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 mayfield brooks, Silas Riener, Angie Pittman, and a DJ set by Ali Rosa-Salas and Nazuk Kochhar.

Video artists are: 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, 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!

Before you visit:

Accessibility at Danspace Project
Covid Safety at Danspace Project

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

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.

Ayano Elson fuses elements like kumi odori (a pre-colonial dance form from the Ryukyu Islands in what is now Japan) with 20th-century techniques, such as those of Cunningham and Graham, aiming to blur the lines between sound and movement, artistic and ancestral inheritances. Part Song/Immortal Life 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 Elson, Matt Evans, Amelia Heintzelman, Zosha Warpeha, Leo Chang, Evan Ray Suzuki, and Jade Manns 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 and Jamal K. White. 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.

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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