Photo of Muna Tseng by Steven Sigoloff | Photo of Rashaun Mitchell by Amitava Sarkar | Photo of Jordan Lloyd by Whitney Browne | Photo of Douglas Dunn by Beatriz Schiller

50 Forward: “The Future Is…” Gathering

Saturday, November 2 | 3–7PM

50 Forward: “The Future Is…” Gathering

Free and open to the public with RSVP

Over the course of Danspace’s 50th year, we will be celebrating the community, artworkers, and artists that have made these 50 years so fabulous. Danspace has invited 50+ artists with special connections to Danspace to create short films in response to the prompt “The Future Is…” Artists representing all five decades, from the 1970s to the present, were invited to record a 50-second dance or performance to be featured over the course of the year at danspaceproject.org. The short films will be screened with celebratory activities around St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, including live offerings by special guests—The Whale Fall Oracle by mayfield brooks, an upcycle station by Silas Riener, line dancing by Angie Pittman, and a DJ set by Ali Rosa-Salas and Nazuk Kochhar.

SCHEDULE
3PM: Doors open

3-4PM:

The Whale Fall Oracle by mayfield brooks

Upcycle Station by Silas Riener*

Print Publications

50th Anniversary Press On Nail Sets by Emily Wong

4-5PM: Viewing a series of 50-second films by Danspace artists
5-6PM: Line Dancing with Angie Pittman
6-7PM: DJ Set by Ali Rosa-Salas and Nazuk Kochhar

*Please bring clothing items or tote bags for Silas Riener’s upcycle station! Iconic Danspace Project images and logos heat pressed onto your t-shirts, hoodies, sweats, and totes. Limited clothing and totes for sale as well.

“Danspace Project is an artist-centered organization, founded by artists, fueled by artists’ ideas, and inspired by their visions! There are hundreds of amazing artists who have graced our space over 50 years. For our 50th anniversary video project, we elected to invite 50 artists who, in addition to their artistic work, have also served Danspace in an official administrative or volunteer capacity,” writes Danspace’s Executive Director and Chief Curator Judy Hussie-Taylor. “These include artists who have served on our Board of Directors, Artists Advisory Board, Admin & Tech Staff or more recently as Research Fellows. We are grateful to all of them for their behind-the-scenes work and commitment to Danspace’s mission.”

Video artists are: Jodi Bender, Suzanne Bocanegra, Jonah Bokaer Choreography, Andros Zins-Browne, Wally Cardona, Peggy Cheng, Barbara Dilley, maura nguyen donohue, David Dorfman, DD Dorvillier, Douglas Dunn, Ursula Eagly, Hilary Easton, devynn emory, Ain Gordon, Miguel Gutierrez, Trajal Harrell, Deborah Hay, Jasmine Hearn, Cynthia Hedstrom, Abby Harris Holmes, John Jasperse, Benjamin Akio Kimitch, jaamil olawale kosoko, Tendayi Kuumba, Iréne Hultman Monti, Heidi Latsky, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, Juliette Mapp, Bebe Miller, Rashaun Mitchell, Carol Mullins, Benedict Nguyen, Mina Nishimura, Christopher “Unpezverde” Núñez, Tere O’Connor, Okwui Okpokwasili & Peter Born, Eiko Otake, David Parker, Angie Pittman, Yvonne Rainer, Melinda Ring, Alice Sheppard, Sarah Skaggs, Tatyana Tenenbaum, David Thomson, Nora Raine Thompson, Muna Tseng, Niko Tsocanos, Donna Uchizono, Ogemdi Ude, Larissa Velez- Jackson, Asiya Wadud, Christopher Williams, Reggie Wilson, Nami Yamamoto, and more!

View the digital program

Before you visit:

Accessibility at Danspace Project
Covid Safety at Danspace Project

Video still from Vespers (1982), with Linda Gibbs and Bebe Miller

Bebe Miller Company: Open Rehearsal of Vespers, Reimagined (2025)

Danspace Project hosts an open rehearsal of Bebe Miller Company’s reimagined performance of Vespers (1982), to be performed this Spring 2025 as part of Danspace Project’s 50th Anniversary year of programming. Performers include: Chloe London, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Bria Bacon, Stacy Matthew Spence, and Jasmine Hearn. Bebe Miller’s Vespers premiered at Danspace Project in 1982 as part of the seminal Parallels, a series curated by Ishmael Houston-Jones.

The open rehearsal is free to RSVP, limited RSVPs available.

Bebe Miller’s vision of dance and performance resides in her faith in the moving body as a record of thought, experience and sheer beauty. She has collaborated with artists, composers, writers, and designers, along with the dancers who share her studio practice and from whom she’s learned what dancing can reveal. A native New Yorker, she formed Bebe Miller Company in 1985. Since then, the Company has been commissioned by Brooklyn Academy of Music’s NEXT WAVE Festival, The Joyce Theater, Wexner Center for the Arts, On The Boards, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, Theater Artaud, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Bates Dance Festival, Dance Theater Workshop, New York Live Arts and Danspace Project, and has performed worldwide. The Company’s work encompasses choreography, writing and film, along with digital archive products that share their creative practice. Bebe is a Professor Emerita at Ohio State University, and though her home is in Columbus, OH she is spending a year in a forest on Vashon Island, WA.

Photo of Ayano Elson by Kayhl Cooper

Ayano Elson + Wendell Gray II

A shared evening

Thursday, November 21 | 7:30PM
Friday, November 22 | 7:30PM
Saturday, November 23 | 7:30PM

Open Dress Rehearsal*
Tuesday, November 19 | 7:30PM

A shared evening of new work by two NYC-based dancers, choreographers, and educators, Ayano Elson and Wendell Gray II. Both artists have recently shown work-in-development in Danspace’s DraftWork series.

Part Song/Immortal Life by Ayano Elson draws on the community-centered participatory design text A Pattern Language (Christopher Alexander, Murray Silverstein, and Sara Ishikawa 1977). “I am dancing in the tension between public site and individual desire,” Elson writes. Performers Amelia Heintzelman, Jade Manns, and evan ray suzuki; composer Matt Evans; and musicians Leo Chang, Tristan Kasten-Krause, and Zosha Warpeha treat the space as a site of surveillance—disappearing, disguising, revealing, and tracking the body within the architecture of the church and processing sensations of seduction, communion, speculation, and violence.

Wendell Gray II has performed at Danspace in the Bessie-nominated work of Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, Tere O’Connor, and with choreographers in the contemporary experimental canon such as Miguel Gutierrez, Joanna Kotze, and Kevin Beasley. His new work in the port’s mouth is comprised of a solo assisted by a duet, performed by Gray, Jamal K. White, and Jordan Demetrius Lloyd. Gray looks to externally express interior streams of consciousness inside a Black experience. “Time happens all at once where the past invades the present to make the future…At once I am many and I’m never alone,” he explains. “Using dance as a mode of processing, remembering, and dreaming, the work swims through a multitude of embodiments: some being manifestations of the imaginary and some being messages from the ancestors.”

*About Open Dress Rehearsal: Tuesday evening’s dress rehearsal will be free with RSVP and open to the public at limited-capacity. Open dress rehearsals are a mask-required, community-minded program prioritizing our immunocompromised and low-income audiences. Staff and audiences will be required to wear masks (N95 or KN95) and performing artists (if unmasked) will be required to test for COVID-19 (rapid tests provided by Danspace Project).

Tickets
support Danspace’s 50th anniversary!

$10 Members
$20 Regular Price
$30 A little extra
$40 A little more!
$50 Celebrating 50 years!
$100 Here’s to the next 50!

PURCHASE TICKETS

Before you visit:

Accessibility at Danspace Project
Covid Safety at Danspace Project

Ayano Elson is an Okinawan-American dancer and choreographer based in New York City. She was born in Okinawa, a small island colonized by Japan in 1879 and occupied by the United States from 1945–1972. She works with improvisation, archival materials, and interdisciplinary collaboration to make dance performances. Her choreographic practice critically investigates power and interpretation as embedded in contemporary Western dance.

Her performances have been presented by Abrons Arts Center, AUNTS, 411 Kent, CPR – Center for Performance Research, The Chocolate Factory, Danspace Project, Gibney Dance, ISSUE Project Room, Knockdown Center, Movement Research, PAGEANT, and Roulette, among others. She has held artist residencies at Center for Performance Research and Abrons Arts Center (2022), Lower Manhattan Cultural Center and ArtCake (2021), and Movement Research Van Lier Emerging Artist of Color Fellow (2018) and Gibney Dance (2015). She has received funding support from Foundation for Contemporary Arts and Mertz Gilmore Foundation. She has performed in works by Laurie Berg, Kim Brandt, Jesi Cook, Milka Djordjevich, Simone Forti, Niall Jones, and Alexa West at museums, galleries, and theaters in Chicago, Los Angeles, and NYC. ayanoelson.com

Wendell Gray II is a dance artist, choreographer, and educator currently based in Brooklyn, NY, situated on Lenapehoking land. Wendell’s artistic journey has led him to perform with choreographers and artists including Miguel Gutierrez, Tere O’Connor, Joanna Kotze, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, Pavel Zustiak, Christal Brown, J. Bouey, and Kevin Beasley, among many others. Wendell’s original choreographic works have been shown at venues such as PAGEANT, Draftwork at Dancespace, Coffey Street Studios, Kinosaito Arts Center, Gibney, University of the Arts, Movement Research at Judson Church, Center for Performance Research, Chez Bushwick, and Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance. Wendell is a 2024-2025 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence. He has additionally been supported by residency programs, including Sighlines Dance Festival (2023), STUFFED Artist in Residence at Judson Church (2021), Work Up 6.0 Artist at Gibney (2020), and Chez Bushwick (2017). He is also currently an adjunct professor of Dance at Sarah Lawrence College and additionally been a guest teacher at New York University, University of the Arts, and Dancewave among others. Wendell is an alumnus of the University of the Arts, where he graduated with a BFA in Dance under the direction of Donna Faye Burchfield. Originally hailing from Atlanta, GA, his artistic journey has been enriched by his upbringing in the performing arts. For more, visit wenings.com

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