Renewal Residencies: Christopher “Unpezverde” Núñez
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.
Christopher “Unpezverde” Núñez is a Visually Impaired Choreographer and Accessibility Consultant with an interest in expanding audio description as an artistic medium.
“While traditional approaches to audio description involve a sighted person describing the dancers’ actions for a visually impaired audience, I became interested in performing the audio description myself as I performed. Rather than describing what a sighted person would see, my audio description centered my own low-vision perspective. I use my own voice as a tool to highlight my cultural, gender and disability identities that are audible in my speech, my accent, my word choice and my bilingualism,” he writes.
“For my Renewal Residency, I am interested in how the physical, emotional and spiritual processes of dance are intimately interconnected to our ancestral memory and how it informs audio description practices. As collaborators in this process, I have invited the artists, researchers and disability activists Krishna Washnburn, Marielys Burgos Melendez, and Michelle Mantioni, who will contribute from their experience in immigration, gender, and disability experiences.”
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!
(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 New Dance Alliance, Battery Dance, The Kitchen, Center for Performance Research and Movement Research (2020-2021 Mertz Gilmore Foundation Artist-in-Residence). 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 undocumented, disabled and queer immigrants. He holds a BFA in Science in Performing Arts from the National University of Costa Rica.
