Fall 2021 at Danspace Project

Dear Friends,

This fall at Danspace Project, we offer space for growth and opportunities for generative encounters to emerge.

On Saturday, September 25, A Ritual of Return: a free, intimate, outdoor gathering in the Gardens at St. Mark’s Church, marks the first public event at our home in the East Village since March, 2020, with offerings by artists devynn emory, Samita Sinha, and Mina Nishimura, and music mixed by artist and DJ JD Samson. Space is very limited! RSVP now!

We are pleased to introduce our inaugural Renewal Residency artists: Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, Mina Nishimura, Christopher “Unpezverde” Núñez, and Gillian Walsh. Renewal Residencies are a response to the needs of artists this year, offering year-long recuperative time and space to revitalize creative processes and to connect with collaborators, fellow artists, and the Danspace Project community.

Our digital DraftWork series, curated by Ishmael Houston-Jones, continues with work in various stages of development by choreographers Kristel Baldoz & Anh Voh and Marguerite Hemmings and Kayla Hamilton and Julie Mayo. These performances are followed by live conversations and Q&A with the artists and Houston-Jones.

In the spirit of collective research, Danspace continues this fall with a group of 2021-2022 Artist Research Fellows: devynn emory, Okwui Okpokwasili, Samita Sinha, and David Thomson, who will provide feedback informing organizational change and curatorial development.

Journal Issue 13: Recuperation & Renewal will include contributions from the fall resident artists, research fellows, and more, as well as published materials from one looped year but the lake, a project guest curated by NYC-based writer and teacher, Asiya Wadud featuring exchanges between Jesse Darling and devynn emory, Tarik Kiswansan and Asiya Wadud, and Angie Pittman and Anaïs Maviel. Experience moments from these rich exchanges throughout the fall right here.

Love,

Danspace Project

Renewal Residencies: Mina Nishimura

This year-long residency program will take place at Danspace Project’s home at St. Mark’s Church beginning in August 2021. The residencies will continue all year with public engagement, artistic dialogue, research, and space support.

Mina Nishimura’s Bladder Inn (and X, Y, Z, W), presented by Danspace Project in 2018, invited audiences and performers to consider peripheral spaces of architecture, perception, and sound specific to the architecture of Danspace Project’s home at St. Mark’s Church. While in-residence, she will be working on a new piece, currently titled Mapping a Forest while Searching for an Opposite Term of Exorcist.

“Exploring an anarchic body, which pierces holes in the wholeness of a thing, I would like to re-imagine a way of organizing a body and a space where multiple energies, traits, memories, and identities are fluidly bubbling up and disappearing,” writes Nishimura. “During my Renewal Residency, I will re-imagine, sketch, compose, and build a new visual landscape using objects, fabrics, drawings, and bodies at St. Mark’s Church.”

“I would like to see how my movement practice of an anarchic body meets a re-imagined landscape. After spending some time alone in the space, a few other dancers will be invited for the exploration.” Nishimura will invite a writer and a photographer to document and map the new landscape and ever-evolving and disappearing process during her residency.

The inaugural 2021-2022 Renewal Residency artists are Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, Mina Nishimura, Christopher “Unpezverde” Núñez and Gillian Walsh. This open and flexible program is an urgent and necessary response to the needs of these artists this year. Renewal Residencies emphasize: recuperation time to create work without the immediate pressure of production; renewed connection to creative process and artistic research; renewed connection to collaborators and fellow artists; and renewed connection to the Danspace Project community. Renewal Residencies attempt to make up for vital time lost, supporting the development of new work in dance.

Each artist will be invited to contribute to Danspace’s online Journal and to participate in Danspace’s virtual Conversations Without Walls series. Visit danspaceproject.org for more info and updates!

A Ritual of Return

*This event is now sold out. Due to limited capacity and Covid restrictions, we won’t be taking a wait list for this event. We hope there are more opportunities to see you at Danspace in the near future!*

RSVP HERE

Due to limited capacity we ask that you only RSVP if you’re planning to attend!

Proof of vaccination is required for attendance of anyone 12 years of age or older. Please show documentation at the door. Face coverings must be worn. Questions? Ben@danspaceproject.org.

Location: The Gardens at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, 131 East 10th Street (at 2nd Avenue), New York, NY. Please enter the Church on 11th Street.

Danspace Project invites you to an intimate celebration in the gardens of St. Mark’s Church, marking the first public event at our home in the East Village since March, 2020.

This gathering will feature offerings by artists devynn emory, Samita Sinha, and Mina Nishimura, and music mixed by musician and DJ JD Samson. devynn emory is a mixed Lenape/Blackfoot transgender choreographer, dance artist, bodyworker, ceremonial guide, acute care and hospice nurse working as a COVID-19 nurse in NYC. Last winter, Danspace premiered emory’s film deadbird and accompanying public grief altar at Prospect Park in Brooklyn in March, 2021. Artist and composer Samita Sinha was a 2020 Kin & Care Research Fellow, and in her work, investigates origins of voice, synthesizing 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 monthly Breathing Room vocal sessions provided Danspace’s community with a virtual space to connect during the height of the pandemic. Mina Nishimura is a dance artist with an interest in the relationship between internal landscapes and external forms. Nishimura is among the 4 artists who will be in-residence at Danspace this year. JD Samson is a renowned artist, musician, songwriter, curator, producer, and DJ. A member of influential musical groups Le Tigre and MEN, song others, Samson is Assistant Arts Professor at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music.