Events – Danspace Project
Photos by Rachel Keane

OO-GA-LA Reimagined (The Fred Holland and Ishmael Houston-Jones 1983 Duet Danced into the 21st Century)

Thursday, January 8 | 7PM
Friday, January 9 | 7PM
Saturday, January 10 | 7PM


Co-presented with Live Artery | New York Live Arts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ishmael Houston-Jones presents OO-GA-LA Reimagined (The Fred Holland and Ishmael Houston-Jones 1983 Duet Danced into the 21st Century). The 1983 Danspace Project festival Contact at 10th and 2nd celebrated the 11th year that Steve Paxton named the form “Contact Improvisation.” Fred Holland and Ishmael Houston-Jones were invited to perform a duet on the Partners Program alongside Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith, and more. Considering themselves to be the Black Punks of Contact Improv, Holland and Houston-Jones decided to perform their improvised duet by doing everything wrong. As part of Danspace’s 50th anniversary in 2025, the piece was reimagined by three extraordinary young dancers of color—Stephanie Hewett, Kris Lee, and AJ Wilmore—who were invited by Houston-Jones to Queer the duet and bring it to a new generation.


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Before you visit:

Accessibility at Danspace Project
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The dynamic Live Artery festival at New York Live Arts is one of NYC’s most attended dance-specific platforms during the annual presenter conference season, featuring resident commissioned artists and curated guests. New York Live Arts, guided by the leadership of visionary artist Bill T. Jones, collaborates with boundary pushing artists, advocates for their vision, and fortifies a creative future.

Ishmael Houston-Jones: choreographer, author, performer, teacher, and curator. His improvised dance and text work has been performed world-wide. He and Fred Holland shared a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Cowboys, Dreams and Ladders. He was awarded his second “Bessie” Award for the revival of THEM, his 1985/86 collaboration with writer Dennis Cooper and composer Chris Cochrane and a third for Variations on Themes from Lost and Found… He curated Platform 2012: Parallels and co-curated with Will Rawls Platform 2016: Lost & Found, both at Danspace Project. Houston-Jones’ work has been supported by a 2013 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Artists Award, a 2015 Doris Duke Impact Award, a 2016 Herb Alpert Award, a 2021 USA Artist Award and a 2022 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.

Fred Holland (1951 – 2016) received a 1973 Bachelor of Fine Arts from Columbus College of Art and Design, Columbus, Ohio. After that, he had a one-man exhibition of his paintings at the Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia where he met dancers Terry Fox and Ishmael Houston-Jones who were performing there. Intrigued by their improvisations he took his first dance classes with them. Houston-Jones introduced him to the emerging practice of Contact Improvisation and they both became members of the Philadelphia Contact Collective. Upon moving to New York, Holland began combining his dance practice with his visual arts working alongside Houston-Jones, with whom he shared their 1984 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Cowboys, Dreams and Ladders.

Stephanie Hewett is a queer Afro-Caribbean multidisciplinary artist from Munsee Lenape land (Bronx, New York). She is a graduate of Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and the Performing Arts in New York City and has studied at the Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London. She holds an MFA in Dance Studies and works with movement and electronic music production to decode ancestral wisdom and knowledge stored in the body. Hewett DJs and produces electronic music under the moniker Madre Guía, and experiments with sound to explore polyrhythmic potentialities of intergenerational healing. She is a member of RUPTURE, a bicoastal performance collective examining Black gatherings that center collective rest, folk games, somatic experimentation, and the creation of communal dance spaces as spiritual technologies and practices of resistance and refusal.

Kris Lee (she/they) is a New York based dancer/performer and home chef. She received her BFA in Dance from University of the Arts in 2019. Kris was a member of the Stephen Petronio Company (2021-22) and has toured with nora chipaumire (2019-20). She was one of the creators and performers for high noon (2022), the interdisciplinary performance work produced by Ninth Planet. Most recently they have performed in Remains Persist (2022) & Out of and Into: Plot (2023) By Moriah Evans; Variations on Themes from Lost and Found: Scenes from a Life and other works by John Bernd (reprisal) by Ishmael Houston-Jones & Miguel Gutierrez (2023); duel c (2023) & duel H (2024) by Andros Zins-Browne. They also had the pleasure of being a part of Impulstanz’ Danceweb scholarship program mentored by Isabel Lewis (2024).

Born and raised in Philadelphia, AJ Wilmore is an artist and performer who delves into storytelling, identity, and the complexities of black familial relationships. She excavates her innermost desires while grappling with questions of visibility, intimacy, and selfhood. Wilmore graduated from The University of the Arts, where she honed her craft in movement investigation and approaches. Her recent performances include ‘ADAKU’ by Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born at BAM’s 2023 Next Wave Festival and Joan Jonas’s ‘Mirror Piece I and II’ at MoMA. Driven by a practice of making love to her fears, Wilmore investigates the stakes, texture, and vulnerability of her social and sexual life.

Photo by Ianne Kenfack

Tiran Willemse: Untitled (Nostalgia: Act 3)

Friday, January 23 | 7:30PM
Saturday, January 24 | 7:30PM


Danspace in collaboration with Swiss Institute is pleased to present Untitled (Nostalgia: Act 3) by artist and choreographer Tiran Willemse. The performance is presented on the occasion of Willemse’s first U.S. solo exhibition, Dweller, at Swiss Institute. In Untitled (Nostalgia: Act 3), Willemse invokes multiple histories of dance, blending the 19th century classical ballet, Giselle, with Kuduro, a dance style tied to a period of civil unrest in Angola in the 1980s, and Alanta, a popular Nigerian dance from the late 2000s. The ghost story of Giselle becomes the narrative vehicle through which past selves, ancestral spirits, repressed histories, and other entities spectrally emerge to reclaim Willemse’s body. Untitled (Nostalgia: Act 3) is an exercise and an exorcism, an evocation of Black experience within European contexts, and a thinly veiled masquerade of contemporary absurdities.


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Before you visit:

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Tiran Willemse was born in South Africa and lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland. Recent performances have been presented at Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts, Lausanne; Museo MACRO, Rome; Serralves Museum, Porto; Roskilde Festival, Roskilde; and Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki. Willemse won the Swiss Performance Prize in 2023.

Photo of Wendy Osserman by Steven Pisano | Photo of Concetta Abbate by Alice Teeple | Photo of Cori Kresge

Off-Season: Wendy Osserman Dance Company, Concetta Abbate and Cori Kresge present ECHO GLASS

Thursday, February 5 | 7:30PM
Friday, February 6 | 7:30PM
Saturday, February 7 | 7:30PM

Echo Glass

Concetta Abbate‘s “Echo Glass” compositions are written for vocal quartet. They are an exploration of how partially sighted individuals experience the world through hearing and vibrational touch as their primary senses. The compositional approach was inspired by Concetta’s personal experience of being born with a visual impairment, and echolocation techniques utilized by blind and partially sighted individuals to navigate space. The piece will be sung by the composer themself in collaboration with vocalists Jimmy Kraft, Judette Elliston and Damon Hankoff.

As a music and dance performance choreographed by Wendy Osserman in collaboration with dancers Cori Kresge and Hui Wang Zhang, the piece further considers the ways we might communicate with the natural world including plants, trees and celestial bodies through re-imagining ideas about sense perception.


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All general admission tickets are offered at a sliding scale $20–$100, pay what you can. Please consider that ticket sales support the artist and production costs. Thank you!


Before you visit:

Accessibility at Danspace Project
Covid Safety at Danspace Project

Concetta Abbate (www.concettabbate.com)  is a violinist, music composer, death doula and disability advocate residing in NYC. She has won awards and residencies from New Music USA, the Rauschenberg Foundation, NYFA and SWALE Environmental Arts on Governors Island.

Wendy Osserman, a New Yorker, has studied many dance forms including modern dance with Martha Graham, José Limón, Hanya Holm. Osserman performed as soloist with Valerie Bettis, Kei Takei, Alice Condodina, Frances Alenikoff and the Hellenic Chorodrama. She founded Wendy Osserman Dance Company in 1976 and performed nationally and internationally. Osserman has choreographed works in collaboration with outstanding dancers, visual artists and composers. She interprets current events an dhistory with drama and humor and has been presented in dance venues including 92nd Street Y, Joe’s Pub, BAC, Dixon Place, Joyce SoHo, Symphony Space, La MaMa, and Theater for the New City. www.wodance.org

Cori Kresge is a NYC based dance artist, licensed massage therapist, writer, and teacher. She has been a member of José Navas/Compagnie Flak, Stephen Petronio Company, the Merce Cunningham Repertory Understudy Group, and is an authorized teacher of Cunningham technique. She currently collaborates and performs with various artists including Rashaun Mitchell+Silas Riener, Liz Magic Laser, Rebecca Lazier, Sarah Skaggs, Wendy Osserman, and Esmé Boyce. She is the author of two poetry collections, isn’t devotion (No, Dear/Small Anchor first chapbook prize, 2019) and Combustion Suite (Bored Wolves, 2023). In 2020 she founded Play With Matches Workshop, pairing artists of different disciplines together to co-mentor one another.

Hui Wang Zhang was born in Jiujiang, China and graduated from the Beijing Dance Academy in 2012. He was a principal dancer with the China Opera and Dance Drama Company in Beijing before getting a full scholarship to pursue his M.F.A in modern dance performance and choreography at the University of Utah. He received his first choreography commission from Paul Reynolds, curator of the Salt Lake City Library to present his original work at their much-praised 12 Minutes Max program in 2017. He has since presented his works at venues in NYC and abroad. He was a member of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company from 2017-2026. You are welcome to learn more about his work at www.huiwangzhang.com 

Skip La Plante invents, builds, composes for, performs on and teaches with musical instruments built from trash and found objects. His collection of instruments explore a variety of alternative materials and tuning systems. He has led workshops and performances about acoustics in hundreds of NYC schools. He has worked collaboratively with Wendy Osserman, Joseph Chaikin, Sam Shepard, Paul Simon, Olympia Dukakis. He has performed on his original musical instruments at The Smithsonian Institution, PS1, New Music America, American Festival of Microtonal Music, Materials For The Arts, and Carnegie Hall.

Judette Elliston (they/she) is a Haitian-Canadian vocalist and composer whose work amplifies our inner worlds, exploring the emotional and ancestral histories that reverberate within. Elliston’s sound exists at the intersection of jazz, singer-songwriter, and Haitian folkloric traditions. In 2024, Elliston released their debut EP Tiny, a collection of chamber jazz songs about intergenerational healing and the beauty of chosen family. Notable performances have taken place at Dizzy’s Club (USA), Smalls Jazz Club (USA), Greenwood Cemetery Catacombs (USA), Koncertkirken (DK), PRiMi (DK), MAI/SON (CAN) and The Victoria Jazz Festival (CAN). 

Jimmy Kraft is a vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and composer from the San Francisco Bay Area whose work spans jazz, original music, and contemporary performance. Now based in New York City, he appears regularly throughout the city as both a performer and arranger, bringing a sharp musical curiosity and a collaborative spirit to every project. A dedicated educator as well, Jimmy approaches teaching with the same creativity he brings to the stage. After Echo Glass, you can catch him live the second Saturday of each month at Good Judy in Park Slope, presenting fresh sets of standards, bespoke arrangements, and original tunes.

Damon Hankoff is a multifarious musician. Primarily a film composer, he also performs IRL in a wide variety of settings: choirs, experimental-improvisational ensembles, early music consorts, straight-ahead singer-songwriter bands, and his own Out of Sight of Land, an ever-evolving project that draws on all these. He has trained hard on jazz piano and choral singing, but looks ever forward towards the mystery.

Photo by Hannah Mayfield

Off-Season: Amanda Krische present Double Blade

Friday, February 27 | 7:30PM
Saturday, February 28 | 7:30PM

There are some things that happen to you where you think: “Surely, any moment now, someone is going to walk up behind me, tap me on the shoulder, apologize for the inconvenience, and guide me back home to my real life.” Double Blade is an interdisciplinary dance-theater work about the events that come before and after that moment and other such moments, about the things that are hidden, and about the stories we tell to make sense of what cannot be explained.


BUY TICKETS

All general admission tickets are offered at a sliding scale $20–$100, pay what you can. Please consider that ticket sales support the artist and production costs. Thank you!


Before you visit:

Accessibility at Danspace Project
Covid Safety at Danspace Project

Amanda Krische is a choreographer, writer, educator, and herbalist creating performance experiences and movement workshops focused on memory, ritual, and healing in individual, social, and environmental bodies. She has premiered work at such venues as the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, The Public Theater, and The Kitchen and has been supported by YoungArts, New York State Council for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Grace Farms Foundation, and the Jerome Foundation. She has held residencies at Omi International Arts Center, Keshet, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Arts Center, Perelman Arts Center, Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, and the Camargo Foundation. She served on faculty in the dance department at LaGuardia H.S., and has been a guest lecturer at Harvard, NYU, and Cooper Union. She has also developed movement curriculum and performance in collaboration with the Louis Armstrong House Museum and the Pina Bausch Foundation. She is currently an MA Candidate in the Performance Studies Department at NYU, and is a U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts.