Gala 2022 Honoring Georgiana Pickett & Muna Tseng

CO-CHAIRS Olga Garay-English, Melissa Levin
HONORARY CHAIRS Ping Chong, Bill T. Jones, Dianne McIntyre
HOST Charmaine Warren
SPEAKERS Ping Chong, Sixto Wagan
PERFORMERS Kyle Abraham, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, Jasmine Hearn, Iréne Hultman,

Miki Orihara, UFly Mothership (Tendayi Kuumba & Greg Purnell)

5:30 Honoree Reception with Wine & Savories
7:00 Performances
8:00 Garden After-Party & Dessert

TICKETS

Platinum Circle of 10 guests $15,000
Gold Circle of 8 guests $10,000
Silver Circle of 6 guests $5,000
To purchase a Platinum, Gold, or Silver Circle, please contact Severine Kaufman at Severine@danspaceproject.org or (212) 674-3554

Platinum Single Ticket $1,000
Gold Single Ticket $750
Silver Single Ticket $500

Sliding Scale Performance & After-Party $250, $100, $75, $50

We are currently at capacity for this event. Please check back closer to April 5, 2022 as more tickets may be released if they become available.

Platinum, Gold, and Silver supporters are invited to join us for wine and savories at the Honoree Reception in the Church Gardens and Parish Hall of St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery. All ticket buyers are welcome to enjoy performances in the Church Sanctuary and a Garden After-Party with dessert.

If you are unable to attend and would like to send a donation, please click here

Online payments will reflect an administrative fee.

Tickets and donations may also be paid by check payable to Danspace Project and sent to the address below, or via bank wire transfer with no fees. Please contact Severine Kaufman, Severine@danspaceproject.org or (212) 674-3554 for payment information, to purchase a circle, or if you have further questions.

Danspace Project
131 East 10^th Street
New York, NY 10003

Danspace Project is closely monitoring the evolving Covid-19 situation and will follow appropriate protocols for in-person gatherings.

Benefit Committee

As of March 31, 2022

Kyle Abraham, Melia Bensussen, Elise Bernhardt, Barbara Bertozzi Castelli, Suzanne Bocanegra* & David Lang, Anthony Calnek* & Linda Sugin, Kim Chan, Ping Chong, Michelle Coffey, Paula Cooper, Jacqueline Davis, Carmen de Lavallade, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, Diana DiMenna, Katie Dixon & Richard Fleming, Elizabeth Doud, Hilary Easton and Joshua McHugh, David Fanger* & Martin Wechsler, Kamilah Forbes, Vallejo Gantner, Olga Garay-English, Anna Glass, Becky Goldring, Allyson Green, Holly Greenfield, Jane Hait, Jasmine Hearn, Pearl Huang and Peter Hobbs, Iréne Hultman, Bill T. Jones & Bjorn Amelan, Colleen Keegan, Don and Christine Kursch, Thomas J. Lax* & Andrew Wallace, Brad Learmonth & Jon Gilman, Melissa Levin*, Kitty Lung, Nellie Lung, Laurie Mallet, Yael Mandelstam and Ken Tabachnick, Cynthia Mayeda, Esther McGowan, Dianne McIntyre, Bebe Miller**, Rashaun Mitchell* and Silas Riener, Meredith Monk, Sarah Needham*, Jody Oberfelder, Miki Orihara, Eiko Otake, David Parker*, Carla Peterson, Yvonne Rainer, Amy Schwartzman, Mikki Shepard, Miranda Shiller, David Thomson, The Trustees of the Merce Cunningham Trust, Dr. Chui and Echo Tsang, Raymond Tseng, UFly Mothership (Tendayi Kuumba & Greg Purnell), Sixto Wagan, Charmaine Warren & Tony Turner, Helen* & Peter Warwick, Wendy Whelan, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Reggie Wilson, Nina Winthrop, Jenny Yee, Tony Zisa

*Board Member

**Board Member Emeritus

Visit our Accessibility Info page for more information about our venue.

Clockwise from top left: mayfield brooks. Photo: Maria Baranova; Silas Riener. Photo: Rashaun Mitchell; iele paloumpis. Photo: courtesy the artist; Ogemdi Ude. Photo: Chidozie Ekwensi; Christopher “Unpezverde” Nunez. Photo: Ian Douglas; Rashaun Mitchell. Photo: Rashaun Mitchell.

Conversations Without Walls: The Dream of the Artist

Part of Platform 2022: The Dream of the Audience (Part II)

Saturday, April 23, 12pm-1:30pm

*This Conversation Without Walls will take place via Zoom. A link to access the event will be sent to registrants approximately 30 minutes prior to start time. Registration is required to access the link.*

Accessibility: CART captioning will be provided. A phone number will be provided so that the Zoom chat may be accessed audibly. For further inquiry, feedback, or to submit specific access requests, please email seta@danspaceproject.org.

A Platform 2022 opening conversation and catalogue launch with facilitator Christopher “Unpezverde” Núñez. This afternoon of conversation between Judy Hussie-Taylor, mayfield brooks, Rashaun Mitchell, iele paloumpis, Silas Riener, and Ogemdi Ude, focuses on the Platform works and the artists’ experience of making work during times of pandemic, precarity, and ambiguity.

Conversations Without Walls (CWW) was designed to bring together voices of artists, curators, scholars, writers, and more, into long-form roundtable discussions. The content of these conversations are intentionally wide ranging and artist driven—they can provide further context and insight into an artist’s research, reflect on a Danspace Project program, unpack methodologies and practices, or reflect on larger systemic and structural issues that impact artists today.

mayfield brooks improvises while black and is based in Lenapehoking, the homeland of the Lenape people also known as Brooklyn, New York. brooks is a movement-based performance artist, vocalist, urban farmer, writer, and wanderer. They are on the faculty at Movement Research NYC and the 2021 recipient of the biennial Merce Cunningham Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. brooks’ dance film, Whale Fall was nominated for a 2021 Bessie Award and they will be a 2022-23 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University this year. brooks is an international teacher and performer whose entire body of work arises from their life/art/movement practice, Improvising While Black or IWB.

Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener are New York-based dance artists. Their ongoing work involves the building of collaborative worlds through improvisational techniques, digital technologies, and material construction. Together they have been artists-in-residence at LMCC, Mt Tremper Arts, pieter, Jacob’s Pillow, New York City Center, The Watermill Center, MANCC, Headlands Center for the Arts, BOFFO, New York City Center, The Center for Ballet and the Arts, and Baryshnikov Arts Center. Their work has been commissioned by Danspace Project, Madison Square Park, The Joyce Theater, BAM/Next Wave, The Barbican, EMPAC, The Walker Art Center, MCA Chicago, REDCAT, The Wexner, On The Boards, The LAB, Marfa Sounding, Culture Summit Abu Dhabi, SFMOMA, and MoMA PS1.

(b. Costa Rica, Garífuna descendant) Christopher “Unpezverde” Núñez is a Visually Impaired Choreographer and Accessibility Consultant based in NYC. His performances have been presented at The Brooklyn Museum for The Immigrant Artist Biennale, The Kitchen, Movement Research at The Judson Church, The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, Battery Dance Festival, Performance Mix Festival, among others. His work has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail and The Dance Enthusiast. He has held residencies at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Danspace Project, The Kitchen, Center for Performance Research and Movement Research. Recent collaborations include “Dressing Up for Civil Rights” by William Pope L, presented at MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art and “La Procession” by Nacera Belaza presented at Danspace Project. Núñez was invited by the NYC Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs to share his story as a queer, disabled and formally undocumented artist during Immigrant Heritage Week 2020. Núñez received his green card in 2018 but he continues to be an advocate for the rights of disabled, queer undocumented artists. He holds a BFA in Science in Performing Arts from the National University of Costa Rica.

iele paloumpis is a dance artist, herbalist, astrologer and end of life doula living in Canarsie/Munsee territory in Lenapehoking. iele’s work is rooted in kinesthetic awareness, trauma-informed griefwork, and ancestral re-membrance practices that reflect fragmented lineages across queer, trans and crip aural histories, alongside their Greek, Anatolian and Irish-American diasporic bloodlines. Most recently, iele has been exploring intergenerational trauma and resilience related to centuries of occupation, forced displacement, and eventually the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey, known to Greeks as “The Catastrophe.” iele comes from a long line of mystics, and is grateful to have studied with many teachers who have influenced their path. Under the direction of Donna Faye Burchfield and Jeffery Bullock, iele received a BA in Dance from Hollins University in 2006. As an end of life doula, they have received certifications from Valley Hospice, Mount Sinai’s Palliative Care Institute, and Deanna Flores Cochran’s Accompanying the Dying program between 2014-16. iele has practiced Tarot since 1995, most recently with the mentorship of Eva Yaa Asantewaa. In summer 2014, iele studied herbology with Rosemary Gladstar, and more recently iele has deepened their connection to ancestral plant medicine across the Mediterranean & SWANA regions with guidance from Layla K. Feghali & SWANA Ancestral. Following in the footsteps of their Anatolian ancestors, iele is mostly a self-taught astrologer, though studying the teachings of Demetra George on Traditional Astrology has been particularly impactful. iele will always be a student of the more-than-human world, and is in endless gratitude to the forests, mountains, rivers, stars and animal-kin who offer so much wisdom. As a disabled, trans, queer survivor from a working class background, iele empathizes across multiple axes of oppression and brings this awareness to their work as an artist, educator, doula and intuitive healer.

Ogemdi Ude is a Nigerian-American dance artist, educator, and doula based in Brooklyn, New York. Her performances focus on Black femme legacies and futures, grief, and memory. She aims to incite critical engagement with embodied Black history as a means to imagine Black futurity. Her work has been presented at Issue Project Room, Recess Art, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Gibney, Center for Performance Research, Streb Lab for Action Mechanics, and for BAM’s DanceAfrica Festival. As an educator, she serves as Head of Movement for Theater at Professional Performing Arts School and has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, MIT, and University of the Arts. In collaboration with Rochelle Jamila Wilbun she facilitates AfroPeach, a series of dance workshops and talks birth work specialists for Black postpartum people in Brooklyn. She is a 2021 danceWEB Scholar, 2021 Laundromat Project Artist-in-Residence, and 2021 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Creative Engagement Grantee. She graduated Magna Cum Laude with a degree in English from Princeton University.

Platform 2022 artists (clockwise from top left): iele paloumpis. Photo: courtesy iele paloumpis. Ogemdi Ude. Photo: Sophie Schwartz. Silas Riener and Rashaun Mitchell. Photo: Rashaun Mitchell. mayfield brooks. Photo: Maria Baranova.

Platform 2022: The Dream of the Audience (Part II)

Platform 2022: The Dream of the Audience (Part II) features new premieres by mayfield brooks, Rashaun Mitchell & Silas Riener, iele paloumpis, and Ogemdi Ude! Platform performances will take place live in the sanctuary at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery.

Platform 2022, curated by Danspace Project Executive Director & Chief Curator, Judy Hussie-Taylor, follows its 2021 predecessor, building on impossible questions as we continue to navigate precarious times. Like Part I, Platform 2022 takes inspiration from a 1977 poem by the late artist and writer, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951-1982), wherein she addresses the audience “as a distant relative.” Platform 2022 delves into ancestral explorations, connections, and disconnections, as well as accessibility, and disability aesthetics, sustainable relationships to land, site, and water, and how these connections find their way into the artists’ choreographic work. Dance artists mayfield brooks, Rashaun Mitchell & Silas Riener, iele paloumpis, and Ogemdi Ude have each noted different considerations of time amidst the ongoing Pandemic. Considering the intersections between life and dancing, how do life practices — building, birthing, weaving, planting, surviving — feed into dancemaking?

Platform 2021 (featuring Eiko Otake, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Reggie Wilson, and Okwui Okpokwasili, in Spring 2021) was designed to allow artists to work safely during a pandemic and reflect upon the current moment through new film commissions. Since the series’ inception in 2010, the Platforms have resulted in multifaceted performances, public programs, and publications that provide rich context for audiences. Recent programs have considered the importance of collective gathering, alternative kinship and care practices, land and site acknowledgements, accessibility, and voice/body practices. Platform 2022 is rooted in this history and with the curatorial team, Hussie-Taylor, Benjamin Akio Kimitch and Seta Morton, artists have been invited to experiment with and expand disability histories and aesthetics and accessibility practices.

The Platform artists will be joined by a unique cadre of guests for two Platform-centric Conversations Without Walls: The Dream of the Artist & The Dream of the Audience.

Danspace will publish a print catalogue to accompany the Platform. The catalogue will both reflect on The Dream of The Audience Part I and anticipate The Dream of The Audience Part II with written contributions from the artists, writer-in-residence, and more.

Maura Nguyen Donohue returns as Writer-in-Residence for the second year of The Dream of The Audience. Donohue’s work will be published in the catalogue and in the Danspace Project Online Journal.

Issue #14 of Danspace’s Online Journal (danspaceproject.org/journal) will also focus on Platform lines of inquiry, artists research and writing, and catalogue excerpts.

VISIT OUR CALENDAR TO BUY YOUR TICKETS NOW!

Silas Riener and Rashaun Mitchell. Photo: Hannah Nielsen-Jones.

Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener: RETROFIT: a new age

Part of Platform 2022: The Dream of the Audience (Part II)

Thursday, April 28, 4-8pm
Friday, April 29, 4-8pm
Saturday, April 30, 2-6pm

*Proof of vaccination with 1st booster and mask required for entry.*

Please note: This is a four-hour performance installation.
Timed-entry tickets will be sold in advance, and walk-up tickets will be sold at the door.
Once admitted, you may come and go, or stay as long as you like.

Accessibility: Audio Description (AD) will be provided by Tess Dworman on Saturday, April 30, from 2pm-3:20pm and additional AD tickets are available for blind or visually impaired audience members. Please email Seta@danspaceproject.org to reserve AD tickets.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE PERFORMANCE PROGRAM

Building a site for dance and working on a house in upstate NY for the last five years has shifted Mitchell and Riener’s approach to time and choreography. The collaborative duo have developed an improvisation-based practice they call desire lines, which teases apart the experiential and spiritual cores of both dancing and watching dance. In their newest work, RETROFIT: a new age, they consider when and how dance slips into ‘something else’.

This site-specific immersive work, created for St. Mark’s Church’s architecture and surrounds, imagines dance as “an everyday ritual, the body as a prism and the audience as a dream,” in their words. Through an adaptive system of choices, relational structures, and material constructions, a group of long-standing and new collaborators (Morgan Amirah Burns, Savannah Gaillard, Jennifer Gonzalez, Eleanor Hullihan, Cori Kresge, Rashaun Mitchell, Mina Nishimura, and Silas Riener) build a world for collective action and transformation.

Audience members are invited to bring clothing items to be decorated + adorned with images of dancers performing, and there will also be unique pre-made upcycled pieces for sale. Designs provided by Otherwild, and a portion of the proceeds will be donated to Housing Works. Housing Works provides lifesaving healthcare, job-training, and housing to those living with affected by AIDS and those without access to quality housing, in our community.

Accessibility & Covid Safety at Danspace:
*Proof of vaccination with 1st booster and mask required for entry.*
Visit our Accessibility Info page & Covid Safety page for more information and guidelines for attending performances and events our venue.

Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener are New York-based dance artists. Their ongoing work involves the building of collaborative worlds through improvisational techniques, digital technologies, and material construction. Together they have been artists-in-residence at LMCC, Mt Tremper Arts, pieter, Jacob’s Pillow, New York City Center, The Watermill Center, MANCC, Headlands Center for the Arts, BOFFO, New York City Center, The Center for Ballet and the Arts, and Baryshnikov Arts Center. Their work has been commissioned by Danspace Project, Madison Square Park, The Joyce Theater, BAM/Next Wave, The Barbican, EMPAC, The Walker Art Center, MCA Chicago, REDCAT, The Wexner, On The Boards, The LAB, Marfa Sounding, Culture Summit Abu Dhabi, SFMOMA, and MoMA PS1.

Danspace
Project

Apr 2022

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