and its history over the decades, alongside presentations of both historic and new work in dance.

It is almost impossible to fully capture the depth and breadth of choreographers and artists who’ve launched their careers at Danspace Project since 1974. From Meredith Monk to Ishmael Houston-Jones, from John Jasperse to DD Dorvillier, from Miguel Guttierez to Michelle Dorrance, from Okwui Okpokwasili to Kyle Abraham. It’s a long list of luminaries. This spring’s offerings reflect only a tiny fraction of the influential artists who call Danspace home (see 50th video commissions here). With this spring season, Danspace attempts to offer a glimpse of artistic transmission and exchange between and throughout the generations.

“Since 2010, exchange between generations of artists has been a focus of our signature Platform series and was carried forward as an area of interest and research for our Artist Research Fellows (2021–2023),” writes Executive Director and Chief Curator Judy Hussie-Taylor. “The 50th is an opportunity to continue forging connections between artists from different eras who share a passionate curiosity about artistic experimentation and exploration.”

The winter and spring 2025 seasons will focus on the archive and the celebrated icons of dance who found home at Danspace Project.

VISIT THE CALENDAR

VIEW OUR SEASON BROCHURE

for more information and to purchase tickets for performances and RSVP for special events

Photo of Jelani Taylor by Emily Farthing | Photo of Nile Harris by Matthew Leifheit

DraftWork: Jelani Taylor + Nile Harris

Saturday, February 22 | 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 Jelani Taylor and Nile Harris.

Showings are followed by a reception, conversation, and Q&A between the artists.

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Before you visit:

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Jelani Taylor is a dancer, choreographer, and arts administrator from Virginia Beach, Virginia, currently working out of New York City. He is the Founder and Artistic Director of Era Dance Company and is the Artists of Color Council Coordinator for Movement Research. Jelani’s choreography has been presented nationally at Inside/Out at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, the International Association of Blacks in Dance Conference (IABD), National Dance Society Conference (NDS), and various festivals in Virginia and New York City. He has performed in work by Nathan Trice, Sinclair O’Gaga, and Mariah Lopez. Jelani and Era Dance Company were artist/company in residence at Norfolk State University and a part of the Digging in Group, Artist Residency program at Green Space Studio. He is currently a 2024/25 Performance Project Fellow at University Settlement. Jelani graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) with a B.F.A in Dance and Choreography in 2019. While at VCU, Jelani was the recipient of the African American Studies Department’s “Black History in the Making” Award.

Nile Harris is a performer and director of live art. He has done a few things and hopes to do a few more, God willing.

Photo of Ishmael Houston-Jones and Fred Holland by Pamela Moore

OO-GA-LA Reimagined (The Fred Holland and Ishmael Houston-Jones 1983 Duet Danced into the 21st Century)

Thursday, February 27 | 7:30PM
Friday, February 28 | 7:30PM*
Saturday, March 1 | 7:30PM

Open Dress Rehearsal
Tuesday, February 25 | 7:30PM

To RSVP for Open Dress Rehearsal, Click Here

As part of recognizing Danspace Project’s 50th anniversary, Ishmael Houston-Jones will present OO-GA-LA Reimagined (The Fred Holland and Ishmael Houston-Jones 1983 Duet Danced into the 21st Century), performed by AJ Wilmore, Stephanie Hewett, and Kris Lee.

Houston-Jones writes: “In 1983 at the Danspace Project festival Contact at 10th and 2nd which celebrated the 11th year that Steve Paxton named the form Contact Improvisation, Fred Holland and I were invited to perform a duet on the Partners Program along with Steve and Nancy Stark Smith and others. Fred and I, who considered ourselves to be the Black Punks of Contact, decided to do our C.I. duet by doing everything wrong. We rehearsed in East Village bars like the Pyramid Club on Avenue A after midnight and were given a cassette tape of sound loops from Kung Fu movies compiled by composer Mark Larson. But it was Fred who named the first ‘wrong’ item in our unpublished score when he said, ‘We are Black.’ We were one of very few people of color included in the festival or inhabiting the C.I. milieu at all. The videos of the two performances of OO-GA-LA by Cathy Weis and Lisa Nelson were largely unseen after the festival until found by Karen Nelson in the early 2000s. I’ve chosen to give the Wrong Contact Score to three AFAB dancers of color who are extraordinary performers, highly skilled improvisors, and innovative DJs to Queer this duet from 40 years and bring it to a new generation.”

*Following Friday night’s performance, there will be a talk with the artists and Judy Hussie-Taylor, Danspace Project’s Executive Director & Chief Curator.

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Tickets
support Danspace’s 50th anniversary!

$10 Members
$20 Regular Price
$30 A little extra
$40 A little more!
$50 Celebrating 50 years!
$100 Here’s to the next 50!

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Before you visit:

Accessibility at Danspace Project
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Ishmael Houston-Jones 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.

Stephanie Hewett is a queer Afro-Caribbean multidisciplinary artist from Munsee Lenape land colloquially known as the Bronx, New York. She is a graduate of Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and the Performing Arts in New York City and has studied at the Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London. She holds an MFA in Dance Studies and works with both movement and sound design to access ancestral wisdom rooted in spiritual, physical, and sonic expressions. Hewett DJs and produces electronic music under the moniker Madre Guía, and experiments with sound to explore polyrhythmic potentialities of intergenerational healing. She is a member of RUPTURE, a bicoastal performance collective examining Black gatherings that center collective rest, folk games, somatic experimentation, and the creation of communal dance spaces as spiritual technologies and practices of resistance and refusal.

Kris Lee (she/they) is a New York based dancer/performer and home chef. She received her BFA in Dance from University of the Arts in 2019. Kris was a member of the Stephen Petronio Company (2021-22) and has toured with nora chipaumire (2019-20). She was one of the creators and performers for high noon (2022), the interdisciplinary performance work produced by Ninth Planet. Most recently they have performed in Remains Persist (2022) & Out of and Into: Plot (2023) By Moriah Evans; Variations on Themes from Lost and Found: Scenes from a Life and other works by John Bernd (reprisal) by Ishmael Houston-Jones & Miguel Gutierrez (2023); duel c (2023) & duel H (2024) by Andros Zins-Browne. They also had the pleasure of being a part of Impulstanz’ Danceweb scholarship program mentored by Isabel Lewis (2024).

Born and raised in Philadelphia, AJ Wilmore is an artist and performer who delves into storytelling, identity, and the complexities of black familial relationships. She excavates her innermost desires while grappling with questions of visibility, intimacy, and selfhood. Wilmore graduated from The University of the Arts, where she honed her craft in movement investigation and approaches. Her recent performances include ‘ADAKU’ by Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born at BAM’s 2023 Next Wave Festival and Joan Jonas’s ‘Mirror Piece I and II’ at MoMA. Driven by a practice of making love to her fears, Wilmore investigates the stakes, texture, and vulnerability of her social and sexual life.

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