Okwui Okpokwasili & Peter Born: Sitting On a Man’s Head

Friday, February 28, 6-10pm
Friday, March 6, 6-10pm: We are no longer taking advance ticket reservations for this evening at this time. However, there will be a limited number of tickets available for sale the night-of at 6:15pm and 8:15pm. Night-of tickets are $25, cash-only.
Friday, March 13, 6-10pm: We are no longer taking advance ticket reservations for this evening at this time. However, there will be a limited number of tickets available for sale the night-of at 6:15pm and 8:15pm. Night-of tickets are $25, cash-only.
Friday, March 20, 6-10pm: We are no longer taking advance ticket reservations for this evening at this time. However, there will be a limited number of tickets available for sale the night-of at 6:15pm and 8:15pm. Night-of tickets are $25, cash-only.

The box office for Sitting On a Man’s Head will open at 5:30pm. Ticket holders are welcome to enter any time between 6-9:45pm to experience this durational practice.

One of PLATFORM 2020: Utterances from the Chorus‘s central questions “How do we weave a collective song?” builds on the ideas behind Okpokwasili’s and Born’s durational piece, Sitting On a Man’s Head.

Okwui’s 2016 research into Nigerian women’s embodied protest resulted in the durational performance created by Okwui and Peter. The practice known as “sitting on a man” was a disruptive durational practice and a public act of shaming carried out by a collective of women in Southeastern Nigeria. It involved gathering in the private courtyard of a colonial official, dancing and singing songs that expressed their grievances and was designed to embarrass the official until he promised to address their concerns. This practice was used by women as a critical tool to protect their economic and social interests.

Rather than “shaming” or seeking redress, Okpokwasili’s and Born’s Sitting On a Man’s Head is an attempt to create a “space of restoration and restitution,” write Okpokwasili and Born. “We are engaged in a creative practice concerned with the formation of new bonds of kinship. In collaboration with a select group of artists, we use the tools of our performance practice to build a space for the creation of an improvisational public song composed of aural and choreographic gestures. Can a shared creative practice be generative and generous while also being instructive in imagining new possibilities of communal relations?”

The work features rotating chorus of performers, who will activate the performance: Martita Abril, Peter Born, Jennifer Brogle, mayfield brooks, Leslie Cuyjet, André Daughtry, Eisa Davis, Brittany Engel-Adams, Lily Gold, Naja Gordon, Melanie Greene, Audrey Hailes, Remi Harris, Jasmine Hearn, Justin Hicks, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Chaesong Kim, Tendayi Kuumba, Breyanna Maples, Priscilla Marrero, Anais Maviel, Okwui Okpokwasili, Maya Orchin, Kay Ottinger, jess pretty, Greg Purnell, Hans Rasch, Katrina Reid, Jean Carla Rodea, Lily Bo Shapiro, Samita Sinha, Eleanor Smith, Tatyana Tenenbaum, David Thomson, Pyeng Threadgill, Asiya Wadud, Charmaine Warren, AJ Wilmore, Anna Witenberg, and Nehemoyia Young.

Part of PLATFORM 2020: Utterances from the Chorus

Accessibility Danspace Project’s main entrance is fully wheelchair accessible via ramp. A same-level restroom is available near Danspace Project’s main performance space in the church sanctuary.

Saturday Afternoon Conversation #3: Voice & Body

Saturday, March 7, 11am-4pm

All are welcome! Advance reservations are no longer available. Please join us on Saturday and we will try to accommodate everyone!

DOWNLOAD THE PROGRAM

This series of long form conversations unfolds over four Saturday afternoons during PLATFORM 2020: Utterances from the Chorus. They will allow for different ways to gather, talk, and share practice. Curators, artists, audience, writers, scholars, friends and family will take this slow time to process the lines of inquiry guiding the Platform to come together, across disciplines.

Scholar, Saidiya Hartman, multi-media artist, Simone Leigh, and Okwui Okpokwasili will open the day in conversation. The Voice & Body research group will follow in response, conducting an afternoon of shared practice. Research fellows include Jasmine Hearn, Tendayi Kuumba, Benedict Nguyen, Samita Sinha, Tatyana Tenenbaum, and Asiya Wadud.

In 2018 Danspace Project Associate Curator Lydia Bell initiated collective terrain/s, a year-long  process into “sounding in the body” led by artists Jasmine Hearn and Tatyana Tenenbaum with invited artists Tendayi Kuumba and Samita Sinha. In spring 2019, Danspace Executive Director and Chief Curator, Judy Hussie-Taylor, invited these artists back alongside writers Asiya Wadud and Benedict Nguyen to form a Research Group, Voice and Body. With facilitation from Assistant Curator, Public Engagement, Seta Morton,  these Research Fellows have gathered threads of individual practice, shared research, and collective reading to weave a lexicon of words and a transmission of ideas that reverberate in sound, somatics, language, and narrative.

The Research Group has focused its work on acknowledging personal and cultural patterns of carrying, ancestral and trans-generational trauma, joy, weight, and sacrifice. They troubled institutional systems of pedagogy and the authority of the archive while placing a high value on embodiment as knowledge. Vibrational frequencies were shared as acts of deep care in resistance to violence. These artists asserted a radical insistence: how many ways are there to say the same thing and how can we say it again? In conversation with Okpokwasili, Hartman, and Leigh, the Fellows will guide us through a day of gestures and shared practices as we gather in community to build a collective song.

SCHEDULE
Please note: all times are approximate.

10:30am: Doors Open

11am: A Conversation between Saidiya Hartman, Simone Leigh, and Okwui Okpokwasili

12:15pm: A Response by Asiya Wadud

1pm: Voice & Body Research Group: An Afternoon of Shared Practice, Jasmine Hearn, Tendayi Kuumba, Benedict Nguyen, Samita Sinha, Tatyana Tenenbaum, and Asiya Wadud

3pm: Reception

Accessibility: Danspace Project’s main entrance is wheelchair accessible via a ramp. The Parish Hall is accessible through the 11th street doors via one (8 inch high) step or a (28.5 inch wide) temporary ramp with assistance from our staff. Please request the use of the temporary ramp, ahead of the event date. All gender bathrooms are accessible via a stairway (24 steps that are all  7.5 inches high). A same-level, one stall restroom is available near Danspace Project’s main performance space in the church Sanctuary. The doorway of that bathroom is 33 inches wide. There is a small corridor to pass through when moving between the Sanctuary and Parish Hall, the narrowest corner of this corridor is 29 inches wide.

CART (Communication access real-time captioning) will be provided.

Part of PLATFORM 2020: Utterances from the Chorus

Nacera Belaza & Meryem Jazouli: A Shared Evening

Monday, March 9, 7pm
Tuesday, March 10, 7pm

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Casablanca-based choreographer and performer, Meryem Jazouli, creates work that is directly influenced by its Moroccan context, in particular South Moroccan Guedra dance and song. Algerian-born/France-based choreographer and performer, Nacera Belaza, has developed a choreography that originates from a sensible awareness of the body, of space, and of the emptiness inside herself. These longtime friends share similar concerns in their considerations of the power of dance in North African culture.

Folkah!, performed on this evening, emerged from Jazouli’s research into an ancestral folk dance from the Sahara: the Guedra, a dance practiced by women from southern Morocco, among other desert regions of North Africa, which is essentially performed on the knees. Jazouli has developed a corporal and vocal language to revisit the context, words, and gestures of the Guedra, to invent a new frame of dialogue between body and voice.

In recent years Belaza has been developing processions as a new way to relate with the public. In La Procession the performers circulate inside a sensory path that invites us to question the essence of a place: the interior and exterior space, private and public, darkness and light. Each Procession is an occasion to create a unique piece with a new group.

Part of PLATFORM 2020: Utterances from the Chorus

Accessibility Danspace Project’s main entrance is fully wheelchair accessible via ramp. A same-level restroom is available near Danspace Project’s main performance space in the church sanctuary.

Okwui Okpokwasili & Peter Born: Sitting On a Man’s Head

For the health and safety of our community, all public performances through March 28 have been cancelled. We will offer full refunds to audiences and seek to reschedule suspended performances and events when reasonably possible. We will be in touch with all ticket buyers directly regarding refunds. MORE INFO

Friday, February 28, 6-10pm
Friday, March 6, 6-10pm: We are no longer taking advance ticket reservations for this evening at this time. However, there will be a limited number of tickets available for sale the night-of at 6:15pm and 8:15pm. Night-of tickets are $25, cash-only.
Friday, March 13, 6-10pm: We are no longer taking advance ticket reservations for this evening at this time. However, there will be a limited number of tickets available for sale the night-of at 6:15pm and 8:15pm. Night-of tickets are $25, cash-only.
Friday, March 20, 6-10pm: We are no longer taking advance ticket reservations for this evening at this time. However, there will be a limited number of tickets available for sale the night-of at 6:15pm and 8:15pm. Night-of tickets are $25, cash-only.

The box office for Sitting On a Man’s Head will open at 5:30pm. Ticket holders are welcome to enter any time between 6-9:45pm to experience this durational practice.

One of PLATFORM 2020: Utterances from the Chorus‘s central questions “How do we weave a collective song?” builds on the ideas behind Okpokwasili’s and Born’s durational piece, Sitting On a Man’s Head.

Okwui’s 2016 research into Nigerian women’s embodied protest resulted in the durational performance created by Okwui and Peter. The practice known as “sitting on a man” was a disruptive durational practice and a public act of shaming carried out by a collective of women in Southeastern Nigeria. It involved gathering in the private courtyard of a colonial official, dancing and singing songs that expressed their grievances and was designed to embarrass the official until he promised to address their concerns. This practice was used by women as a critical tool to protect their economic and social interests.

Rather than “shaming” or seeking redress, Okpokwasili’s and Born’s Sitting On a Man’s Head is an attempt to create a “space of restoration and restitution,” write Okpokwasili and Born. “We are engaged in a creative practice concerned with the formation of new bonds of kinship. In collaboration with a select group of artists, we use the tools of our performance practice to build a space for the creation of an improvisational public song composed of aural and choreographic gestures. Can a shared creative practice be generative and generous while also being instructive in imagining new possibilities of communal relations?”

The work features rotating chorus of performers, who will activate the performance: Martita Abril, Peter Born, Jennifer Brogle, mayfield brooks, Leslie Cuyjet, André Daughtry, Eisa Davis, Brittany Engel-Adams, Lily Gold, Naja Gordon, Melanie Greene, Audrey Hailes, Remi Harris, Jasmine Hearn, Justin Hicks, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Chaesong Kim, Tendayi Kuumba, Breyanna Maples, Priscilla Marrero, Anais Maviel, Okwui Okpokwasili, Maya Orchin, Kay Ottinger, Jess Pretty, Greg Purnell, Hans Rasch, Katrina Reid, Jean Carla Rodea, Lily Bo Shapiro, Samita Sinha, Eleanor Smith, Tatyana Tenenbaum, David Thomson, Pyeng Threadgill, Asiya Wadud, Charmaine Warren, AJ Wilmore, Anna Witenberg, and Nehemoyia Young

Part of PLATFORM 2020: Utterances from the Chorus

Accessibility Danspace Project’s main entrance is fully wheelchair accessible via ramp. A same-level restroom is available near Danspace Project’s main performance space in the church sanctuary.

Okwui Okpokwasili & Samita Sinha: A Shared Evening

For the health and safety of our community, all public performances through March 28 have been cancelled. We will offer full refunds to audiences and seek to reschedule suspended performances and events when reasonably possible. We will be in touch with all ticket buyers directly regarding refunds. MORE INFO

Saturday, March 14, 8pm
One-night-only!

Advance tickets are sold out for this event. A wait list will begin at the door on Saturday night at 7:15pm.

Okwui Okpokwasili and composer, performer, and educator,  Samita Sinha, have been informally sharing their individual voice and body practices over the past year. Sinha’s work combines Bengalese Baul vocal tradition with vocal and movement experiments that investigate her cultural inheritance. Okpokwasili writes and performs songs for her performance collaborations with Peter Born.

Many of Okpokwasili’s songs are included in her first album, day pulls down the sky (available February 22), produced by Danspace Project. PLATFORM 2020 co-curator, Judy Hussie-Taylor, has invited these two singular artists to create a new collaboration for this special one-night-only event.

Part of PLATFORM 2020: Utterances from the Chorus

Accessibility Danspace Project’s main entrance is fully wheelchair accessible via ramp. A same-level restroom is available near Danspace Project’s main performance space in the church sanctuary.

Poetic Utterance #1

For the health and safety of our community, all public performances through March 28 have been cancelled. We will offer full refunds to audiences and seek to reschedule suspended performances and events when reasonably possible. We will be in touch with all ticket buyers directly regarding refunds. MORE INFO

Thursday, March 19, 8pm

Justin Hicks, NIC Kay, Tendayi Kuumba & Greg Purnell, Alice Sheppard, Pamela Sneed, and Ni’Ja Whitson

Poetic Utterance performative evenings will be comprised of a multitude of artists sharing bursts of performance and practice. Poets, movers, sound, and vocal artists will respond to some PLATFORM 2020 curatorial inquiries posed by co-curators Judy Hussie-Taylor and Okwui Okpokwasili.

Each artist will respond to Platform ideas with 10-15 minutes of movement, text, song, sound, or some combination of these. A place to hum, utter, and gesture together.

Part of PLATFORM 2020: Utterances from the Chorus

Accessibility Danspace Project’s main entrance is fully wheelchair accessible via ramp. A same-level restroom is available near Danspace Project’s main performance space in the church sanctuary.

Okwui Okpokwasili & Peter Born: Sitting On a Man’s Head

For the health and safety of our community, all public performances through March 28 have been cancelled. We will offer full refunds to audiences and seek to reschedule suspended performances and events when reasonably possible. We will be in touch with all ticket buyers directly regarding refunds. MORE INFO

Friday, February 28, 6-10pm
Friday, March 6, 6-10pm: We are no longer taking advance ticket reservations for this evening at this time. However, there will be a limited number of tickets available for sale the night-of at 6:15pm and 8:15pm. Night-of tickets are $25, cash-only.
Friday, March 13, 6-10pm: We are no longer taking advance ticket reservations for this evening at this time. However, there will be a limited number of tickets available for sale the night-of at 6:15pm and 8:15pm. Night-of tickets are $25, cash-only.
Friday, March 20, 6-10pm: We are no longer taking advance ticket reservations for this evening at this time. However, there will be a limited number of tickets available for sale the night-of at 6:15pm and 8:15pm. Night-of tickets are $25, cash-only.

The box office for Sitting On a Man’s Head will open at 5:30pm. Ticket holders are welcome to enter any time between 6-9:45pm to experience this durational practice.

One of PLATFORM 2020: Utterances from the Chorus‘s central questions “How do we weave a collective song?” builds on the ideas behind Okpokwasili’s and Born’s durational piece, Sitting On a Man’s Head.

Okwui’s 2016 research into Nigerian women’s embodied protest resulted in the durational performance created by Okwui and Peter. The practice known as “sitting on a man” was a disruptive durational practice and a public act of shaming carried out by a collective of women in Southeastern Nigeria. It involved gathering in the private courtyard of a colonial official, dancing and singing songs that expressed their grievances and was designed to embarrass the official until he promised to address their concerns. This practice was used by women as a critical tool to protect their economic and social interests.

Rather than “shaming” or seeking redress, Okpokwasili’s and Born’s Sitting On a Man’s Head is an attempt to create a “space of restoration and restitution,” write Okpokwasili and Born. “We are engaged in a creative practice concerned with the formation of new bonds of kinship. In collaboration with a select group of artists, we use the tools of our performance practice to build a space for the creation of an improvisational public song composed of aural and choreographic gestures. Can a shared creative practice be generative and generous while also being instructive in imagining new possibilities of communal relations?”

The work features rotating chorus of performers, who will activate the performance: Martita Abril, Peter Born, Jennifer Brogle, mayfield brooks, Leslie Cuyjet, André Daughtry, Eisa Davis, Brittany Engel-Adams, Lily Gold, Naja Gordon, Melanie Greene, Audrey Hailes, Remi Harris, Jasmine Hearn, Justin Hicks, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Chaesong Kim, Tendayi Kuumba, Breyanna Maples, Priscilla Marrero, Anais Maviel, Okwui Okpokwasili, Maya Orchin, Kay Ottinger, Jess Pretty, Greg Purnell, Hans Rasch, Katrina Reid, Jean Carla Rodea, Lily Bo Shapiro, Samita Sinha, Eleanor Smith, Tatyana Tenenbaum, David Thomson, Pyeng Threadgill, Asiya Wadud, Charmaine Warren, AJ Wilmore, Anna Witenberg, and Nehemoyia Young.

Part of PLATFORM 2020: Utterances from the Chorus

Accessibility Danspace Project’s main entrance is fully wheelchair accessible via ramp. A same-level restroom is available near Danspace Project’s main performance space in the church sanctuary.

Poetic Utterance #2

For the health and safety of our community, all public performances through March 28 have been cancelled. We will offer full refunds to audiences and seek to reschedule suspended performances and events when reasonably possible. We will be in touch with all ticket buyers directly regarding refunds. MORE INFO

Saturday, March 21, 8pm

Eisa Davis, Yves B Golden x Venïson Man, Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, M Lamar, Ogemdi Ude, Mariana Valencia

Poetic Utterance performative evenings will be comprised of a multitude of artists sharing bursts of performance and practice. Poets, movers, sound and vocal artists will respond to some PLATFORM 2020 curatorial inquiries posed by co-curators Judy Hussie-Taylor and Okwui Okpokwasili.

Each artist will respond to Platform ideas with 10-15 minutes of movement, text, song, sound, or some combination of these. A place to hum, utter, and gesture together.

Part of PLATFORM 2020: Utterances from the Chorus

Accessibility Danspace Project’s main entrance is fully wheelchair accessible via ramp. A same-level restroom is available near Danspace Project’s main performance space in the church sanctuary.

Saturday Afternoon Conversation #4: Slowness

For the health and safety of our community, all public performances through March 28 have been cancelled. We will offer full refunds to audiences and seek to reschedule suspended performances and events when reasonably possible. We will be in touch with all ticket buyers directly regarding refunds. MORE INFO

Saturday, March 21, 12-4pm

Okwui Okpokwasili in conversation with black feminist theorist of visual culture and contemporary art, Tina Campt. With catering from Yardy.

This series of long form conversations unfolds over four Saturday afternoons during PLATFORM 2020: Utterances from the Chorus. They will allow for different ways to gather, talk, and share practice. Curators, artists, audience, writers, scholars, friends and family will take this slow time to process the lines of inquiry guiding the Platform to come together, across disciplines.

Full schedule of the day’s events is forthcoming!

Part of PLATFORM 2020: Utterances from the Chorus

Accessibility Danspace Project’s main entrance is fully wheelchair accessible via ramp. A same-level restroom is available near Danspace Project’s main performance space in the church sanctuary.

Megan Williams Dance Projects

For the health and safety of our community, all public performances through March 28 have been cancelled. We will offer full refunds to audiences and seek to reschedule suspended performances and events when reasonably possible. We will be in touch with all ticket buyers directly regarding refunds. MORE INFO

Thursday, March 26, 8pm
Friday, March 27, 8pm
Saturday, March 28, 8pm

Danspace Project’s Community ACCESS series provides subsidized off-season rental opportunities for Danspace Project community members.

can I have it without begging is a live music and dance event created and performed in collaboration with acclaimed composer Eve Beglarian, the dancers of Megan Williams Dance Projects, five new music luminaries, and the Young People’s Chorus of NYC. The evening will be comprised of four connected repertory dance works that live in and around existing compositions from Beglarian’s expansive catalogue, as well as inside of two newly commissioned world premiere works. 

Works include:

My Great Desire, a large ensemble “ballet” to five sections of Eve Beglarian’s MACHAUT IN THE MACHINE AGE series, that interrogates and agitates the classical lexicon while forging a narrative around attention, longing, and the finely drawn and oft-severed line between desire and love. Beglarian has been writing responses to 14th century Guillaume de Machaut’s secular songs since the 1980s and has added a new world premiere piece for these performances.  

Play Like A Girl, a raucous and contemplative suite of short dances to Beglarian’s keyboard variations of the same name based on the Bulgarian tune “Kaval Sviri”(sung by the Young People’s Chorus of NYC in these performances) that reveal embodied memories of the physical struggles and joys of girlhood that fuel our collective adult sense of self.

Five Things is a reboot of a duet that originally premiered in the DANCE NOW Festival in 2018, and is now reimagined for Megan and Esmé Boyce. It jumps head first into the musical dialogue and zen text in Beglarian’s work that was written in October 2001 and was the first piece Beglarian’s wrote after the events of early September of that year to the text of Thomas Cleary’s translation of a Song Dynasty (10th to 13th century) letter to a Zen Master Xiang.

Swift Bird, a newly commissioned world premiere companion piece to Five Things, is a rigorous solo for Megan Williams that explores and exposes the vulnerability and solitude of aging.

Dancers: Esmé Boyce, Robert Mark Burke, Derek Crescenti, Réka Echerer, Mary Lyn Graves, Chelsea Hecht, Courtney Lopes, Amelia Pagliaro, Joshua Tuason, and Michael Wang

Musicians: Margaret Lancaster (flute), Tristan Kasten-Krause (bass), Amy Garapic (percussion), Thomas Feng (piano), Huizi Zhang (toy piano/synth)

Lighting design: Kathy Kaufmann
Sound design: Sam Crawford
Costume designer: Barbara Erin Delo

Accessibility Danspace Project’s main entrance is fully wheelchair accessible via ramp. A same-level restroom is available near Danspace Project’s main performance space in the church sanctuary.

A Live Zoom and Facebook Event with Tina Campt, Saidiya Hartman, Simone Leigh, and Okwui Okpokwasili

We are pleased to announce that tonight’s conversation will also be streamed on Facebook Live!

Already registered via Zoom? Just proceed with the instructions sent to you!

If you were unable to register on Zoom, tune into our Facebook Live at 7pm-8:30pm EST!
Facebook.com/danspaceproject

Please consider giving a donation to Danspace Project so that we can continue to find ways to share the work of artists with you. Thank you. Donate here

Platform 2020 co-curator and artist, Okwui Okpokwasili with scholar, Saidiya Hartman, multi-media artist, Simone Leigh, and Black feminist theorist of visual culture and contemporary art, Tina Campt, will engage in a public conversation via Zoom on Thursday, March 26th.

As an extension of the Platform 2020: Utterances From The Chorus programming, we will gather, digitally, across disciplines, to field questions surrounding the implications, textures, and politics of Slowness as it pertains to the current moment of global pandemic, quarantine, shut-downs, cancelations, and physical distance.

Tina and Okwui were scheduled to have a public conversation at Danspace Project on March 21st on the topic of Slowness as part of Platform 2020: Utterances From The Chorus. Slowness has taken on a very different resonance now. They are asking how we can address this moment when so many of us are forced to be still and yet so many, like healthcare workers and grocers, can’t stop moving as they put themselves at great risk.