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DANSPACE PROJECT PRESENTS

Stacy Matthew Spence:

With in, Around, With out… me

Thursday, April 23 | 5:30PM
Friday, April 24 | 5:30PM
Saturday, April 25 | 5:30PM

Choreographed and Performed by
Stacy Matthew Spence

Musicians
Charlotte Jacobs, vocals
Raf Vertessen, percussion
Nora Stanley, clarinet, saxophone
Selendis Sebastian Alexander Johnson, trombone

Costume
Pants by Athena Kokoronis
Shirt by Stacy Matthew Spence

Lighting
Lutin Tanner

Technical Manager
Niko Tsocanos

Production Support
Seta Morton, Marin Day, Allison Hsu

THANKS

My heartfelt thank you to Michael for his continued love and support that calms. Alexis who keeps it real and keeps my heart growing. Martha for her continued icon status. Thank you to the artists who graced me on this journey with their creativity and talents. To the amazing band! Charlotte and Raf, wonderful to go on another exploration with you, Nora and Selendis, I feel so lucky we came into each other’s orbit and play. The breath into sound is exquisite. Lutin for the warmth of your being and the atmosphere that shifts beautifully. Athena for taking the threads of ideas and bringing the cloth to the vision. Danspace has been a landing place for me through the years as an artist as well as a spectator. Much love and thanks to Judy Hussy Taylor and Seta Morton for the chance to continue sharing as an addition to this Platform. Your support is deeply felt and appreciated. Thanks to Niko for the assured collaboration and eye. Thank you, Marin Day, Allison Hsu, Miranda Brown, and Julian Roel for all your help and special touches that add to the work and keep it going forward. As always, a thank you to the audience who come to experience and share creativity. Lastly, a remembrance of Carol Mullins who lit my work from my first piece at Danspace until her passing. A poet of light and air.

NOTE

There are notebooks and pencils scattered among the seating areas. Please feel free to make a mark, a word/s, a doodle, a drawing in the pages as comes forward and pass the book along to another person if you would like.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Stacy Matthew Spence is a New York City based choreographer, dancer, and teacher. Stacyʼs choreography has been commissioned by Danspace Project, New York Live Arts: Live Artery, The High Line with visual artist Ronny Quevedo, The New School, Ishmael Houston-Jones’s Platform 2012: Parallels for Danspace Project and Tisch School of the Arts. Stacy has performed in co/motion directed by Margaret Peak as part of Jason Moranʼs Whitney Biennial: Bleed, in Deborah Hayʼs Blues as part of Ralph Lemonʼs One Fine Day at The Museum of Modern Art NY and Joanna Kotze’s BIG BEATS, as well as Vespers Reimagined (2025) and Indifferent Forest with Bebe Miller. Stacy danced with The Trisha Brown Dance Company from 1997-2006, was Education Director from 2018-2020 and continues collaborating with the company through teaching and re-staging Trisha’s work. He has also taught nationally and internationally at institutions such as The New School, Juilliard, Barnard College, Tisch School of the Arts, Manhattan Marymount College, London Contemporary Dance School, Centre National de Danse Contemporaine, and Movement Research. Stacy is currently an instructor at The New School in New York City and is a New York State Council on the Arts Support for Artists Grant 2026 recipient. Stacy’s piece This is how we got here, will be performed by students of the dance department at Brown University, April 30-May 2, 2026.

Grants and residencies include New York State Council on the Arts Support for Artists Grant 2026, Gibney Dance in Process (DiP) Resident Artist 2022-23, Movement Research Artist Parent Residency; Workspace Artist-in-Residence, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council NY; Manhattan Community Fund, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, NY; New York Live Arts Studio Series Residency; Artist Residency at Centre National de Danse Contemporaine in Angers, France; Movement Research Artist-in-Residence.

A Belgian-born vocalist, composer, and recording artist now based in Brooklyn, Charlotte Jacobs is known for her avant-pop works that blend elements of visual art, poetry, and contemporary dance. Her distinctive vocal manipulations, employing sampling and loops, create a unique blend of warm melodies and glitchy textures. Her critically acclaimed EP The Shape of Wandering was hailed by NPR Music as “a sonic adventure,” described by WNYC as a “musical headfake,” and compared to “a book of shadows” by Atwood Magazine.

Charlotte has collaborated with a range of artists including Hannah Epperson, Zubin Hensler, Joanna Kotze, Željka Blakšić, Raf Vertessen, Charlotte Greve, and Rosanne Cash. She recently released a spoken word album with poet Alex Deforce on the

renowned underground label Stroom. In October 2024, she debuted her full-length album a t l a s via the Grammy-winning New Amsterdam Records, premiering it at National Sawdust on November 13. She has toured extensively and will join Half Waif for an international tour in February 2025.

Raf Vertessen is a Belgian drummer, percussion player and composer based in Brooklyn. He’s involved in New York’s avant-garde and improvised music scene. Vertessen has performed and/or recorded with artists such as Charlotte Jacobs, Ingrid Laubrock, Joe Morris, Joe McPhee, Ches Smith, Anna Webber, Nick Dunston, Will Greene, Elias Stemeseder, Dan Pencer, Jesse Heasly.

Shortly after his move to Brooklyn in 2016 he founded the Raf Vertessen Quartet with Anna Webber, Adam O’ Farrill and Nick Dunston. Their next release is scheduled for ‘25 on Clean Feed Records. This quartet uses Vertessen’s graphic scores, characteristics and modules as a means of structuring improvised music.

Vertessen is also active as a solo artist where he focuses on his own projections/figures, no input mixing, contact mics, and objects.

Nora Stanley is an improviser, composer, and songwriter based in Brooklyn. She variably uses saxophone, flute, clarinet, guitar, synthesizer, and voice in her work which spans jazz, rock and experimental music. She is deeply interested in the relationship between acoustic and synthesized sounds and plays with this throughout her work. As both a solo artist and a collaborator her music emphasizes openness, connection, and deep listening. In 2023 Stanley released Distance of the Moon (Colorfield Records) with collaborator Benny Bock to acclaim from Fader, Downbeat, and The New York Times who called it “music with a sense of focus and intimacy, yet a kind of unknowability too.” She will release an album of songs entitled Glass in 2026 on Worm Records. Stanley also frequently contributes woodwinds and more to others’ recording projects and has appeared on albums by Cassandra Jenkins, The New Pornographers, and Landlady.

Stanley leads a group that performs her songs, moving fluidly between rock band, experimental electronic, and improvised jazz. She is one third of the band Sprat and frequently collaborates in a duo with contemporary dancer Corinne Lohner. Other recent musical collaborations have included Fred Frith, Wendy Eisenberg, Cassandra Jenkins, Peter Apfelbaum’s Hieroglyphics, and Simon Hanes’ Tsons of Tsunami. She has toured with Chris Morrissey, Caroline Rose, The New Pornographers, and Beth Orton. Stanley has performed across North America and Europe at venues including Big Ears Festival, Winter Jazz Festival, and The Jazz Gallery. Stanley is a 2023 McDowell fellow and in 2025 was awarded a fellowship through New Music USA’s Next Jazz Legacy program. She holds a B.M. in Jazz Studies and a B.A. in Latin American Studies from Oberlin College and Conservatory.

Selendis Sebastian Alexander Johnson is a vibraphonist, trombonist, and organist originally from San Francisco and currently living in New York City. Growing up around jazz throughout her childhood, she picked up a range of instruments as a teenager, leaving most of them behind to focus on vibes upon moving to NYC to study music at The New School in 2018. Continuing to explore and work on her belief formed in childhood that anything can be improvised, she created the Selendis Sebastian Alexander Johnson Big Band in 2023, a project coming out of a class she ran as guest faculty at The New School just after graduation. Here she and the band explore new horizons of what large group improvisation can be, while also presenting new compositions by friends, and old compositions that go underperformed. In 2022, at the urging of fellow trombonist Zekkereya El-magharbel, she brought a trombone she was given by the family of an old musical comrade from high school back to New York, and has since made it her primary instrument. In 2024 she began co-running the venue Brothers Wash & Dry in Maspeth, and spent a lot of time studying the venue’s Conn organ, culminating in the 2025 release of her solo organ debut record ‘Transgender Music 2025’. She can be found often at Brothers Wash & Dry, playing at venues around New York City, and at times on avoiceiwanttoshare.net.

Athena Kokoronis is an interdisciplinary artist whose work expands across art, food, dance, pedagogical engagements, and design. Born out of motherhood, her art brand, Domestic Performance Agency (DPA) is a creative protective container for process, hospitality, and experimentation. She was recently awarded a Cynthia Hazen and Leon Ponsky Rome Prize with Jasmine Hearn for their design collaborations. Athena was a 2026 artist in residence at the Emily Harvey Foundation in Venice. Join her at DPA with LRC for the durational performance DPA 24-hour Diner, May 9-10, 2026. domesticperformanceagency@gmail.com.

Lutin Tanner hails from Mankato, Minnesota. He received a BA in Dance and Theatre from Western Michigan University. He joined Garth Fagan Dance, with whom he performed nationally and internationally. Lutin then transitioned to resident Lighting Designer & Production Manager for Dance New Amsterdam in NYC. Using his unique dance lighting perspective, he has lit Theatre, Dance and Music from New York to Cali, Europe to Hungary to New Zealand. Lutin is excited to be working with Stacy Spence at Danspace Project. Thanks, and love to his wife Adrienne, for her understanding of the late nights. Big UP! To his sons Lucien & Ellington, Love & Peace

SUPPORT FOR THIS WORK

With in, Around, With out… me is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

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 over 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

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