FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Danspace Project features

PLATFORM 2020: Utterances from the Chorus

co-curated by Okwui Okpokwasili and Judy Hussie-Taylor

as part of our 45th anniversary year celebration and

10th anniversary of our award-winning Platform series

 

February 22-March 21, 2020

Okwui Okpokwasili. Photo: Peter Born.

New York, NY, January 6, 2020 – Danspace Project is pleased to announce PLATFORM 2020: Utterances from the Chorus (February 22 through March 21), co-curated by MacArthur Award recipient, Okwui Okpokwasili, and Danspace Executive Director & Chief Curator, Judy Hussie-Taylor.

Participants include: Martita Abril, Nacera Belaza, Lydia Bell, Peter Born, Jennifer Brogle, mayfield brooks, Tina Campt, Leslie Cuyjet, Eisa Davis, devynn emory, Brittany Engel-Adams, Lily Gold, Yves B Golden x Venïson Man, Melanie Greene, Audrey Hailes, Saidiya Hartman, Jasmine Hearn, Justin Hicks, Judy Hussie-Taylor, Meryem Jazouli, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Kristin Juarez, NIC Kay, Chaesong Kim, Tendayi Kuumba, M. Lamar, Simone Leigh, Breyanna Maples, Anais Maviel, Seta Morton, Benedict Nguyen, Maura Nguyen Donohue, Okwui Okpokwasili, Kay Ottinger, iele paloumpis, Angie Pittman, Jess Pretty, Greg Purnell, Katrina Reid, Jean Carla Rodea, Jaime Shearn Coan, Alice Sheppard, Samita Sinha, Pamela Sneed, Tatyana Tenenbaum, David Thomson, Pyeng Threadgill, Ogemdi Ude, Mariana Valencia, Cecilia Vicuña, Asiya Wadud, Ni’Ja Whitson, AJ Wilmore, Eva Yaa Asantewaa, Nehemoyia Young, and Spiral Theory Test Kitchen: Bobbi Salvör Menuez, Quori Theodor, and Precious Okoyomon, and others to be announced. Platform writers in-residence include Chanelle Adams, Omar Berrada, Legacy Russell, and Asiya Wadud, who will respond to the Platform on Danspace’s online journal and in the Platform print publications.

Okpokwasili and Peter Born’s durational practice, Sitting On a Man's Head, will have its New York City premiere at Danspace and will be the focal point of the Platform. “A space of restoration and restitution is our concern,” write Okpokwasili and Born. “We are engaged in a creative practice concerned with the formation of new bonds of kinship around essential questions,” Okpokwasili and Hussie-Taylor used these ideas as a point of departure for the Platform’s curatorial inquiries, conversations, and programs.

Marking 10 years since Hussie-Taylor conceived of the series, this Platform will be the centerpiece of Danspace’s 45 ^th anniversary year.

The Platforms were launched by Danspace Project in 2010 as “exhibitions that unfold over time” shaped by guest artist-curators. Past Platforms, curated by such artists as Eiko Otake, Ishmael Houston-Jones, David Parker, and Ralph Lemon, have addressed the intersections of dance, art, race, and gender, and created powerful spaces for community dialogue. For example, Danspace’s largest Platform, Lost & Found, curated by Houston-Jones and Will Rawls in 2016, created a ritual and generative space for artists by acknowledging the many generations of artists impacted by HIV/AIDS. In the last decade Danspace also pioneered an extensive publication series, previously unheard of in dance and performing arts curation, which has included the historically important Judson NOW Platform catalogue on the 50th anniversary of Judson Dance Theater.

“In early 2017, Okwui and I began a conversation about Sitting on a Man’s Head and how that piece might inform a Platform at Danspace Project,” writes Hussie-Taylor. “We were also extremely interested in creating containers for sharing artistic practices. Could we create a Platform for artists to be in a conversation with one another and offer that to a broader audience?” The result is a program that will unfold over four weeks and that includes multiple voices, artistic collaborations, and interdisciplinary juxtapositions.

Out of these conversations Okpokwasili and Hussie-Taylor developed these lines of curatorial inquiry:

How do we weave a collective song?

How can the voice and body be a site of resistance and transformation?

How can we share artistic practices – between artists and between artists and audiences?

Utterances from the Chorus is a quote from Saidiya Hartman's “A Note On Method,” the introduction to her groundbreaking 2019 book Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Stories of Social Upheaval. Although Okpokwasili’s and Hussie-Taylor’s initial Platform research predates the release of the book in 2019, Hartman’s research resonates with Okpokwasili’s body of work addressing the lives of young women of color and has informed much of the latter research to this Platform.

As an inquiry-based extension of the Platform, Danspace invited individual artists to be part of two artistic Research Groups that have been meeting regularly over the last 8 months. They will curate two long-form programs as part of the Platform, one exploring ideas around “Kin & Care,” and the other exploring ideas around “Voice & Body.” Research group participants include: devynn emory, Jasmine Hearn, Tendayi Kuumba, Benedict Nguyen, Maura Nguyen Donohue, iele paloumpis, Angie Pittman, Jaime Shearn Coan, Samita Sinha, Tatyana Tenenbaum, and Asiya Wadud.

In addition to Okpokwasili and Hussie-Taylor, the Platform’s curatorial team includes Danspace Associate Curator and Program Director, Lydia Bell, and Seta Morton, Assistant Curator for Public Engagement.

Platform 2020 engagements will range widely in format, and include:

A new album release (in vinyl and digital platforms) by Okpokwasili, entitled day pulls down the sky

 

A collaborative book of songs and poems titled day pulls down the sky: a filament in gold leaf by Okpokwasili with writer Asiya Wadud

A weekly performance installation by Okpokwasili and Peter Born, Sitting on a Man’s Head, which will include a rotating chorus of 30 performers

Workshops, public conversations, and artist gatherings

Writing and short videos shared digitally on Danspace Project’s online Journal

For the first time, Danspace Project will issue a two-volume catalogue for the Platform. Volume One will include essays, writing, and interviews providing context and some of the research informing the Platform programs. Volume Two will be a document of the Platform including text by writers-in-residence, Chanelle Adams, Omar Berrada, and Legacy Russell, as well as images and interviews with artists and curators.

A weekly calendar and descriptions for each event are below.

PLATFORM 2020 WEEKLY CALENDAR

 

WEEK 1

Sat., February 22, 12-5pm: Opening, SATURDAY AFTERNOON CONVERSATION #1: PLATFORM AS PRACTICE: COLLABORATIVE ORGANIZING: Lydia Bell, Maura Donohue, Judy Hussie-Taylor, Kristin Juarez, Seta Morton, Okwui Okpokwasili, Cecilia Vicuña, Asiya Wadud, Eva Yaa Asantewaa, and others to be announced

WEEK 2

Fri., February 28, 6-10pm: SITTING ON A MAN'S HEAD: a performance installation by Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born (NY premiere) including a rotating chorus of 30 performers including: Martita Abril, Peter Born, Jennifer Brogle, mayfield brooks, Leslie Cuyjet, Eisa Davis, Brittany Engel-Adams, Lily Gold, Melanie Greene, Audrey Hailes, Jasmine Hearn, Justin Hicks, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Chaesong Kim, Tendayi Kuumba, Breyanna Maples, Anais Maviel, Okwui Okpokwasili, Kay Ottinger, Jess Pretty, Greg Purnell, Katrina Reid, Jean Carla Rodea, Samita Sinha, Tatyana Tenenbaum, David Thomson, Pyeng Threadgill, Asiya Wadud, AJ Wilmore, and Nehemoyia Young

Sat., February 29, 12-4pm: SATURDAY AFTERNOON CONVERSATION #2: KIN AND CARE RESEARCH GROUP PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT PROGRAM : Jaime Shearn Coan, Maura Donohue, devynn emory, iele paloumpis, Angie Pittman, and others to be announced

WEEK 3

Fri., March 6, 6-10pm: SITTING ON A MAN'S HEAD : a performance installation by Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born including a rotating chorus of 30 performers

Sat., March 7, 11am-4pm: SATURDAY AFTERNOON CONVERSATION #3: SIMONE LEIGH & OKWUI OKPOKWASILI IN CONVERSATION WITH THE VOICE AND BODY RESEARCH GROUP PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT PROGRAM: Jasmine Hearn, Tendayi Kuumba, Benedict Nguyen, Samita Sinha, Tatyana Tenenbaum and Asiya Wadud

WEEK 4

Mon., March 9, 7pm: A Shared Evening: MERYEM JAZOULI: Folkah!, NACERA BELAZA: La Procession

 

Tues., March 10, 7pm: A Shared Evening: MERYEM JAZOULI: Folkah!, NACERA BELAZA: La Procession

Fri., March 13, 6-10pm: SITTING ON A MAN'S HEAD: a performance installation by Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born including a rotating chorus of 30 performers

Sat., March 14, 8pm: A Shared Evening: OKWUI OKPOKWASILI & SAMITA SINHA

WEEK 5

Thurs., March 19, 8pm: POETIC UTTERANCE: performative evenings comprised of a multitude of artists sharing bursts of performance and practice including Justin Hicks, NIC Kay, Tendayi Kuumba & Greg Purnell, Alice Sheppard, Pamela Sneed, and Ni’Ja Whitson

Fri., March 20, 6-10pm: SITTING ON A MAN'S HEAD: a performance installation by Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born including a rotating chorus of 30 performers

Sat., March 21, 12-4pm: SATURDAY AFTERNOON CONVERSATION #4: THE CHORUS: a Conversation between Okwui Okpokwasili, Tina Campt, and Saidiya Hartman, and others to be announced

Sat., March 21, 8pm: POETIC UTTERANCE : performative evenings comprised of a multitude of artists sharing bursts of performance and practice including Yves B Golden x Venïson Man , M Lamar, Ogemdi Ude, Mariana Valencia

PLATFORM 2020 PERFORMANCE AND EVENT DETAILS

SATURDAY AFTERNOON CONVERSATIONS

Saturday, February 22, 12-5pm

Saturday, February 29, 12-4pm

Saturday, March 7, 11am-4pm

Saturday, March 21, 12-4pm

Admission: RSVP recommended at danspaceproject.org. Donations accepted at the door.

This series of long form conversations unfold over four Saturday afternoons. They will allow for different ways to gather, talk, and share practice. Curators, artists, audience, writers, scholars, friends and family will take this slow time to process the lines of inquiry guiding the Platform to come together, across disciplines.

Participants include: Lydia Bell, Tina Campt,​ ​Jaime Shearn Coan​, ​Maura Donohue, devynn emory,​ ​Saidiya Hartman, Jasmine Hearn, Judy Hussie-Taylor, Kristin Juarez, Tendayi Kuumba,​ ​Seta Morton, Benedict Nguyen​, ​Okwui Okpokwasili, iele paloumpis, Angie Pittman​, ​Samita Sinha, Tatyana Tenenbaum, Cecilia Vicuña,​ ​Asiya Wadud​,​ and Eva Yaa Asantewaa.

See above Platform 2020 Weekly Calendar for details on which participants will be present at each conversation.

 

OKWUI OKPOKWASILI & PETER BORN

Sitting On a Man’s Head (New York Premiere)

Friday, February 28, 6-10pm

Friday, March 6, 6-10pm

Friday, March 13, 6-10pm

Friday, March 20, 6-10pm

Admission: $22 General / $15 Members

One of the Platform’s central questions “How do we weave a collective song?” builds on the ideas behind Okpokwasili’s and Born’s durational piece Sitting On a Man’s Head. 

Okwui’s 2016 research into Nigerian women’s embodied protest resulted in the durational performance created by Okwui and Peter. The practice known as “sitting on a man” was a disruptive durational practice and a public act of shaming carried out by a collective of women in Southeastern Nigeria. It involved gathering in the private courtyard of a colonial official, dancing and singing songs that expressed their grievances and was designed to embarrass the official until he promised to address their concerns. This practice was used by women as a critical tool to protect their economic and social interests. 

Rather than “shaming” or seeking redress, Okpokwasili’s and Born’s Sitting On a Man’s Head is an attempt to create a “space of restoration and restitution,” write Okpokwasili and Born. “We are engaged in a creative practice concerned with the formation of new bonds of kinship. In collaboration with a select group of artists, we use the tools of our performance practice to build a space for the creation of an improvisational public song composed of aural and choreographic gestures. Can a shared creative practice be generative and generous while also being instructive in imagining new possibilities of communal relations?”

The work features rotating chorus of 30 performers, who will activate the performance, including: Martita Abril, Peter Born, Jennifer Brogle, mayfield brooks, Leslie Cuyjet, Eisa Davis, Brittany Engel-Adams, Lily Gold, Melanie Greene, Audrey Hailes, Jasmine Hearn, Justin Hicks, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Chaesong Kim, Tendayi Kuumba, Breyanna Maples, Anais Maviel, Okwui Okpokwasili, Kay Ottinger, Jess Pretty, Greg Purnell, Katrina Reid, Jean Carla Rodea, Samita Sinha, Tatyana Tenenbaum, David Thomson, Pyeng Threadgill, Asiya Wadud, AJ Wilmore, and Nehemoyia Young

MERYEM JAZOULI & NACERA BELAZA

A Shared Evening

Monday, March 9, 8pm

Tuesday, March 10, 8pm

Admission: $22 General / $15 Members

Casablanca-based choreographer and performer, Meryem Jazouli, creates work that is directly influenced by its Moroccan context in particular South Moroccan Guedra dance and song. Algerian-born/France-based choreographer and performer, Nacera Belaza, has developed a choreography that originates from a sensible awareness of the body, of space, and of the emptiness inside herself. These longtime friends share similar concerns in their considerations of the power of dance in North African culture.

Folkah!, performed on this evening, emerged from Jazouli’s research into an ancestral folk dance from the Sahara: the Guedra, a dance practiced by women from southern Morocco, among other desert regions of North Africa, which is essentially performed on the knees. Jazouli has developed a corporal and vocal language to revisit the context, words, and gestures of the Guedra, to invent a new frame of dialogue between body and voice.

In recent years Belaza has been developing processions as a new way to relate with the public. Each Procession is an occasion to create a unique piece with a new audience. In La Procession a group of spectators become a single body. The performers circulate with the audience inside a sensory path that invites us to question the essence of a place: the interior and exterior space, private and public, darkness and light.

 

 

OKWUI OKPOKWASILI & SAMITA SINHA

A Shared Evening

Saturday, March 14, 8pm

Admission: $22 General / $15 Members

 

Okpokwasili and composer, performer, and educator,  Samita Sinha, have been informally sharing their individual voice and body practices over the past year. Sinha’s work combines Bengalese Baul vocal tradition with vocal and movement experiments that investigate her cultural inheritance. Okpokwasili writes and performs songs for her performance collaborations with Born. Many of Okpokwasili’s songs are included in her first album, day pulls down the sky, produced by Danspace Project. Hussie-Taylor has invited these two singular artists to create a new collaboration for this special one-night-only event.

 

 

POETIC UTTERANCE

Thursday, March 19, 8pm

Saturday, March 21, 8pm

Admission: $22 General / $15 Members

Poetic Utterance performative evenings will be comprised of a multitude of artists sharing bursts of performance and practice. Poets, movers, sound and vocal artists will respond to some Platform curatorial inquiries posed by co-curators Judy Hussie-Taylor and Okwui Okpokwasili. Each artist will respond to Platform ideas with 10-15 minutes of movement, text, song, sound or some combination of these. A place to hum, utter, and gesture together.

Participating artists include: Yves B Golden x Venïson Man , Justin Hicks, NIC Kay, Tendayi Kuumba & Greg Purnell, M. Lamar, Alice Sheppard, Pamela Sneed, Ogemdi Ude, Mariana Valencia, Ni’Ja Whitson, and others to be announced.

ABOUT THE CURATORS

Okwui Okpokwasili is a Brooklyn-based writer, performer, and choreographer who creates multidisciplinary performance pieces that seek to shape and amplify the shared psychic space the audience and performer inhabit, and, through centering the African/African American feminine, to illuminate universal human conditions. Her productions, created in collaboration with acclaimed designer Peter Born, are highly experimental in form, bringing together elements of dance, theater, and the visual arts. Okpokwasili and Born’s first New York production, Pent-Up: A Revenge Dance, premiered at Performance Space 122 and received a 2010 New York Dance and Performance Award (Bessie) for Outstanding Production. Their second collaboration, Bronx Gothic, premiered at Danspace Project as part of Performance Space 122’s COIL festival, and won a 2014 Bessie Award for Outstanding Production, toured nationally and internationally, is the subject of a documentary film directed by Andrew Rossi and was recently performed at the Young Vic Theater in London in a month long run in 2019. Currently touring work includes Poor People’s TV Room, premiered at New York Live Arts in 2017; Adaku’s Revolt, 2019, premiered at Abrons Art Center and Sitting on a Man’s Head, appeared at the 2018 Berlin Biennale and at the 2019 CounterCurrent Festival in Houston. Okpokwasili frequently collaborates with award-winning director Ralph Lemon. She has appeared as an actor in many productions including works by Nora Chipaumire, Julie Taymor, Young Jean Lee, Richard Foreman and Richard Maxwell. Most recently, Okpokwasili performed as the Lady in Green at the Public Theater in For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf. Film credits include Her Composition , Knut Åsdam’s AbyssY, The Interpreter, The Hoax, I Am Legend, and Madeline’s Madeline. Okpokwasili is a 2018 MacArthur Fellow. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including a 2018 Doris Duke Artist Award, a 2018 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, a 2018 United States Artist Fellowship, and a 2018 Herb Alpert Award. Her performance work has been commissioned by the Walker Art Center, Danspace Project, Performance Space New York, Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, the 10th Annual Berlin Biennale, Jacob’s Pillow, and New York Live Arts, where she was a Randjelovic/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist. Her first album, day pulls down the sky, was produced by Danspace Project and will be released in February.

Judy Hussie-Taylor  has served as Executive Director & Chief Curator of Danspace Project (DSP) since 2008. She initiated and is artistic director of DSP’s Platform series 2010 - 2018 and is editor-in-chief of DSP's catalogue series. She organized  PLATFORM 2012:Judson NOW  and co-curated  PLATFORM 2016: A Body In Places  featuring Eiko Otake. From 1990 – 2008 Hussie-Taylor lived in Colorado where she contributed to the artistic and administrative leadership of the following organizations: Colorado Dance Festival, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver. She served on the faculty of the University of Colorado-Boulder’s in the Department of Art & Art History from 2000 – 2005. She is a faculty member and on the Advisory Committee of the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance at Wesleyan University. Hussie-Taylor was appointed  Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres  by the French Government in 2014 and received 2017 Bessie New York Dance & Performance Award, the first ever awarded to a curator. 

TICKETS

Unless otherwise noted, advance tickets are priced at $22 and can be purchased by visiting danspaceproject.org or by calling TheaterMania / OvationTix at (866) 811.4111. If available, tickets can be purchased at the door on the night of the performance for $25 (cash or check only).

LOCATION & CONTACT INFORMATION

Danspace Project is located inside St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery at 131 East 10 ^th Street (near 2 ^nd Avenue) in Manhattan’s East Village.

Phone: (212) 674-8112

Email: info@danspaceproject.org

ACCESSIBILITY

Danspace Project’s main entrance is fully accessible via ramp. A same-level restroom is available near Danspace Project’s main performance space in the church sanctuary.