Danspace
Project

St. Mark’s Church
131 East 10th St.
New York, NY 10003
Phone (212) 674-8112
info@danspaceproject.org
Events – Danspace Project

Dec 2020

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Frame from “Untitled (perfect human)”

Dean Moss: Untitled (perfect human) screening and artist talk with Young Jean Lee

Click here to watch the film.

The film will be available for viewing until December 22, 2020.

Screening and Artist Talk with Young Jean Lee | Tuesday, December 1, 8pm ET

A link to the December 1 screening will be sent to registrants in advance of the screening. Directly following the screening, viewers will be invited to a Zoom where the conversation and Q&A will take place. Though not required, all are invited to turn on their cameras for the Zoom portion.

Following the livestream, the film will be available for viewing at danspaceproject.org from December 2-22.

Untitled (perfect human) is a mesmerizing digital film by interdisciplinary choreographer and video artist, Dean Moss. Referencing Jørgen Leth’s 1967 Danish cult film, The Perfect Human, Moss reimagines Leth’s “empty” white space as a seductive kaleidoscopic world of flesh folding in on itself, offering wry observations of race, materialism, and spirituality.

On December 1, playwright, director, and filmmaker, Young Jean Lee, will join Moss for a screening of this new work. Building on their long standing artistic relationship they will engage in a live discussion of the film’s making, sharing insights on how their relationship grew from mentorship to collaboration, plus take questions from the audience.


Accessibility: Please email seta@danspaceproject.org to request CART live captioning or any other access requests. Requests should be submitted by November 9.

Dean Moss is an award-winning director, choreographer and media artist who makes work investigating perception and the fluidity of self. For ten years he had the great pleasure to present, facilitate and mentor some of NYC’s finest experimental artists as a curator of Dance and Performance at The Kitchen. Currently he lectures in Choreography at Princeton University and Sarah Lawrence College, plus facilitates choreographic research at Kinosaki International Art Center’s DanceCamp, near Kyoto, Japan.

Young Jean Lee has been called “the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation” by The New York Times and “one of the best experimental playwrights in America” by Time Out New York. She became the first Asian-American woman to have her play produced on Broadway with her show STRAIGHT WHITE MEN. She is currently working on a Broadway play commission for Second Stage and a screenplay commission for Cinereach.

Frame from “Untitled (perfect human)”

WATCH: Dean Moss: Untitled (perfect human)

Untitled (perfect human) is a mesmerizing digital film by interdisciplinary choreographer and video artist, Dean Moss. Referencing Jørgen Leth’s 1967 Danish cult film, The Perfect Human, Moss reimagines Leth’s “empty” white space as a seductive kaleidoscopic world of flesh folding in on itself, offering wry observations of race, materialism, and spirituality.

The live screening of Untitled (perfect human) and Artist Talk with Dean Moss & Young Jean Lee took place on December 1, 2020.

The film was available for viewing from December 2, 2020 until December 22, 2020.

Dean Moss is an award-winning director, choreographer and media artist who makes work investigating perception and the fluidity of self. For ten years he had the great pleasure to present, facilitate and mentor some of NYC’s finest experimental artists as a curator of Dance and Performance at The Kitchen. Currently he lectures in Choreography at Princeton University and Sarah Lawrence College, plus facilitates choreographic research at Kinosaki International Art Center’s DanceCamp, near Kyoto, Japan.

Young Jean Lee has been called “the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation” by The New York Times and “one of the best experimental playwrights in America” by Time Out New York. She became the first Asian-American woman to have her play produced on Broadway with her show STRAIGHT WHITE MEN. She is currently working on a Broadway play commission for Second Stage and a screenplay commission for Cinereach.

Kyle Abraham by Tatiana Willis. Taylor Stanley by Sasha Arutyunova.
Kyle Abraham by Tatiana Willis. Taylor Stanley by Sasha Arutyunova.

Conversations Without Walls: Kyle Abraham & Taylor Stanley

Livestream: Saturday, December 12, 12pm ET

RSVP HERE

WATCH ON OUR JOURNAL

YouTube link will also be sent to registrants on Saturday morning prior to the event, and will be posted on our website, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter (@DanspaceProject)

Danspace Project Program Director and Associate Curator, Benjamin Akio Kimitch, will be in conversation with Kyle Abraham, choreographer and Artistic Director of his company A.I.M, and Taylor Stanley, Principal Dancer for New York City Ballet, about the development of their collaborative friendship, beginning with the creation of Abraham’s The Runaway (2018) for New York City Ballet to their short film collaboration, Ces noms que nous portons (2020) for Lincoln Center. Footage of Ces noms que nous portons and rehearsal documentation for The Runaway will be screened. They’ll discuss their shared experiences with representation, trust, and advocating for change within dance institutions.

This conversation will explore new dimensions to Danspace’s PLATFORM 2015: Dancers, Buildings and People in the Streets, curated by Claudia La Rocco, which examined the overlapping and divergent lineages of George Balanchine, Merce Cunningham, and Judson Dance Theater. How are these lineages being embraced, subverted and/or rejected by today’s Black, brown, and queer dance artists?

The CWW digital series are pre-recorded and will be streamed on YouTube and archived on the Danspace Project online Journal. More about Conversations Without Walls


Accessibility: This program will be captioned.

Recently featured in both Kinfolk and O, The Oprah Magazine, 2018 Princess Grace Statue Award recipient and Lincoln Center Education Artist in Residence, Kyle Abraham is a 2013 MacArthur Fellow and a 2016 Doris Duke Awardee who began his dance training in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania before receiving his BFA from Purchase College and his MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Abraham is in his fifth year as a Visiting Professor in Residence at UCLA and is the Artistic Director of A.I.M, acclaimed NY-based company of dancers from various disciplines and diverse personal backgrounds. In addition to performing and developing new works for A.I.M in 2019, he also choreographed and premiered The Bystander for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Only The Lonely for Paul Taylor American Modern Dance Company and Ash, a new solo work for American Ballet Theater principle, Misty Copeland to rave reviews.  In 2011, OUT Magazine labeled Kyle Abraham as the “best and brightest creative talent to emerge in New York City in the age of Obama.” For more information please visit: abrahaminmotion.org

Taylor Stanley was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and began his dance training at the age of three at The Rock School in Pennsylvania. He attended summer programs at Miami City Ballet in 2006 and 2007 and at the School of American Ballet during the summer of 2008 before enrolling full-time at SAB in the fall of that same year. In September 2009, Stanley became an apprentice with New York City Ballet, and joined the Company as a member of the corps de ballet in September 2010. He was promoted to soloist in February 2013 and to principal dancer in May 2016. Taylor received the Mae L. Wien Award for Outstanding Promise in 2009 and was the 2011-2012 recipient of the Janice Levin Award. He performed in NYCB Soloist Troy Schumacher’s BalletCollective from 2010-2015, and has danced in various works by Andrea Miller, Jodi Melnick, Annabelle Lopez-Ochao, Liz Gerring, Pam Tanowitz, Kim Brandstrup, and Christopher Williams. Taylor has also participated in workshops with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Nederlands Dans Theater, and Batsheva Dance Company. In 2019, Taylor received a Bessie Award for “Outstanding Performance” in Kyle Abraham’s The Runaway, choreographed for NYCB in 2018. IG: taylor.g.stanley
Image from Samita Sinha’s “Voice as Matter” workshop at Centro Nacional de las Artes in Mexico City. She and a student are lying on the ground in a moment of vocal work.
Photo: Daniela Martinez and Alejandro Arce.

Samita Sinha: Breathing Room

Open to all levels!

Wednesday, September 23, 10am-1pm ET (guest facilitator: Julia Ulehla) – Sign up here
Wednesday, October 21, 10am-1pm ET (guest facilitator: Julia Ulehla) – Sign up here
Wednesday, November 18, 10am-1pm ET (guest facilitator: Okwui Okpokwasili – Sign up here
Wednesday, December 16, 10am-1pm ET (guest facilitator: Cesar Alvarez) – Sign up here

A link will be sent to registrants in advance of each session.

Admission: Sliding scale of $0-$20 per session. Participants are invited to choose what to pay based on your circumstances. We ask that you be honest with yourself and your financial situation. You are welcome to attend for FREE if that makes the most sense for you.

The series will offer an accumulation of tools, knowledge, and pathways, however there is no requirement to attend all sessions.

“Breathing Room is a virtual space to reclaim life force. To open channels through voice and body. To come together, and be apart. To feel. To sense. To listen. To listen deeper, to be heard.  To be naked. To be complicated. To be fragile. To rebel. To be sacred.”  -Samita Sinha

In this series, artist and composer, Samita Sinha, will lead participants in vocal practice, followed by in-depth conversations with guest artists and participants. Sinha will teach energy threads, or miniature compositions, adapted from Indian vocal traditions. There will be space to work in shared solitude, as well as to sound together. “Embracing the medium of technology, we will play with making vibration-formations of our collective body through the process of listening and sounding,” writes Sinha.

Each month Sinha will be joined by a guest artist who will help facilitate reflection and conversation following the sonic travels. Guests include vocalist/composer, Julia Ulehla, artist/performer, Okwui Okpokwasili, and composer/performer, Cesar Alvarez.


Accessibility: Please email seta@danspaceproject.org to request CART live captioning or any other access requests. Requests should be submitted at least three weeks ahead of any one session.

Artist and composer Samita Sinha investigates origins of voice: quantum entanglement of listening and sounding, how voice emerges from body and consciousness, and how voice is claimed and rescued from voicelessness. She synthesizes 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 sound and performance works have been commissioned by Asia Society, Performance Space 122 and Invisible Dog Art Center, Danspace, Rubin Museum, Queens Museum, and Gibney Dance, and presented by The Kitchen, Wexner Center for the Arts, REDCAT, PICA, National Sawdust and others. She has received awards from National Endowment for the Arts, Fulbright Foundation, National Performance Network, New York State Council on the Arts and the Ucross/Alpert Residency Prize, and collaborated across disciplines with artists including Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born, Ralph Lemon, Sunny Jain and Grey Mcmurray, Fiona Templeton, Daria Fain, Julia Ulehla, Robert Ashley, Dani Restack, Sunil Bald, and Aki Onda. Sinha teaches voice through many channels—in addition to private lessons and workshops, she has in recent years taught at Princeton University, Swarthmore College, Movement Research, Rubin Museum, Centro Nacional de las Artes (CENART) in Mexico City, and New York Asian Women’s Center.

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