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.
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, Amelia Heintzelman, Jade Manns, and evan ray suzuki and musicians Leo Chang, Matt Evans, and Zosha Wapeha 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.
*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!
Before you visit:
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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.
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