Events – Danspace Project
Anna Sperber by Ian Douglas
Evvie Allison by Alex Escalante

DraftWork: Anna Sperber / Evvie Allison

Curated by Ishmael Houston-Jones, the DraftWork series hosts informal Saturday afternoon performances that offer choreographers an opportunity to show their work in various stages of development.

Performances are followed by discussion and a reception during which artists and audiences share perspectives about the works-in-progress.

DraftWork is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and City Council Member Rosie Mendez.

Jessica Gaynor Dance: The Location of Figures

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

The Location of Figures is inspired by the art and ideas of American born conceptual artist Sol LeWitt, specifically his Incomplete Open Cube series. Dancers move through the square space as the floor is divided and subdivided, many times over. As intensity builds and more and more dancers occupy an increasingly smaller space, Gaynor considers how relationships between the dancers (or figures) shifts depending on continually changing spatial boundaries. How many people does it take to make a structure, and how few are needed before it crumbles?

The Location of Figures reveals human relationships based simply on lines in space, as density, angles and structures continue to shift.

Performers: Emily Diers, Sarah Eichler, Ariel Lembeck, Jordan Risdon, Julia Sabangan,Gabriel Speiller, Dillon Spicer, Kristi Tornga
Choreography: Jessica Gaynor
Music: Quentin Tolimieri
Lighting Design: Andrew Dickerson

Jessica Gaynor Dance is a modern dance company based in Brooklyn NY. Founded in 2003, the company, hailed for its “risk-laden” (DIY Dancer) choreography and “sophisticated approach to pure dance,” (The New Yorker), performs Gaynor’s works that utilize kinetic physicality, intricate patterning, and formal structures in an exploration of the complexities of human experience.

Over the last decade, JGD has created sixteen works, including seven evening length pieces, and has performed at venues such as The Skirball Center/NYU, Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out, Danspace Project, Ailey Citigroup Theater, Dance Theater Workshop, The 92nd Street Y, The Kitchen, Peridance, Gowanus Art + Production, Hudson Guild Theater, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Dixon Place, White Wave, Brown University, Built on Stilts Dance Festival on Martha’s Vineyard and has been presented by Triskelion Arts for eight sold-out seasons, including an encore performance in 2011. Recent grants include a New Music/USA Commission, a Mertz Gilmore Late Stage Production Stipend and an Andrew W. Mellon Space Subsidy. www.jessicagaynordance.com

Photo: AnjolaToro

Vicky Shick and Dancers: Another Spell

Another Spell is the latest from Vicky Shick, who returns after her Bessie-nominated Everything You See (Danspace Project Premiere, 2013).

Another Spell sits inside a tiny hidden village of women. The audience looks in as dancers Jodi Bender, Donna Costello, Lily Gold, Marilyn Maywald-Yahel, Heather Olson, Omagbitse Omagbemi, and Shick reveal and unfold themselves. Their camaraderie guides them through their movement—authentic and feigned—as they offer stereotypes, awesome idiosyncrasies, robust exuberance and, at times, the inexplicable.

“My obsessive passion for trying to decipher nuance, detail, intimacy and the quirkiness of the everyday bubbles here,” Shick writes. “With a small acknowledgement of our tough economic times and with an abiding commitment to ongoing work, we are recycling some cherished set and costume pieces–scattering and dancing them in a new landscape.

Set and costume pieces by Barbara Kilpatrick
Sound design constructed and performed live by Elise Kermani
Lighting design by Kathy Kaufmann

Food For Thought: Ayesha Jordan and André D. Singleton: Social Studies

Danspace Project is pleased to present this one-night-only evening of performance (originally scheduled as part of Food for Thought in January 2016) curated by Greta Hartenstein with choreographers Ayesha Jordan & André D. Singleton and special guest Akhmose Ari* as The Compliment King!

“Social studies is the integrated study of the social sciences and humanities to promote civic competence.

The primary purpose of social studies is to help people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world.”

André Singleton aka @brohogany’s preferred gender pronoun depends on the day. 🙂 #veryhuman

Ayesha Jordan is a multidisciplinary performance artist who often uses characters and stories to create indelible moments for cerebral and visceral experiences. Jordan’s characters each represent a facet of herself and act as a tool to playfully disguise herself, and to uniquely connect with guests. Her work aims to create a feeling of authenticity and genuineness that relates directly to who she is as a person. Much of Jordan’s work is about audience engagement, bringing participants as close to the work as possible – creating moments, tasks, and prompts allowing the opportunity to engage with the performer, as well as with fellow audience members. Some of her previous performances and events include Come See My Double D’s (JACK), Enter & Exit: Playing House (JACK), Enter & Exit: Family Reunion (JACK), Inter 1-to-1, and In the Tube. Other works include the video project Living Room Dance Breaks, Drunk & Famous, and a host of other songs and videos. Jordan has also been seen as an actor in Ludic Proxy, by Aya Ogawa (The Play Company), Platonov: Or the Disinherited by Jay Scheib (The Kitchen), Harold I Hate You, by Cakeface (Ars Nova & Triskelion). www.ayeshajordan.com

Born in Rochester, NY and living in Brooklyn, Greta Hartenstein received a BA in Art History and Dance from Wesleyan University. She is currently the Senior Curatorial Assistant for performance at the Whitney Museum where she has been an instrumental in planning the opening season of performance at the new building, and has previously worked on exhibitions including 2012 Biennial, 2014 Biennial, Rituals of Rented Island, and Stewart Uoo & Jana Euler: Outside Inside Sensibility. Dance is an essential part of her focus and over the past five years at the Whitney, she has worked on major projects with choreographers including Sarah Michelson, Michael Clark, taisha paggett, and Miguel Gutierrez. Outside of the Whitney, she has guest curated for Current Sessions, as well as an exhibition at Pratt entitled The Artist as Provocateur: Pioneering Performance at Pratt Institute. Greta has danced with Sophie Sotsky | TYKE DANCE since 2010, and continues to perform with the company and foster her collaborative spirit.

Food for Thought is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and City Council Member Rosie Mendez.

Charles Atlas. Rainer Variations, 2002. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York.

Charles Atlas: Rainer Variations (2002)

This special one-night-only screening will be followed by a conversation with Charles Atlas and Yvonne Rainer!

In his portrayal of filmmaker/choreographer Yvonne Rainer, artist Charles Atlas undermines genre conventions to pose some of the same questions that have long concerned her. While an extended interview with Rainer runs throughout the piece, Atlas’ editing takes up four “performers” (Rainer herself among them) who enact and re-enact the interview, shuffling and superimposing image and voice tracks to yield a video palimpsest of theatricality and ambiguity.

Yvonne Rainer will be honored alongside Joan Jonas at Danspace Project’s 2016 Gala.

Photo by Deborah Hay

An Evening with Deborah Hay

This very special evening of film and performance by Deborah Hay will include Hay’s hour-long performative talk, reorganizing myself, and a screening of Turn Your F*^king Head (2012), an hour-long documentary made by British filmmaker Becky Edmunds, about Hay’s final Solo Performance Commissioning Project at the Findhorn Community Foundation, near Inverness, Scotland.

“What my body can do is limited,” writes Hay. “This is not a bad thing because how I choreograph frees me from those limitations. Writing is then how I reframe and understand the body through my choreography.” In reorganizing myself Hay attempts to convey this process live.

“I hope that [Turn Your F*^king Head] will be seen by artists around the world because it is not only an educational tool that proposes an alternative way of creating dance material, but it also manages to encompass the trajectory of the postmodern dance world of the past forty years.” –Anne Bogart (Columbia University and Artistic Director of SITI Company)

With a poetic certainty, Becky Edmunds follows the process by which Hay transmits and coaches the same solo dance to 20 dancer/choreographers from 11 different countries, during 10 consecutive days.

Hay’s 4th book, Using the Sky, and the DVD Turn your F*^king Head will be for sale at this event.

Food For Thought: curated by Iréne Hultman, André Zachery, and Mina Nishimura

Food for Thought is three nights of performance selected by a different guest artist curator each night.

Curators for this season of Food for Thought are Iréne Hultman (Thu), André Zachery (Fri), and Mina Nishimura (Sat).

Canned goods collected through Food for Thought are donated to St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery food distribution programs.Admission is $5 + two cans of food; or $10 with no cans. No advance reservations. First-come, first-served!

Thursday, April 28
Fabulous Women
curator: Iréne Hultman
Emily Coates
Jane Comfort
Moriah Evans
Liz Gerring
Patricia Hoffbauer
Doris Reyes
Vicky Shick
Muna Tseng
Charmaine Warren

Friday, April 29
PATCHWORKING
curator: André Zachery
Remi Harris & Michelle Golden
Jumatatu Poe
Nehemoyia Young

Saturday, April 30
Sparkling Confessions
curator: Mina Nishimura
Takahiro Yamamoto
Tatyana Tenenbaum
Marguerite Hemmings
Kensaku Shinohara

Food for Thought is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and City Council Member Rosie Mendez.

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