DANSPACE PROJECT PRESENTS
Marjani Forté-Saunders performing Blondell Cummings’ Chicken Soup
Thursday, May 29 | 7:30PM
Friday, May 30 | 7:30PM
Saturday, May 31 | 7:30PM
Chicken Soup (1981) Sound Design
Music for Voice and Glass
Meredith Monk and Percussion and Glass
Colin Walcott from “Our Lady of Late” [The Vanguard Tapes, 1973] and Brian Eno “Ambient 1: Music for Airports”
Text from “Enormous Changes at the Last Minute” Grace Paley, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974
Recipe from The Settlement Cookbook
Excerpt from Poem by Pat Steir, Kitchens, 1970
Additional Sound Design and Reconstruction for Chicken Soup (2025)
Everett Saunders/7NMS
Media Design
Meena Murugesan
Lighting Design
Kathy Kaufmann
Co-Presented by the City of Santa Monica Cultural Affairs Division
Family of Blondell Cummings for your support and trust with this monumental work!
Elizabeth Streb, thank you for taking the time to speak with me about the beloved Blondell Cummings, the artist and your friend.
UBW Archivist Camille Lawrence, thank you so much for helping me dig up my 20yr+ history with Chicken Soup.
Jawole Zollar, thank you for introducing me/us to the work and the visioning of Blondell Cummings. She was among the firsts to affirm me as a choreographer, and I am ever grateful for both of your support and care.
Natalie, Ishmael, Tara, and Jawole thank you for saying “yes”. Grateful and honored!
Thank you The Tetra for your encouragement, your timely and insightful messages, and your permission to share your words.
To the incredible Guest Artists who also said “yes”, I am in steady awe of your beauty, generosity, and grace. A special shoutout to Skeleton Architecture and Eva Yaa Asantewaa for launching this collective.
A VERY SPECIAL THANK YOU to everyone who so lovingly contributed to our GoFundMe this year. It is because of your monumental support that we were able to gather ourselves after the Eaton Canyon Fires. The road to full recovery is long, but we are taking it one step at a time, and we are beyond grateful for YOU!
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Marjani Forté-Saunders (she/her) is an award winning choreographer and performance artist, as well as an educator, community organizer, facilitator, and visionary. 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 Museum of Contemporary Arts Chicago, May 2024.
Marjani was recently awarded a Sweat Variant Fellowship, an unrestricted monetary award from the collective studio of the critically acclaimed Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born and is developing a new evening length piece called float through a scientific, choreographic, and technical research process in collaboration with Everett Asis Saunders, Jasmine Hearn, Nayaa Opong, Bennalldra Williams, and Guy de Lancey. Danspace is a commissioning partner for float, and an iteration of the performance is planned for the 2025–2026 season.
In 2024 Marjani also celebrated her 2024 United States Artists Fellow Award, and her MET Choreographic Debut for the New York Metropolitan Opera, El Niño, a libretto composed by John Adams and directed by fellow United States Artist Fellow, Liliana Blain-Cruz. She is an awardee of the prestigious Dance Magazine Harkness Award (2020) and the (2020) Foundation for Contemporary Arts Fellowship. In addition to being a three time Bessie Award winning artist, Saunders is an inaugural recipient of three 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).
In 2021 she partnered with long-time collaborators, including composer Everett Saunders, choreographer D. Sabela Grimes, and filmmaker Meena Murugesan to create the PROPHET Film and BLUEPRINT: a Memoirs of Unicorn Documentary. In 2022, Forté-Saunders made her off-broadway debut as choreographer of Dreaming Zenzile, written and starring grammy-nominated jazz vocalist Somi Kakoma, and directed by the then, Drama League Founder’s Award winning artist Lileana Blain-Cruz. Her work Garden of Unicorns- a Surrealist Ode to Blondell Cummings was an installation in The Getty Gardens as part of the Ever Present Series, curated by Kristin Juarez and Sarah Cooper.
Commercially, as a choreographer and movement coach, she has worked with Sundance Award winning director and fellow LMU Alum Kahlil Joseph (PROCESS & Pantene Pro-V Black is Beautiful commercial campaign), Kevin Willmott (The 24th– a feature film), Kevin Everson (Black Bus Stop), and actress Tracee Ellis Ross’ PATTERNS photo/video campaign. Forté-Saunders was a touring artist for five years, with the internationally renowned Urban Bush Women Dance Company (UBW) where she performed works by Camille A. Brown, and was the first and only artist (beyond Blondell Cummings) to perform Chicken Soup. As a sole inheritor of the work, Saunders was commissioned to resurrect the infamous Blondell Cummings’ Chicken Soup for Danspace Project’s 50th Anniversary. This work was also presented at The City of Santa Monica’s Annenberg House earlier this year.
Humbly, Forté-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, Marjani’s most creative, commanding and rewarding practice is as a Mother, which operates inextricably alongside her visioning as an artist.
Blondell Cummings (1944-2015) was a choreographer and video artist who mined everyday experiences like washing, cooking and building to create works celebrated for their rich characterizations and dramatic momentum. According to Wendy Perron, Cummings crossed over from modern to postmodern, from the black dance community to the avant-garde community. Cummings referred to stop-motion movement vocabulary as “moving pictures,” which combined in her interest in the visual imagery of photography and the kinetic energy of movement. Her dances drew from an accumulation of character studies that often began with photography and workshops, and included poetry, oral histories, and projection. Her interest in moving pictures is also evidenced in her commitment to dance films. She both supported the documentation of dance, and created many experimental dance films. Several of these works will be on view in the exhibition Blondell Cummings: Dance as Moving Pictures.
Cummings was born in Effingham, South Carolina but was raised in Harlem, New York City. Cummings began dance study in the New York public schools. As Thomas F. DeFrantz notes, she attended New York University’s School of Education, did graduate work in film and photography at Lehman College, and continued serious dance study at the schools of Martha Graham, Jose Limon, and Alvin Ailey, along with Eleo Pomare, Thelma Hill, and Walter Nicks. She was also deeply influenced by choreographers who worked across mediums, including Meredith Monk, Yvonne Rainer, and Elaine Summers. In 1969, she became a founding member of Monk’s The House, with whom she danced for ten years. In 1978 Cummings formed the Cycle Arts Foundation, a discussion/performance workshop focused on familial issues including menopause, caregiving, rituals of the everyday, and art-making–emphasizing her commitment to relate the arts to everyday life. In 2006, her dance Chicken Soup (1981) was deemed an American Masterpiece by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Everett Saunders is a Composer, and Sound Designer specializing in collaborative processes, score and soundscape development for theater and film. Everett is the composer and thought partner behind the award-winning and internationally touring production, Memoirs of a.. Unicorn. His work can be found as composer/sound designer on Jaamil Kosoko’s Chameleon, mayfield Brooks Whale Fall, and Urban Bush Women’s Hair & Other Stories (2018). His ongoing work in the production Memoirs of a… Unicorn, received a 2018 Bessie Award for Outstanding Production, with international debuts in Brussels, Belgium and Berlin, Germany.
Saunders was awarded two different New Music USA grants in 2017 to develop a 3-Dimensional Binaural Soundscape and Score for the performance work being Here…/this time, and later featured as 1 of 5 installations exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Art (Brooklyn, NY), funded by the SURDNA Foundation Thriving Cultures Grant as part of the being Here… In Memory 3 month installation. As a community organizer and teaching artist, Saunders formerly served as an interim Director of Operations and Programs at the Alkebulan Cultural Center, instituting new programs and projects for artists, Youth, and adults- focused on galvanizing and transforming community through the arts.
Anchored in a steady collaboration with partner and choreographer Marjani Forté-Saunders, they have emerged as 7NMS| Everett Saunders & Marjani Forte. The duo’s latest work, Prophet: The Order The Lyricist was awarded a 2020 New Music USA grant for Everett’s lyric and sonic design, and a 2021 National Dance Project Touring & Presentation award. Including an early post-COVID premiere at Abrons Arts Center in 2022, the project has presented at the Experimental Media & Performing Arts Center at Rennslaar University, Kelly Strayhorn Theater, REDCAT Los Angeles, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.
Meena Murugesan (they/them) is a video and movement artist living on Tongva-Kizh land. Meena creates experimental non-linear narratives at the intersection of live performance, video art installation, and social issues. Grappling with the practises of collage, projection mapping, contemplative documentary, improvisation, somatic bodywork and bharatanatyam, Meena centers an anti-racist, anti-caste, feminist, queer, melanin-rich creative liberatory practice. They are directing a multimedia series entitled Dravidian Futurities about African-Dravidian connections, casteism, colorism, and trance/possession movement rituals. Meena is a current founding member of two collectives: SAEDA (South Asian Experimental Dance Artists, Mellon awardee 2021-2022) and SiriusShapeShifters (with d. Sabela grimes). Recently, Meena has presented their films or video projection design work at The Getty Museum, The Getty Villa, Underground Museum, The Broad Museum, MOCA LA, Jacob’s Pillow, SOPHIENSALE, 651 Arts, EMPAC, BLACKSTAR, etc.
Kathy Kaufmann (Lighting Designer) is a New York City native, and two time Bessie recipient. She designs regularly for Dorrance Dance, Music From The Sole, Joanna Kotze, Sally Silvers, The Bang Group, Mariana Valencia, Megan Williams, Koma Otake, Ephrat Asherie Dance, and Vicky Shick. She is delighted to be collaborating with Marjani once again.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
SUPPORT FOR THIS WORK
This project was supported, in part, by a Sweat Variant Fellowship and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.
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.
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 For information on our funders, visit danspaceproject.org/support FOLLOW US @danspaceproject danspaceproject.org