Photo: Kota Yamazaki.

Mina Nishimura: Mapping a Forest while Searching for an Opposite Term of Exorcist

Thursday, November 3 at 7:30pm
Friday, November 4 at 7:30pm
Saturday, November 5 at 7:30pm

Please check back soon for more information regarding accessibility.

A new work by Mina Nishimura, performed by Emma Rose Brown, David Guzman, Sabrina Leira, Stuart B Meyers, Mina Nishimura, Glenn Potter-Takata, Evan Ray Suzuki, and Jace Weyant, with Music Composed by Kenta Nagai

By conversing with peripheral spaces and invisible inhabitants through specific physical modalities, Nishimura continues to sketch out an alternate dimension of St. Mark’s Church, where “multiple energies, traits, memories, and identities are fluidly bubbling up and disappearing.”

Explains Nishimura, “I’ve also been furthering my relationship to Buddhism-based concepts of ‘emptiness (or 空 kuu)’ and ‘no-mind (or Mushin無心)’ through creation of this work as a fluid zone of potentiality, which welcome, embrace and internalize any ‘arrivals’ from outside our known territory.”

Danspace will partner with APAP’s Arts Forward project to provide Nishimura an additional residency in Danspace’s Sanctuary in September. During this time, unannounced pop-up performances will wander out to random public spaces across the city: a subway corridor, a parking lot, a residential street, and the space around St. Mark’s, expanding an invisible web of searching bodies.

The development of Mapping a Forest while Searching for an Opposite Term of Exorcist was supported, in part, by Danspace Project’s Renewal Residency program, residency programs at Topaz Arts and Bennington College, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, and a Creation Grant from Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

Download the performance program

Before you visit:

Accessibility at Danspace Project
Covid Safety at Danspace Project

Mina Nishimura, originally from Tokyo, was introduced to butoh and improvisational dance through Kota Yamazaki, and studied at Merce Cunningham Studio in NYC. Buddhism-influenced concepts and beliefs are reflected across her somatic, performance and choreographic practices. She has been performing and collaborating with a number of groundbreaking artists, in the most recent years, such as Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener, Yasuko Yokoshi, Jasperse, Dean Moss, Vicky Shick, Neil Greenberg, and SIA for her Saturday Night Live performance. Nishimura’s choreographic works have been commissioned by NYU Skirball Center, Danspace Project, Gibney Dance, Mount Tremper Arts Center, Dance Theater Workshop, UC Davis, Sarah Lawrence College among other organizations. Nishimura is a recipient of Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists 2019, and is the 2021-22 Renewal Residency Artist at Danspace Project. She completed the MFA Fellowship at Bennington College in 2021, and currently teaches at the school. Nishimura also is a member of the curatorial artist collective, whenever wherever festival, in Tokyo. minanishimuradance.com

Photo: Alfonso Castro.

Christopher “Unpezverde” Núñez: The Circle or Prophetic Dream

Thursday, November 17 at 7:30pm
Friday, November 18 at 7:30pm
Saturday, November 19 at 7:30pm

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Click here to download the performance program
Click here to download the audio description script

Accessibility: Spanglish, Spanish and English poetic and bimodal Audio Description (AD) is embedded in the choreographic work. Audio Descripción bimodal y en Spanglish, español e inglés poético está incrustado en el trabajo coreográfico.

American Sign Language (ASL) will be provided on Thursday, November 17. Sign Language service is bilingual, bicultural, and bimodal. The interpreter will navigate and interpret spoken English and spoken Spanish into American Sign Language (ASL). El lenguaje de señas americano (ASL) se brindará el jueves 17 de noviembre. El servicio de lenguaje de señas es bilingüe, bicultural y bimodal. El intérprete navegará e interpretará el inglés hablado y el español hablado al lenguaje de señas americano (ASL)

Christopher “Unpezverde” Núñez is a Visually Impaired Choreographer and Disability Advocate expanding Audio Description as an art form.

The Circle or Prophetic Dream is an anthropological research on how the body and sound inhabit social space as new forms of nomadism, in the midst of the current international migration crisis caused by displacement, climate change and land appropriation. Núñez and collaborators excavate between historical facts and genetic memory linked to the natural (indigenous) people of the Central American Atlantic Coast, the political and social conflicts resulting from the long and chaotic process of colonization, which culminated in forced migration or practice of nomadism by several groups.

Núñez and sound designer Alfonso Castro are developing an acoustic practice that regenerates the cells of the dancers; particularly Black, indigenous, disabled, and immigrant dancers who carry intergenerational fatigue. Set and Costume Designer, Branden Charles Wallace, takes inspiration from the circle as a cultural, ancestral, and mystical symbol that has captivated the human imagination through time.

Collaborators include Alfonso Castro, Marielys Burgos Meléndez, Rafael Cañals, and Branden Charles Wallace.

Before you visit:

Accessibility at Danspace Project
Covid Safety at Danspace Project

(b. Costa Rica, Nicaraguan descent) Christopher “Unpezverde” Núñez is a Visually Impaired choreographer and Disability advocate based in NYC. Núñez is a Princeton University Arts Fellow, a Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art Fellow and is an FCA two-time Emergency Grant recipient. His performances have been presented by The Joyce Theater, The Brooklyn Museum, The Kitchen, Danspace Project, Movement Research at The Judson Church, The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, CUE Art Foundation, among others. He has held residencies at Danspace Project, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), The Kitchen, Movement Research and Center for Performance Research. In 2020, Núñez was invited by the NYC Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs to share his story as disabled and formally undocumented during Immigrant Heritage Week. Núñez received his green card in 2018 and continues to be an advocate for the rights of undocumented disabled immigrants.

Photo: Ian Douglas.

Renewal Residency: mayfield brooks

Danspace is pleased to continue Renewal Residencies in 2022-2023 with a new cohort of artists: mayfield brooks, Andros Zins-Browne, Yo-Yo Lin, and Ogemdi Ude.

Each artist will receive two weeks of residency time in the sanctuary at St. Mark’s Church, a generous artist fee, and stipends for research in racial equity and accessibility. The artists will have access to curatorial support and technical assistance throughout the year, as well as opportunities to connect with one another, contribute to Danspace’s online Journal, and participate in a DraftWork work-in-progress showing.

Renewal Residencies emphasize recuperation time to create work without the immediate pressure of production, encouraging connection to: creative process and artistic research; collaborators and fellow artists; and to the Danspace Project community.

Renewal Residencies are not open to the public.

mayfield brooks is a movement based performance artist, vocalist, urban farmer, writer, and wanderer based in Lenapehoking also known as Brooklyn, New York. They are the 2021 recipient of the Merce Cunningham Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, their dance film, Whale Fall, was recently nominated for a 2021 Bessie Award, and they will be a 2022-23 Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University. brooks is an international teacher and performer whose entire body of work arises from their life/art/movement practice, Improvising While Black.

Danspace
Project

Nov 2022

3–5