DANSPACE PROJECT PRESENTS DraftWork Symara Sarai + Anh Vo Saturday, December 21 | 3PM Join us after the performances for food & drinks and a conversation between the artists.
Sound Contributions: CHIMI
Acknowledgements: Th
The development of this work was made possible in part by a 2023/2024 Women in Motion Commission and the Mertz Gilmore Foundation through Eva Dean Dance.
Anh Vo is a Vietnamese choreographer and writer working primarily in New York City, with a second base in Hanoi. Their practice fleshes out the body as a vessel for apparitional forces. Their work is situated in the unlikely lineage convergences between Downtown New York experimental dance, queer and feminist performance art, and Vietnamese folk ritual practices. Vo is indebted to Miguel Gutierrez’s unapologetic queerness and amorphous excess, Moriah Evan’s speculative commitment to the depth of interiority, Tehching Hsieh’s existential sense of time, and Ngoc Dai’s guttural sonic landscape of postwar Vietnam. Their formal training is in Performance Studies, studying with esteemed theorists and practitioners at Brown University (BA) and New York University (MA). Some of their mentors and teachers are Noémie Solomon, Rebecca Schneider, Moriah Evans, Juliana May, Daria Faïn, and Julie Tolentino.
Kristel Baldoz is a Queens-based multidisciplinary artist who works across performance, dance, and ceramics. Her artistic practice is grounded in the choreography and relationship between objects, materiality, and bodies. Her work has received support from New York Live Arts, Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, and NYU’s Production Lab, with features in Brooklyn Rail and Fjord. As a performer, she has worked with Reggie Wilson, Anh Vo, Wilmer Wilson IV, Kate Watson-Wallace, and Alex Da Corte.
Violist and composer, Jessica Pavone, explores the tactile and sensory experience of music as a vibration-based medium. Inspired by processes centered on intuition and instinct, her music channels these ideas by focusing on how music feels when played and heard, integrating her experiences as an instrumentalist into works that transcend time. Although her primary training was in classical music, Pavone has dedicated her practice to exploring alternative avenues for creative musical expression and “has made a career of redefining the possibilities for her instrument” (Steve Smith, National Sawdust Log). Pavone has premiered new music at prominent NYC venues, including the Noguchi Museum, Abrons Art Center, the Museum of Art and Design, Pioneer Works, Socrates Sculpture Park, National Sawdust, and the Kitchen. Pavone’s albums have been produced by Tzadik, Taiga Records, Thirsty Ear, Out of Your Head Records, Astral Spirits, and Relative Pitch Records.
Acknowledgements: In reverence of Merce Cunningham, Sarah Michelson, Trajal Harrell, Ngoc Dai, and the countless unnamed individuals who keep northern Vietnamese folk rituals alive.
Ishmael Houston-Jones (DraftWork curator) is an award winning choreographer, author, performer, teacher, and curator. His improvised dance and text work has been performed in New York, across the US, and in Europe, Canada, Australia, and Latin America. Drawn to collaborations as a way to move beyond boundaries and the known, Houston-Jones celebrates the political aspect of cooperation. Houston-Jones and Fred Holland shared a 1984 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Cowboys, Dreams and Ladders, which reintroduced the erased narrative of the Black cowboy back into the mythology of the American west. He was awarded his second “Bessie” Award for the 2010 revival of THEM, his 1985/86 collaboration with writer Dennis Cooper and composer Chris Cochrane. In 2017 he received a third “Bessie” for Variations on Themes from Lost and Found: Scenes from a Life and other Works by John Bernd presented by Danspace Project. In 2020 he received a fourth “Bessie” for Service to the Field of Dance. Houston-Jones is the DraftWork curator for works-in-progress at Danspace Project in New York. He has curated Platform 2012: Parallels which focused on choreographers from the African diaspora and postmodernism and co-curated with Will Rawls Platform 2016: Lost & Found, Dance, New York, HIV/AIDS, Then and Now both at Danspace Project. As an author Houston-Jones’ essays, fiction, interviews, and performance texts have been published in several anthologies and in numerous journals and magazines. His FAT and Other Stories: Some Writing About Sex was published in June 2018 by Yonkers International Press.
Danspace Project pays respect to Lenape peoples. We acknowledge that this work is situated on the Lenape island of Manhattan (Mannahatta) in Lenapehoking, the Lenape homeland. We pay respect to Lenape land, water, and ancestors past, present and future.
FUNDING FOR DRAFTWORK DraftWork is presented, in part, with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
For information on our funders, visit danspaceproject.org/support
ABOUT DANSPACE PROJECT
Danspace Project presents new work in dance, supports a diverse range of choreographers in developing their work, encourages experimentation, and connects artists to audiences. For 50 years, Danspace Project has supported a vital community of contemporary dance artists in an environment unlike any other in the United States. Located in the historic St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, Danspace shares its facility with the Church, The Poetry Project, and New York Theatre Ballet. Danspace Project’s Commissioning Initiative has commissioned nearly 600 new works since its inception in 1994. More about our staff, our mission, and values FOLLOW US @danspaceproject danspaceproject.org