Writer in Residence

decomposing with mayfield brooks in “Sensoria: An Opera Strange” by maura nguyễn donohue

December 15, 2022

In a darkly lit church, mayfield's larger than life shadow is cast on the arched and embellished walls of the altar. Their head is tilted back and their braids fall behind them. The altar steps are covered in a mysterious, black, shiny material.

maura nguyễn donohue is the Writer-in-Residence for Platform 2021: The Dream of the Audience and Platform 2022: The Dream of the Audience (Part II). Her reflections on the Platform 2022 performances and events are posted, accumulatively here, in Issue 14 of the Danspace Project Online Journal.… Read more

these ties constitute what we are: iele paloumpis’ “in place of catastrophe, a clear night sky” by maura nguyễn donohue

December 15, 2022

iele paloumpis descends the altar steps backward, with their left arm extended with the palm facing forward, and the right hand holding their white cane. The altar steps are draped with a burlap fabric that has been partially embroidered and there are woven ropes, burlap roses, and other objects adorning the veiled steps.

“I know exactly what you mean” A Community of the Curious with Ogemdi Ude by maura nguyễn donohue

December 15, 2022

Three Black femme dancers with their backs turned, perform a synchronized and wide wingspan gesture, looking up over slightly lifted right shoulders. Infront of the dancers is a large industrial printer that has a long stream of paper extending out onto the blond wood floor of a stage, with lines of printed text covering the enormous page that reads: “OK so I found a squirrel in my backyard found a squirrel yeah there, OK so I found a squirrel in my backyard found a squirrel yeah there”

Retrofitting A Mysterious Mundane by maura nguyễn donohue

August 10, 2022

maura nguyễn donohue is the Writer-in-Residence for Platform 2021: The Dream of the Audience and Platform 2022: The Dream of the Audience (Part II). Her reflections on the Platform 2022 performances and events will be posted, accumulatively here, in Issue 14 of the Danspace Project… Read more

Common Union: The Dream of the Audience (Part II) by maura nguyễn donohue

August 2, 2022

An Asian American woman, in a black sparkle dress, is on stage in purple/blue lights. She looks out at an audience mid-sentence, while holding a mircophone and wearing a headdress made of aluminum can ribbon tendrils, flouresecent green tentacles, and reclaimed plastics. Her makeup looks like black branches, tentacles or snakes growing from the corners of her eyes.

maura nguyễn donohue is the Writer-in-Residence for Platform 2021: The Dream of the Audience and Platform 2022: The Dream of the Audience (Part II). Her reflections on the Platform 2022 performances will be posted, accumulatively here, in Issue 14… Read more

Moving Through: 10 Years of Danspace Platforms by Maura Nguyen Donohue

May 10, 2021

On a soft white background in soft red handwriting is a note scrawled along various angles: "Somewhere else, Self becoming, becoming somewhere else, no belonging”

Maura Nguyen Donohue is the Writer-in-Residence for Platform 2021: The Dream of the Audience. Donohue conducted extensive research in 2019-2020 around the history of the Platform series, cataloguing the many curators, curatorial fellows, writers-in-residence, performances, print publications, and the… Read more

ON WAITING (FOR THE HOST TO JOIN) [1], Legacy Russell

May 18, 2020

A still life photograph of a composition of tropical fruits arranged artfully.

Legacy Russell is a Platform 2020 Writer in Residence The question of the riot is that it seeks to preserve nothing [2]. —Saidiya Hartman Slowness is a (re)negotiation of spatial desire, a wrestling and (re)definition of time. It is a… Read more