Events – Danspace Project
Photo of Anna Thérèse Witenberg by Luis Artemis De Los Santos | Photo of Dominica Greene by Elyse Mertz

DraftWork: Anna Thérèse Witenberg + Dominica Greene

Saturday, April 5 | 3PM

Curated by Ishmael Houston-Jones, Danspace Project’s DraftWork series hosts free, informal showings of new works in varying stages of development. This afternoon features performances by Anna Thérèse Witenberg and Dominica Greene.

Showings are followed by a reception, conversation, and Q&A between the artists.


RSVP HERE


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Anna Thérèse Witenberg is a choreographer and dancer living in New York. Her first evening length show “Heat” was presented this fall at Pageant, Kestrels, and excerpts shown at Canada Gallery in conjunction with the solo exhibition by Lee Mary Manning. Her collaboration with Shade Théret called “Mal Intent”  was presented by the Lament series and staged at the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin. As a dancer, she has collaborated extensively with Maya Lee-Parritz, Isa Spector, Anna Sperber, Sarah Michelson, Joanna Kotze, and visual artist Nick Mauss, performing in their work at venues such as Whitney Museum, the Kitchen, the Walker Art Center, the Shed, American Dance Festival, Judson Memorial Church, and Abrons Art Center. She will be touring the EU this spring with choreographer Anna María Häkkinen on her commission for Perfoma. She is a Visual Arts MFA candidate at Hunter College.


Dominica Greene is a bi-racial Caribbean-American artist harnessing the elements, spirit, and womanness into an existence rooted in love, community, and regeneration. Residing on the unceded lands of the Munsee Lenape people, Greene creates conceptual, body-based art guided by her philosophy that dance is a ubiquitous energetic entity encompassing anything that is alive or in proximity to aliveness. Her work seeks to reflect nature, human and otherwise, as a way of highlighting humanity, our similarities and differences, and the stark similarities in our differences.

Dancers, Buildings and People in the Streets Reunion

Saturday, April 12 | 4–8PM

 

Danspace Project’s Platform 2015: Dancers, Buildings and People in the Streets, curated by writer and critic Claudia La Rocco, explored the poet-as-critic tradition; the overlapping dance lineages of George Balanchine, Merce Cunningham, and Judson Dance Theater; and their continued and complicated influence on choreographic practice today

As La Rocco recently noted in an email to Judy and Seta: “One thing I am remembering…is the extent to which this Platform was inspired by Danspace’s beginnings out of the Poetry Project, with the Natural History of the American Dancer approaching [poet] Larry [Fagin], and him crediting [poet/dance critic] Edwin Denby as teaching him to see. It’s a nice answer to the question of why are we remembering this Platform in particular—it sprang from 50 years ago, so fits right into your anniversary celebrations.”

This special reunion program will be co-facilitated by Claudia La Rocco and Judy Hussie-Taylor and will include reflections and conversations with many of the original artists, including Kaitlyn GillilandSilas RienerRashaun MitchellJodi MelnickJillian PeñaTroy SchumacherEmily CoatesYve Laris Cohen, and Pam Tanowitz. The day will feature excerpts from documentary footage by filmmaker Howard Silver and performances of the work of:

  • George Balanchine, performed by Sara Mearns and Tyler Angle
  • Trisha Brown Company, performed by Marc CrousillatCecily Campbell, and Jennifer Payán
  • Merce Cunningham, performed by Sienna Blaw and Morgan Amirah Burns
  • Pam Tanowitz, performed by Miriam Miller

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Film Screening and Conversation with Reggie Wilson: Some Reflections on Prayerful Platforms

Saturday, April 26 | 6:30–8:30PM

 

Danspace Project’s Platform 2017: Dancing Grounds curated by Reggie Wilson inspired an extensive Philadelphia project in 2018 which featured eight Philly choreographers at three historic churches in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia project resulted in a documentary film entitled GROUNDS THAT SHOUT!… and others merely shaking produced by Deborah Thomas, directed by Gordon Divine Asaan, and curated by Reggie Wilson. The Fist and Heel Performance Group presented a new work which premiered and was co-commissioned at Danspace Project and performed for a 2nd time at the Church of the Advocate in North Philadelphia.

As part of Danspace 50th celebration, we are revisiting Platform 2018: Dancing Platform Praying Grounds: Blackness, Churches, and Downtown Dance, which emerged from Wilson’s ongoing research into religion, dance, and race—specifically the history of our site, St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery. Wilson and a team of artists and curators researched the history of the Church, revealing its completion in 1799, the year of the New York State Gradual Emancipation Act, a fact which is now incorporated into Danspace Project’s land and site acknowledgements. St. Mark’s history is summarized in Hussie-Taylor’s essay for Wilson’s Platform. 

Soon after the Danspace Platform, Wilson was invited by Philadelphia Contemporary and Partners for Sacred Spaces to recreate a new version of his Danspace Platform at historic churches in downtown Philadelphia. Grounds that Shout! (and others merely shaking) was a series of performances in May 2019 that responded to the layered histories of Philadelphia’s religious spaces and race through contemporary dance. A documentary film captures the process of working in community, using history and choreography as a point of departure. 

This program will include reflections on the Danspace Platform in 2018 and a screening of the documentary of the 2019 Philadelphia series.


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Before you visit:

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Photo Credits: Kevin Beasley by David Schulze, Linda Brumbach by WEF, Meredith Monk by LNDW Studio

Danspace Project Gala 2025

TICKETS AVAILABLE SOON

HONORING REBEL ANGELS

Kevin Beasley Profoundly molding and mixing visual and sonic culture 

Linda Brumbach Boldly amplifying and realizing artists works around the world

Meredith Monk Conjuring and creating wonder through her voice, art, and spiritual practice

CO-CHAIRS Kristy Edmunds, Michael Kondziolka, T. Lax, and Sarah Needham

HONORARY CO-CHAIRS Ralph Lemon and Joan Jonas

HOST David Thomson

REMARKS Ralph Lemon, Anne Waldman, Kristy Edmunds, Michael Kondziolka

PERFORMERS Lucinda Childs, Jlin with Leonard Sandoval, Samora Pinderhughes with Amanda Krische, Angie Pittman, Paul Hamilton, Dwayne Brown, Lysis, Meredith Monk with Vocal Ensemble Katie Geissinger, Allison Sniffin, and more to come!

BENEFIT COMMITTEE (as of March 2025)

Kyle Abraham, Marina Abramović, Charles Atlas, Yona Backer*, Suzanne Bocanegra*, Connie Butler, Anthony Calnek*, Michelle Coffey, Molly Davies, Douglas Dunn**, David Fanger*, Susan Feder, Simone Forti, Philip Glass, Miguel Gutierrez, Kathy Halbreich, Ishmael Houston-Jones*,  Judy Hussie-Taylor*, T Lax*, Ruby Lerner, Ralph Lemon**, Melissa Levin*, Bonnie Marranca, Bebe Miller**, Rashaun Mitchell*, Polly Motley, Richard Move, Carol Mullins, Sarah Needham*, Phoebe Neville, Okwui Okpokwasili, Eiko Otake*, David Parker*, Annie-B Parson, Yvonne Rainer, Judilee Reed*, Dana Reitz, Lucy Sexton, Pat Steir, Muna Tseng, Helen WarwickWendy Whelan, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Nina Winthrop* … and more TBA

*Danspace Board member  **Danspace Board Emeriti


Before you visit:

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Photo of Blondell Cummings by Kei Orihara. Courtesy The Estate of Blondell Cummings. | Photo of Marjani Forté-Saunders by Augustus Cooke

Marjani Forté-Saunders performing Blondell Cummings’ Chicken Soup

Thursday, May 29 | 7:30PM
Friday, May 30 | 7:30PM
Saturday, May 31 | 7:30PM

Open Dress Rehearsal*
Tuesday, May 27 | 7:30PM

To RSVP for Open Dress Rehearsal, Click Here

Blondell Cummings’ most well-known work, Chicken Soup (1981), is a solo based on her childhood memories of her grandmother in the kitchen, performed in 1982 as part of the Parallels series curated by Ishmael Houston-Jones at Danspace Project.

Joan Acocella of The New Yorker wrote, “What made Chicken Soup so compelling—wild, funny, frightening—was the alternation between realism and surrealism.” The National Endowment for the Arts designated Chicken Soup an American Masterpiece in 2006, and in 2007, the work was reconstructed and restaged at the Joyce Theater in 2007 by Urban Bush Women. A deep and direct artistic transmission, Marjani Forté-Saunders was the first and among very few artists to ever learn Chicken Soup from Cummings and the only one other than Cummings to ever perform the solo.

 

*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). This is a first-come-first-served event. Danspace will not hold late seating or a waitlist during Open Dress Rehearsals. Thank you for your understanding.


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Before you visit:

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Marjani Forté-Saunders (she/her) is a 2023 United States Artists Fellow, and recently celebrated her debut as choreographer for the New York Metropolitan Opera, El Niño (2024). She is an awardee of the prestigious Dance Magazine Harkness Award (2020) and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Fellowship (2020). Saunders is a three time NY Dance & Performance/Bessie Awardee and an inaugural recipient of 3 distinguishing fellowships in dance, including Urban Bush Women’s Choreographic Center Initiative Fellowship (2017), the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship (2018), and the DanceUSA Artist Fellowship (2019).

Her practice has been forging my physical and energetic bodies  to conjure transformative moments in space and time. Her art poses and processes questions, such as: What might freedom, a reality that elevates culture, life, wisdom, the intangible and mysterious, look like? Can we achieve it?

Marjani is a part of a multi-platformed collective vision called 7NMS (pronounced seven names), with composer and sound designer Everett Saunders. The work of 7NMS houses the Art, the Studios, and the Creative Incubator that is Art x Power- which is dedicated to building resilient futures for Black Artists, by creating pathways towards long-term, fiscal and creative wellness. The creative duo architects of the project, Prophet: The Order of the Lyricist, which premiered at Abrons Arts Center in 2022. 7NMS are recipients of New Music USA Award (2021), the MAP Fund (2020) and the National Dance Project Production & Touring award, for this work. In 2023, PROPHET had its Los Angeles premiere, at the REDCAT ROY AND EDNA DISNEY/CALARTS THEATER (REDCAT), and traveled to the Musuem of Contemporary Arts Chicago, May 2024.

Humbly, Saunders embraces the depth of her career and craft as a divine opportunity and command to listen, serve, and transform. She defines her work by its lineage stemming from culturally rich, vibrant, historic, loving, irreverent conjurers. With joy, Saunders’ most creative, commanding and rewarding practice is as a Mother, which operates inextricably alongside her visioning as an artist.

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