#celebratethework
In response to the effects of COVID-19 on the dance and performance world, CPR will highlight and honor our spring season artists on the day of their scheduled performance. Stay tuned as artists share their processes, motivations, and media over the coming weeks and join us as we #celebratethework
Follow us online:
CPRNYC.org // @cprnyc
Postponed/Cancelled Events:
Performance Studio Open House: PSOH March 2020
New Voices in Live Performance: the corpus is exquisite, the equinox is vernal (ceev)
Spring Movement: CPR Spring Movement 2020
Performance Studio Open House: PSOH April 2020
Performance Studio Open House: PSOH May 2020
OPEN STAGE | Fall Movement: chameckilerner, Cal Fish, Marcelline Mandeng Nken, Alejandra Ramos, and Kat Sotelo
Kat Sotelo. Photo by Sarrah Danziger.
Tickets: $0-$25, pay what you can
Purchase Tickets
Fri, December 6 at 7 P.M.
Sat, December 7 at 7 P.M.
CPR’s long-running Fall Movement program is an opportunity for artists to present new, fully-produced work in dance, performance, and time-based art in a shared program, curated by an independent panel of artists through an open call. Artists are encouraged to submit work with experimental approaches to content, form, and aesthetic, and which embrace risk-taking and the unexpected.
Five artists working across and between live art disciplines were selected to present their work: chameckilerner, Cal Fish, Marcelline Mandeng Nken, Alejandra Ramos, and Kat Sotelo.
The 2024 program was curated by a selection panel comprised of artists Ayano Elson, Nazareth Hassan, Kamikaze Jones, and Eleanor Kipping.
PROGRAM
chameckilerner: Untitled Still
Untitled Still echoes chameckilerner’s artistic origins from the 1990s as a dynamic duo. Seventeen years after EXIT, a seminal piece exploring closure, Andrea Lerner and Rosane Chamecki embark on a journey of introspection and reinvention. This experimental dance documentary interweaves spoken word and choreography to delve into themes of intimacy, conflict, the process and consequences of becoming a “we”, and the cyclical nature of death and rebirth. Their collaboration, rooted in their shared histories of aging, migration, and cultural identity, serves as a testament to resilience and the transformative power of artistic exploration. Amidst the passage of time and in a new environment, they aim to explore human connections, where the evolving dynamics between two individuals mirror the universal journey of personal and artistic evolution.
Cal Fish: Pre-York River: Absorber Antenna
A solo performance exploring the body as absorber/container and antenna/conduit for sounds and memories, Pre-York River: Absorber Antenna is a series of carefully indexed choreographies enabled by sound sculptures that will share a collection of audio. The Dynamic Listening Instrument, FM radios and transmitters, and a towel with conductive thread to sense a body will be engaged by a score. Sonic fragments will echo NYC's intense flooding, offer visions of remediation, and share “watermark memories,” and deeply affective oral histories from Cal Fish’s interviewing practice. Using their body as a literal antenna and conduit, sharing site-specific body mapping of FM waves, electromagnetic fields, and zones of capacitive reactivity, movement and sound will be linked, sonic tasks will have choreographic consequences, and movements will have sonic repercussions.
Marcelline Mandeng Nken: Rush Hour Pt. 1
Rush Hour Pt. 1 is a movement phrase about the concept of liminality or the feeling of being "caught up in between." The main character is the vehicle of the train; themes of migration, displacement, and mobility are rest stops along the ride, offering reflections on the motives of colonialism. Journeying to a distant paradise or final frontier for enlightenment becomes a measure of conquest. The performance considers the tension that emerges from shuttling through space and time before you reach the final destination through the lens of Black feminine literary imagination. Movements enacted within a miniature train set are abstractions of passages from Zora Neale Hurston's novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God" and Audre Lorde's poem "Women on Trains." Both texts build metaphors around the train motif to illustrate dynamic shifts in relationships and the weight of responsibilities that arise as the trip unfolds, from the mundane to the cosmic.
Alejandra Ramos: She Died in a Guatemalan Sinkhole
In 2006 Zoila Molina was murdered in her home in Guatemala City. Her daughter, Paula Molina, was an undocumented immigrant living in the US and could not return to see her mother's body before her burial. She lived over 10 years without ever seeing her mother or her grave. “Where is her body? I have not seen it,” Paula says, “She breathes beneath the earth, and it is our job to free her.” She Died in a Guatemalan Sinkhole is a docufiction performance lecture by Alejandra Ramos about the passing of her grandmother, Zoila Molina, and her relationship with Ramos' mother, Paula Molina. The performance utilizes small archived photo blocks to recreate a tangible sequence of a family’s life in Guatemala City. Through live-feed projection and fictional narration, audiences witness a testimony of a daughter in search of her mother's body.
Kat Sotelo: XOXO (FILIPINO FUTURISM)
XOXO (FILIPINO FUTURISM) is a new movement, a manifesto. What if Filipinos we were able to move beyond relegated roles of subordination and service? What if we manipulate these roles to our advantage? Assimilation and camouflage have been mechanics of our survival in America. This work investigates/restructures these systems to uplift our visibility; to simultaneously reconnect with pre-colonial indigenous practices and carry these into our vast imagined futures. Using the Peep Show as a performative container in this reclamation of power, Kat Sotelo simulates a kaleidoscope of identities in erotic exchange as a tribute to her vessel and its predecessors – the ways in which her ancestors have been perceived, used, exoticized, erased. XOXO also pinpoints schisms between the homeland and the diaspora, evident in the heated debate over Filipino vs. Filipinx. Synthesizing personal video archives with movement, set design, and folk traditions, the work bridges generational and geographical gaps with discourse, intimacy, and absurdist panache.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
chameckilerner is a 30-year collaboration between Rosane Chamecki and Andrea Lerner, an interdisciplinary duo working in the intersection of dance and time-based media. Their work has been presented by The Kitchen, The Chocolate Factory, Dance Theater Workshop, The Joyce, PS122, Central Park SummerStage, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Mass MoCA, Diverseworks, Jacob’s Pillow, and American Dance Festival. chameckilerner is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award, NEFA, NYFA, NYSCA, Jerome Foundation, and Rockefeller Map Fund, among others. Residencies include The Bogliasco Fellowship, Yaddo, The Rauschenberg Foundation, EMPAC, The Watermill Center, and Gibney’s Dance in Process Residency, among others.
Cal Fish is a cross-disciplinary artist from New York. Their work is multi-modal and immersive, often employing interactive sonic tools in soft and social sculpture. Cal performs regularly around NYC and has toured to share work all across North America and parts of Europe. Listening and archival practices, electromagnetic fields, flute, fm hijacking, songs, oral histories, up-cycled quilts, conductive thread, comfort objects, and magical kinesthetic tools combine to create environments for critical play, ecological awareness, and expanded perception. Graduating from Bard in 2018, Cal has since shared work at venues including Chaos Computer, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Brooklyn Academy of Music. Currently Cal helps run the Living Gallery in Brooklyn where they regularly organize/host multimedia events, sews upcycled clothing in their home studio, and runs the phone line media label Call Waitn.
Born in Yaounde, Cameroon, Marcelline Mandeng Nken pairs curious objects with movement phrases to unpack dominant narrative structures and the societal conditions that produce them. Her practice is grounded in research, focusing on Greco-Egyptian mythologies and sociopolitical situations that address the semiotics of desire, ancestral knowledge systems as metadata, and the biological limits of human transfiguration. She recently completed her MFA from Yale School of Art and is a current Dance Research Fellow at the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library.
Alejandra Ramos is a Guatemalan / Mexican artist focusing on personal familial-based collaboration. She values the practice of consistent communication between herself and her family abroad – creating spontaneous dialogues and new histories. She uses writing, video, and photography to translate her family’s narratives relating to loss, migration, and separation. Alejandra was born and raised between the suburbs of Lehi, UT, and the endless deserts of Tucson, AZ. She is an MFA candidate at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and values the necessity of community within and beyond educational institutions. Due to the limitation of distance, much of her collaboration with relatives occurs over a phone call where stories are exchanged and recorded. Working in a way where live bodies are not present with voice only recalls how the artist's family has always lived. To be an immigrant means leaving behind one's home and community where seemingly mundane interactions are no longer possible. As such, Alejandra embraces the fragmentation of oral storytelling that is built through myth and imaginative truth.
Kat Sotelo is a 1st generation Filipino American performance artist who received her BFA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture with a Concentration in Video/Film from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2009. Her performances manifest as dance, theatrical productions, and social experiments – all framing the absurdity of life and desperate need for human connection. For over a decade, Sotelo has been professionally employed in the film industry where she decorates sets and manufactures realities on a commercial scale. These skills have sharpened her cinematic approach to stage fabrication – fusing gesture, character tropes, and set pieces to build realms in the threshold of the ordinary and the extraordinary. Her current work focuses on decolonization from the perspective of a Filipino femme. Exploring her body as a means of currency in the American social landscape, she scrutinizes her relationship to “whiteness” through acts of deep humor and sorrow. Sotelo currently lives and works in Brooklyn.
OPEN STAGE | Fall Movement: chameckilerner, Cal Fish, Marcelline Mandeng Nken, Alejandra Ramos, and Kat Sotelo
Kat Sotelo. Photo by Sarrah Danziger.
Tickets: $0-$25, pay what you can
Purchase Tickets
Fri, December 6 at 7 P.M.
Sat, December 7 at 7 P.M.
CPR’s long-running Fall Movement program is an opportunity for artists to present new, fully-produced work in dance, performance, and time-based art in a shared program, curated by an independent panel of artists through an open call. Artists are encouraged to submit work with experimental approaches to content, form, and aesthetic, and which embrace risk-taking and the unexpected.
Five artists working across and between live art disciplines were selected to present their work: chameckilerner, Cal Fish, Marcelline Mandeng Nken, Alejandra Ramos, and Kat Sotelo.
The 2024 program was curated by a selection panel comprised of artists Ayano Elson, Nazareth Hassan, Kamikaze Jones, and Eleanor Kipping.
PROGRAM
chameckilerner: Untitled Still
Untitled Still echoes chameckilerner’s artistic origins from the 1990s as a dynamic duo. Seventeen years after EXIT, a seminal piece exploring closure, Andrea Lerner and Rosane Chamecki embark on a journey of introspection and reinvention. This experimental dance documentary interweaves spoken word and choreography to delve into themes of intimacy, conflict, the process and consequences of becoming a “we”, and the cyclical nature of death and rebirth. Their collaboration, rooted in their shared histories of aging, migration, and cultural identity, serves as a testament to resilience and the transformative power of artistic exploration. Amidst the passage of time and in a new environment, they aim to explore human connections, where the evolving dynamics between two individuals mirror the universal journey of personal and artistic evolution.
Cal Fish: Pre-York River: Absorber Antenna
A solo performance exploring the body as absorber/container and antenna/conduit for sounds and memories, Pre-York River: Absorber Antenna is a series of carefully indexed choreographies enabled by sound sculptures that will share a collection of audio. The Dynamic Listening Instrument, FM radios and transmitters, and a towel with conductive thread to sense a body will be engaged by a score. Sonic fragments will echo NYC's intense flooding, offer visions of remediation, and share “watermark memories,” and deeply affective oral histories from Cal Fish’s interviewing practice. Using their body as a literal antenna and conduit, sharing site-specific body mapping of FM waves, electromagnetic fields, and zones of capacitive reactivity, movement and sound will be linked, sonic tasks will have choreographic consequences, and movements will have sonic repercussions.
Marcelline Mandeng Nken: Rush Hour Pt. 1
Rush Hour Pt. 1 is a movement phrase about the concept of liminality or the feeling of being "caught up in between." The main character is the vehicle of the train; themes of migration, displacement, and mobility are rest stops along the ride, offering reflections on the motives of colonialism. Journeying to a distant paradise or final frontier for enlightenment becomes a measure of conquest. The performance considers the tension that emerges from shuttling through space and time before you reach the final destination through the lens of Black feminine literary imagination. Movements enacted within a miniature train set are abstractions of passages from Zora Neale Hurston's novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God" and Audre Lorde's poem "Women on Trains." Both texts build metaphors around the train motif to illustrate dynamic shifts in relationships and the weight of responsibilities that arise as the trip unfolds, from the mundane to the cosmic.
Alejandra Ramos: She Died in a Guatemalan Sinkhole
In 2006 Zoila Molina was murdered in her home in Guatemala City. Her daughter, Paula Molina, was an undocumented immigrant living in the US and could not return to see her mother's body before her burial. She lived over 10 years without ever seeing her mother or her grave. “Where is her body? I have not seen it,” Paula says, “She breathes beneath the earth, and it is our job to free her.” She Died in a Guatemalan Sinkhole is a docufiction performance lecture by Alejandra Ramos about the passing of her grandmother, Zoila Molina, and her relationship with Ramos' mother, Paula Molina. The performance utilizes small archived photo blocks to recreate a tangible sequence of a family’s life in Guatemala City. Through live-feed projection and fictional narration, audiences witness a testimony of a daughter in search of her mother's body.
Kat Sotelo: XOXO (FILIPINO FUTURISM)
XOXO (FILIPINO FUTURISM) is a new movement, a manifesto. What if Filipinos we were able to move beyond relegated roles of subordination and service? What if we manipulate these roles to our advantage? Assimilation and camouflage have been mechanics of our survival in America. This work investigates/restructures these systems to uplift our visibility; to simultaneously reconnect with pre-colonial indigenous practices and carry these into our vast imagined futures. Using the Peep Show as a performative container in this reclamation of power, Kat Sotelo simulates a kaleidoscope of identities in erotic exchange as a tribute to her vessel and its predecessors – the ways in which her ancestors have been perceived, used, exoticized, erased. XOXO also pinpoints schisms between the homeland and the diaspora, evident in the heated debate over Filipino vs. Filipinx. Synthesizing personal video archives with movement, set design, and folk traditions, the work bridges generational and geographical gaps with discourse, intimacy, and absurdist panache.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
chameckilerner is a 30-year collaboration between Rosane Chamecki and Andrea Lerner, an interdisciplinary duo working in the intersection of dance and time-based media. Their work has been presented by The Kitchen, The Chocolate Factory, Dance Theater Workshop, The Joyce, PS122, Central Park SummerStage, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Mass MoCA, Diverseworks, Jacob’s Pillow, and American Dance Festival. chameckilerner is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award, NEFA, NYFA, NYSCA, Jerome Foundation, and Rockefeller Map Fund, among others. Residencies include The Bogliasco Fellowship, Yaddo, The Rauschenberg Foundation, EMPAC, The Watermill Center, and Gibney’s Dance in Process Residency, among others.
Cal Fish is a cross-disciplinary artist from New York. Their work is multi-modal and immersive, often employing interactive sonic tools in soft and social sculpture. Cal performs regularly around NYC and has toured to share work all across North America and parts of Europe. Listening and archival practices, electromagnetic fields, flute, fm hijacking, songs, oral histories, up-cycled quilts, conductive thread, comfort objects, and magical kinesthetic tools combine to create environments for critical play, ecological awareness, and expanded perception. Graduating from Bard in 2018, Cal has since shared work at venues including Chaos Computer, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Brooklyn Academy of Music. Currently Cal helps run the Living Gallery in Brooklyn where they regularly organize/host multimedia events, sews upcycled clothing in their home studio, and runs the phone line media label Call Waitn.
Born in Yaounde, Cameroon, Marcelline Mandeng Nken pairs curious objects with movement phrases to unpack dominant narrative structures and the societal conditions that produce them. Her practice is grounded in research, focusing on Greco-Egyptian mythologies and sociopolitical situations that address the semiotics of desire, ancestral knowledge systems as metadata, and the biological limits of human transfiguration. She recently completed her MFA from Yale School of Art and is a current Dance Research Fellow at the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library.
Alejandra Ramos is a Guatemalan / Mexican artist focusing on personal familial-based collaboration. She values the practice of consistent communication between herself and her family abroad – creating spontaneous dialogues and new histories. She uses writing, video, and photography to translate her family’s narratives relating to loss, migration, and separation. Alejandra was born and raised between the suburbs of Lehi, UT, and the endless deserts of Tucson, AZ. She is an MFA candidate at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and values the necessity of community within and beyond educational institutions. Due to the limitation of distance, much of her collaboration with relatives occurs over a phone call where stories are exchanged and recorded. Working in a way where live bodies are not present with voice only recalls how the artist's family has always lived. To be an immigrant means leaving behind one's home and community where seemingly mundane interactions are no longer possible. As such, Alejandra embraces the fragmentation of oral storytelling that is built through myth and imaginative truth.
Kat Sotelo is a 1st generation Filipino American performance artist who received her BFA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture with a Concentration in Video/Film from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2009. Her performances manifest as dance, theatrical productions, and social experiments – all framing the absurdity of life and desperate need for human connection. For over a decade, Sotelo has been professionally employed in the film industry where she decorates sets and manufactures realities on a commercial scale. These skills have sharpened her cinematic approach to stage fabrication – fusing gesture, character tropes, and set pieces to build realms in the threshold of the ordinary and the extraordinary. Her current work focuses on decolonization from the perspective of a Filipino femme. Exploring her body as a means of currency in the American social landscape, she scrutinizes her relationship to “whiteness” through acts of deep humor and sorrow. Sotelo currently lives and works in Brooklyn.
Important note about visiting CPR:
CPR requires all visitors, artists, and staff to provide documentation of full vaccination against Covid-19 as well as a vaccine booster (if eligible), along with a photo ID, to enter CPR. For more information about booster eligibility, please visit the CDC's website. Masks must also be worn at all times inside CPR.
OPEN AiR | Sarah Rothberg: MEETINGS RESEARCH (HUMAN IN THE LOOP)
Image by Sarah Rothberg.
Tickets: $0-$25, pay what you can
Purchase Tickets
MEETINGS RESEARCH (HUMAN IN THE LOOP) is a performance-experiment by 2024 Artist-in-Residence Sarah Rothberg which uses improvisation, conversation, and AI language models to (literally) reflect the present moment.
MEETINGS RESEARCH (HUMAN IN THE LOOP) is an extension of Rothberg’s larger body of work MEETINGS which centers conversation as a creative act and plays with the emerging communication technologies that affect it.
Creative Technologist: Tommy Martinez
Performers: Arden Thomas, Bryce Walsh, Eliane Mitchell, Olive Lafeunte, Payton Adamski, and Zephyr Koczara
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Sarah Rothberg creates playful, poetic, usually-a-bit-weird experiences that invite you to reconsider your relationships to the world around you. These take many forms ranging from installation to immersive experiences, performance, websites, video, writing, workshops, and experiments with technology. Rothberg’s work appears in a variety of contexts: at art exhibitions, in public google docs, on the screens in the NYC Subway system, or whispered into the void. Support for Rothberg’s work has come from organizations including: MoMA, CPR – Center for Performance Research, rhizome.org, bitforms gallery, MTA Arts&Design, CultureHub, and Gray Area. Rotherberg is an Assistant Arts Professor at NYU (Interactive Telecommunications Program), a member of Onassis ONX Studio, and a mentor/former-member at NEW INC, and is part of collaboratives: MORE&MORE UNLIMITED, which offers experiences for imagining changed worlds, and IS THIS THING ON? a post-web2 experiment in artist-driven livestreaming. Rothberg is a 2023-2024 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow.
Tommy Martinez is an artist and programmer working primarily through research, sound, and code. He creates software and musical systems for the internet, embedded devices, and for live multichannel performance. Martinez has performed at MoMA PS1, The DiMenna Center for Classical Music, Fridman Gallery, and Pioneer Works. He has lectured on sound and electronic art at School for Poetic Computation, UC Berkeley, Stanford University, and Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.
Leslie Cuyjet: For All Your Life (Co-Presented with Live Artery | New York Live Arts)
Film still from Leslie Cuyjet: For All Your Life (2024). Video by Peter Richards. Courtesy the artist.
General Admission: $25
Presenter Tickets: $15
Purchase Tickets
Saturday, January 11 at 6:30PM
Sunday, January 12 at 1PM & 5PM
For All Your Life is a performance event and social experiment that investigates the value of black life and black death. Centered around an ambitious serio-comical short film, For All Your Life is staged as a seminar, guided by an insurance sales woman, played by choreographer and artist Leslie Cuyjet.
Part screening, part sales pitch, this solo performance offers a primer on the life insurance industry and its direct connection to slavery; unpacking the ways in which human beings grapple with the inevitable prospect of death and, more importantly, the ways in which lives — especially those of people of color — are monetized.
The short film, shot in 2023 with award-winning Brooklyn director Daniele Sarti, serves as a primer on life insurance. The “pitch” offers a unique investment opportunity — exclusive to audiences — while commenting on professional standards required to achieve legibility for black women within the setting of corporate theater. For All Your Life, the presentation and performance, delivers insight, humor, and drives its mission directly to audiences to choose life.
More information at forallyourlife.com.
For All Your Life is co-presented with Live Artery | New York Live Arts. Explore the full 2025 Live Artery Festival here.
CREDITS
Created and performed by Leslie Cuyjet
Co-director and Dramaturgy: Sean Donovan
Stage Management: Randi Rivera
Stage Design: Neal Wilkinson
Lighting design: Amanda K. Ringger
Video and sound design: Max Ludlow
Co-producers: Jennifer Castro Song and Sweat Variant
Film Credits
Director: Daniele Sarti
Assistant Camera: Max Nemhauser and Joe Kickbush
Audio: Will Scott
Assistant Set Design: Joseph Wolfslau
Make up: Jane Serenska
Production Management: Tess Dworman
Editing: Daniele Sarti, Leslie Cuyjet, and Tim Donovan
Sound Mix: dayae choi
Additional Performers: Tess Dworman, Jacque Betesh, Katrina Reed, and Jason Watt
SUPPORT
The premiere of For All Your Life was commissioned and presented by The Chocolate Factory Theater, April 10-13, 2024. For All Your Life was made possible by a Support for Artists grant from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; created, in part, during a 2023-2024 Research Residency at Danspace Project; supported by the Mertz Gilmore Foundation Late Stage Production Stipend; and developed, in part, during a residency at Baryshnikov Arts, New York, NY.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Leslie Cuyjet is a performer, artist and “a potent choreographic voice,” says the New York Times. For two decades, she has danced for and collaborated with a range of artists like David Gordon, Juliana F. May, Will Rawls, Cynthia Oliver, Jane Comfort, Tere O’Connor, Niall Jones, Yanira Castro and many others. Cuyjet’s own work interrogates these experiences as a performer through the lens of the black body, and includes movement, film, text, and theater. Her work has been presented at The Kitchen, MoMA PS1, The Chocolate Factory, CPR – Center for Performance Research, SculptureCenter, Gibney, and The Shed; where her piece, Blur, garnered her second “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Choreographer/Creator in 2022. Recent honors include Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants for Artists, Princeton Hodder Fellow, Movement Research Resident Artist, and MacDowell Fellow. Cuyjet has been supported by residencies at Movement Research, CPR – Center for Performance Research, Yaddo, Marble House Project, and New Dance Alliance. She is a published writer and the former co-editor of Critical Correspondence. Cuyjet graduated from the first cohort of Goldman Sachs One Million Black Women: Black in Business program and holds a B.F.A. in Dance from the University of Illinois.
Sean Donovan is an actor, director, choreographer, dancer, and writer. His recent works include, Cabin at The Bushwick Starr, The Reception at HERE Arts, and 18 1/2 Minutes at JACK (in collaboration with Sebastián Calderón Bentin). He’s also been presented in The Under the Radar Festival, CUNY’s Prelude Festival, Incubator Arts Project, FAE Festival in Panama, Stanford University, NYU, and others. Sean won a 2022 Lortel Award for his performance in Heather Christian’s Oratorio for Living Things at Ars Nova. He was nominated for 2014 and 2017 BESSIE awards for Outstanding Performer. He’s worked with Taylor Mac, Lee Sunday Evans, Heather Christian, Faye Driscoll, Miguel Gutierrez, Jane Comfort, The Builders Association, and many others. Recent credits include Bark of Millions at Sydney Opera House and BAM, The Trees at Playwrights Horizons, Oratorio for Living Things at Ars Nova, Thank You for Coming at BAM, Danspace Project and an international tour, Age & Beauty Part 2 at NYLA, and House/Divided at BAM. He co-wrote the web series Morning Chardonnay with Hannah Heller. Other Film/TV credits include Law and Order: Organized Crime, Feast of the Epiphany, and Laurence. He holds a BFA in Theatre from NYU. He teaches Movement and Choreography at NYU.
Max Ludlow is a British-American audio engineer, sound designer, and multimedia artist based in Brooklyn, New York. He can often be found building sound systems, troubleshooting projectors, and hanging large objects from the ceiling at venues such as The Kitchen, Harlem Stage, and The Chocolate Factory, among others. A graduate of Purchase College, SUNY, with a BA in Anthropology and Media Studies, Max produces the Artists and Hackers podcast and coordinates the Audio Storytelling program at the Tribeca Festival. In his free time, he performs electronic music under the alias Windy 500 and conducts research on avant-garde, punk, and electronic art.
Amanda K. Ringger has been designing locally, nationally, and internationally for over 20 years with artists such as Faye Driscoll, Cynthia Oliver, Doug Elkins, Leslie Cuyjet, Molly Poerstel, Ivy Baldwin, Laura Peterson, Darrah Carr, Antonio Ramos, Alexandra Beller, Sean Donovan, and cakeface, among many others. She received a BA from Goucher College in Baltimore, MD and an MFA from Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. She is the recipient of a Bessie award for her collaboration on Faye Driscoll’s 837 Venice Boulevard at HERE Arts Center.
Randi Rivera is a native New Yorker from the Bronx. She has been a freelance Stage Manager and Lighting Director since 2009, working both in NYC and on the road. A few favorite colleagues include Tina Satter & Half Straddle, Keigwin & Company, Dance Heginbotham, Harlem Stage, Faye Driscoll, Doug Elkins Choreography Etc, Sidra Bell Dance NY, The Chocolate Factory, Andrew Schneider, Ivy Baldwin, Cathy Weis, Gallim Dance, Sean Donovan, Phantom Limb Company, and Ballez. Rivera served as Associate Director for the Broadway run of Half Straddle’s Is This A Room in 2021. All of her work is for her family.
Neal Wilkinson is a set designer, production manager, and visual artist. His most recent set design was Hang Time by Zora Howard, which was premiered at the Flea last year. As a member of the Builders Association from 2003 to 2019, he designed works including House/Divided, Elements of OZ, and Strange Window, which have been presented by theater festivals internationally. Neal’s company Corps Liminis provides production management for theatrical productions, museums, and installations. Most recent projects include Here We Are, Sonic Sphere, and Tomas Saraceno’s Particular Matter(s) at the SHED, the 2022 Lightscape at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and the Joan Jonas retrospective at MoMA. As a multimedia artist, his new work Fight For America!, in which the events of January 6th, 2021 are re-played by audience members as a tabletop wargame, will be produced by The American Vicarious and premiere in 2025: [www.fightforamerica.games]
Leslie Cuyjet: For All Your Life (Co-Presented with Live Artery | New York Live Arts)
Film still from Leslie Cuyjet: For All Your Life (2024). Video by Peter Richards. Courtesy the artist.
General Admission: $25
Presenter Tickets: $15
Purchase Tickets
Saturday, January 11 at 6:30PM
Sunday, January 12 at 1PM & 5PM
For All Your Life is a performance event and social experiment that investigates the value of black life and black death. Centered around an ambitious serio-comical short film, For All Your Life is staged as a seminar, guided by an insurance sales woman, played by choreographer and artist Leslie Cuyjet.
Part screening, part sales pitch, this solo performance offers a primer on the life insurance industry and its direct connection to slavery; unpacking the ways in which human beings grapple with the inevitable prospect of death and, more importantly, the ways in which lives — especially those of people of color — are monetized.
The short film, shot in 2023 with award-winning Brooklyn director Daniele Sarti, serves as a primer on life insurance. The “pitch” offers a unique investment opportunity — exclusive to audiences — while commenting on professional standards required to achieve legibility for black women within the setting of corporate theater. For All Your Life, the presentation and performance, delivers insight, humor, and drives its mission directly to audiences to choose life.
More information at forallyourlife.com.
For All Your Life is co-presented with Live Artery | New York Live Arts. Explore the full 2025 Live Artery Festival here.
CREDITS
Created and performed by Leslie Cuyjet
Co-director and Dramaturgy: Sean Donovan
Stage Management: Randi Rivera
Stage Design: Neal Wilkinson
Lighting design: Amanda K. Ringger
Video and sound design: Max Ludlow
Co-producers: Jennifer Castro Song and Sweat Variant
Film Credits
Director: Daniele Sarti
Assistant Camera: Max Nemhauser and Joe Kickbush
Audio: Will Scott
Assistant Set Design: Joseph Wolfslau
Make up: Jane Serenska
Production Management: Tess Dworman
Editing: Daniele Sarti, Leslie Cuyjet, and Tim Donovan
Sound Mix: dayae choi
Additional Performers: Tess Dworman, Jacque Betesh, Katrina Reed, and Jason Watt
SUPPORT
The premiere of For All Your Life was commissioned and presented by The Chocolate Factory Theater, April 10-13, 2024. For All Your Life was made possible by a Support for Artists grant from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; created, in part, during a 2023-2024 Research Residency at Danspace Project; supported by the Mertz Gilmore Foundation Late Stage Production Stipend; and developed, in part, during a residency at Baryshnikov Arts, New York, NY.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Leslie Cuyjet is a performer, artist and “a potent choreographic voice,” says the New York Times. For two decades, she has danced for and collaborated with a range of artists like David Gordon, Juliana F. May, Will Rawls, Cynthia Oliver, Jane Comfort, Tere O’Connor, Niall Jones, Yanira Castro and many others. Cuyjet’s own work interrogates these experiences as a performer through the lens of the black body, and includes movement, film, text, and theater. Her work has been presented at The Kitchen, MoMA PS1, The Chocolate Factory, CPR – Center for Performance Research, SculptureCenter, Gibney, and The Shed; where her piece, Blur, garnered her second “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Choreographer/Creator in 2022. Recent honors include Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants for Artists, Princeton Hodder Fellow, Movement Research Resident Artist, and MacDowell Fellow. Cuyjet has been supported by residencies at Movement Research, CPR – Center for Performance Research, Yaddo, Marble House Project, and New Dance Alliance. She is a published writer and the former co-editor of Critical Correspondence. Cuyjet graduated from the first cohort of Goldman Sachs One Million Black Women: Black in Business program and holds a B.F.A. in Dance from the University of Illinois.
Sean Donovan is an actor, director, choreographer, dancer, and writer. His recent works include, Cabin at The Bushwick Starr, The Reception at HERE Arts, and 18 1/2 Minutes at JACK (in collaboration with Sebastián Calderón Bentin). He’s also been presented in The Under the Radar Festival, CUNY’s Prelude Festival, Incubator Arts Project, FAE Festival in Panama, Stanford University, NYU, and others. Sean won a 2022 Lortel Award for his performance in Heather Christian’s Oratorio for Living Things at Ars Nova. He was nominated for 2014 and 2017 BESSIE awards for Outstanding Performer. He’s worked with Taylor Mac, Lee Sunday Evans, Heather Christian, Faye Driscoll, Miguel Gutierrez, Jane Comfort, The Builders Association, and many others. Recent credits include Bark of Millions at Sydney Opera House and BAM, The Trees at Playwrights Horizons, Oratorio for Living Things at Ars Nova, Thank You for Coming at BAM, Danspace Project and an international tour, Age & Beauty Part 2 at NYLA, and House/Divided at BAM. He co-wrote the web series Morning Chardonnay with Hannah Heller. Other Film/TV credits include Law and Order: Organized Crime, Feast of the Epiphany, and Laurence. He holds a BFA in Theatre from NYU. He teaches Movement and Choreography at NYU.
Max Ludlow is a British-American audio engineer, sound designer, and multimedia artist based in Brooklyn, New York. He can often be found building sound systems, troubleshooting projectors, and hanging large objects from the ceiling at venues such as The Kitchen, Harlem Stage, and The Chocolate Factory, among others. A graduate of Purchase College, SUNY, with a BA in Anthropology and Media Studies, Max produces the Artists and Hackers podcast and coordinates the Audio Storytelling program at the Tribeca Festival. In his free time, he performs electronic music under the alias Windy 500 and conducts research on avant-garde, punk, and electronic art.
Amanda K. Ringger has been designing locally, nationally, and internationally for over 20 years with artists such as Faye Driscoll, Cynthia Oliver, Doug Elkins, Leslie Cuyjet, Molly Poerstel, Ivy Baldwin, Laura Peterson, Darrah Carr, Antonio Ramos, Alexandra Beller, Sean Donovan, and cakeface, among many others. She received a BA from Goucher College in Baltimore, MD and an MFA from Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. She is the recipient of a Bessie award for her collaboration on Faye Driscoll’s 837 Venice Boulevard at HERE Arts Center.
Randi Rivera is a native New Yorker from the Bronx. She has been a freelance Stage Manager and Lighting Director since 2009, working both in NYC and on the road. A few favorite colleagues include Tina Satter & Half Straddle, Keigwin & Company, Dance Heginbotham, Harlem Stage, Faye Driscoll, Doug Elkins Choreography Etc, Sidra Bell Dance NY, The Chocolate Factory, Andrew Schneider, Ivy Baldwin, Cathy Weis, Gallim Dance, Sean Donovan, Phantom Limb Company, and Ballez. Rivera served as Associate Director for the Broadway run of Half Straddle’s Is This A Room in 2021. All of her work is for her family.
Neal Wilkinson is a set designer, production manager, and visual artist. His most recent set design was Hang Time by Zora Howard, which was premiered at the Flea last year. As a member of the Builders Association from 2003 to 2019, he designed works including House/Divided, Elements of OZ, and Strange Window, which have been presented by theater festivals internationally. Neal’s company Corps Liminis provides production management for theatrical productions, museums, and installations. Most recent projects include Here We Are, Sonic Sphere, and Tomas Saraceno’s Particular Matter(s) at the SHED, the 2022 Lightscape at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and the Joan Jonas retrospective at MoMA. As a multimedia artist, his new work Fight For America!, in which the events of January 6th, 2021 are re-played by audience members as a tabletop wargame, will be produced by The American Vicarious and premiere in 2025: [www.fightforamerica.games]
Leslie Cuyjet: For All Your Life (Co-Presented with Live Artery | New York Live Arts)
Film still from Leslie Cuyjet: For All Your Life (2024). Video by Peter Richards. Courtesy the artist.
General Admission: $25
Presenter Tickets: $15
Purchase Tickets
Saturday, January 11 at 6:30PM
Sunday, January 12 at 1PM & 5PM
For All Your Life is a performance event and social experiment that investigates the value of black life and black death. Centered around an ambitious serio-comical short film, For All Your Life is staged as a seminar, guided by an insurance sales woman, played by choreographer and artist Leslie Cuyjet.
Part screening, part sales pitch, this solo performance offers a primer on the life insurance industry and its direct connection to slavery; unpacking the ways in which human beings grapple with the inevitable prospect of death and, more importantly, the ways in which lives — especially those of people of color — are monetized.
The short film, shot in 2023 with award-winning Brooklyn director Daniele Sarti, serves as a primer on life insurance. The “pitch” offers a unique investment opportunity — exclusive to audiences — while commenting on professional standards required to achieve legibility for black women within the setting of corporate theater. For All Your Life, the presentation and performance, delivers insight, humor, and drives its mission directly to audiences to choose life.
More information at forallyourlife.com.
For All Your Life is co-presented with Live Artery | New York Live Arts. Explore the full 2025 Live Artery Festival here.
CREDITS
Created and performed by Leslie Cuyjet
Co-director and Dramaturgy: Sean Donovan
Stage Management: Randi Rivera
Stage Design: Neal Wilkinson
Lighting design: Amanda K. Ringger
Video and sound design: Max Ludlow
Co-producers: Jennifer Castro Song and Sweat Variant
Film Credits
Director: Daniele Sarti
Assistant Camera: Max Nemhauser and Joe Kickbush
Audio: Will Scott
Assistant Set Design: Joseph Wolfslau
Make up: Jane Serenska
Production Management: Tess Dworman
Editing: Daniele Sarti, Leslie Cuyjet, and Tim Donovan
Sound Mix: dayae choi
Additional Performers: Tess Dworman, Jacque Betesh, Katrina Reed, and Jason Watt
SUPPORT
The premiere of For All Your Life was commissioned and presented by The Chocolate Factory Theater, April 10-13, 2024. For All Your Life was made possible by a Support for Artists grant from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; created, in part, during a 2023-2024 Research Residency at Danspace Project; supported by the Mertz Gilmore Foundation Late Stage Production Stipend; and developed, in part, during a residency at Baryshnikov Arts, New York, NY.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Leslie Cuyjet is a performer, artist and “a potent choreographic voice,” says the New York Times. For two decades, she has danced for and collaborated with a range of artists like David Gordon, Juliana F. May, Will Rawls, Cynthia Oliver, Jane Comfort, Tere O’Connor, Niall Jones, Yanira Castro and many others. Cuyjet’s own work interrogates these experiences as a performer through the lens of the black body, and includes movement, film, text, and theater. Her work has been presented at The Kitchen, MoMA PS1, The Chocolate Factory, CPR – Center for Performance Research, SculptureCenter, Gibney, and The Shed; where her piece, Blur, garnered her second “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Choreographer/Creator in 2022. Recent honors include Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants for Artists, Princeton Hodder Fellow, Movement Research Resident Artist, and MacDowell Fellow. Cuyjet has been supported by residencies at Movement Research, CPR – Center for Performance Research, Yaddo, Marble House Project, and New Dance Alliance. She is a published writer and the former co-editor of Critical Correspondence. Cuyjet graduated from the first cohort of Goldman Sachs One Million Black Women: Black in Business program and holds a B.F.A. in Dance from the University of Illinois.
Sean Donovan is an actor, director, choreographer, dancer, and writer. His recent works include, Cabin at The Bushwick Starr, The Reception at HERE Arts, and 18 1/2 Minutes at JACK (in collaboration with Sebastián Calderón Bentin). He’s also been presented in The Under the Radar Festival, CUNY’s Prelude Festival, Incubator Arts Project, FAE Festival in Panama, Stanford University, NYU, and others. Sean won a 2022 Lortel Award for his performance in Heather Christian’s Oratorio for Living Things at Ars Nova. He was nominated for 2014 and 2017 BESSIE awards for Outstanding Performer. He’s worked with Taylor Mac, Lee Sunday Evans, Heather Christian, Faye Driscoll, Miguel Gutierrez, Jane Comfort, The Builders Association, and many others. Recent credits include Bark of Millions at Sydney Opera House and BAM, The Trees at Playwrights Horizons, Oratorio for Living Things at Ars Nova, Thank You for Coming at BAM, Danspace Project and an international tour, Age & Beauty Part 2 at NYLA, and House/Divided at BAM. He co-wrote the web series Morning Chardonnay with Hannah Heller. Other Film/TV credits include Law and Order: Organized Crime, Feast of the Epiphany, and Laurence. He holds a BFA in Theatre from NYU. He teaches Movement and Choreography at NYU.
Max Ludlow is a British-American audio engineer, sound designer, and multimedia artist based in Brooklyn, New York. He can often be found building sound systems, troubleshooting projectors, and hanging large objects from the ceiling at venues such as The Kitchen, Harlem Stage, and The Chocolate Factory, among others. A graduate of Purchase College, SUNY, with a BA in Anthropology and Media Studies, Max produces the Artists and Hackers podcast and coordinates the Audio Storytelling program at the Tribeca Festival. In his free time, he performs electronic music under the alias Windy 500 and conducts research on avant-garde, punk, and electronic art.
Amanda K. Ringger has been designing locally, nationally, and internationally for over 20 years with artists such as Faye Driscoll, Cynthia Oliver, Doug Elkins, Leslie Cuyjet, Molly Poerstel, Ivy Baldwin, Laura Peterson, Darrah Carr, Antonio Ramos, Alexandra Beller, Sean Donovan, and cakeface, among many others. She received a BA from Goucher College in Baltimore, MD and an MFA from Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. She is the recipient of a Bessie award for her collaboration on Faye Driscoll’s 837 Venice Boulevard at HERE Arts Center.
Randi Rivera is a native New Yorker from the Bronx. She has been a freelance Stage Manager and Lighting Director since 2009, working both in NYC and on the road. A few favorite colleagues include Tina Satter & Half Straddle, Keigwin & Company, Dance Heginbotham, Harlem Stage, Faye Driscoll, Doug Elkins Choreography Etc, Sidra Bell Dance NY, The Chocolate Factory, Andrew Schneider, Ivy Baldwin, Cathy Weis, Gallim Dance, Sean Donovan, Phantom Limb Company, and Ballez. Rivera served as Associate Director for the Broadway run of Half Straddle’s Is This A Room in 2021. All of her work is for her family.
Neal Wilkinson is a set designer, production manager, and visual artist. His most recent set design was Hang Time by Zora Howard, which was premiered at the Flea last year. As a member of the Builders Association from 2003 to 2019, he designed works including House/Divided, Elements of OZ, and Strange Window, which have been presented by theater festivals internationally. Neal’s company Corps Liminis provides production management for theatrical productions, museums, and installations. Most recent projects include Here We Are, Sonic Sphere, and Tomas Saraceno’s Particular Matter(s) at the SHED, the 2022 Lightscape at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and the Joan Jonas retrospective at MoMA. As a multimedia artist, his new work Fight For America!, in which the events of January 6th, 2021 are re-played by audience members as a tabletop wargame, will be produced by The American Vicarious and premiere in 2025: [www.fightforamerica.games]
Technical Residency: Jen Rosenblit and Simone Aughterlony (closed to the public)
Jen Rosenblit and Simone Aughterlony: Everything Fits in the Room (2017). Photo by Chiara Pagano. Courtesy the artists.
The Technical Residency is closed to the public.
CPR welcomes Jen Rosenblit and Simone Aughterlony as Winter 2025 Technical Residents, and will provide one uninterrupted week in CPR’s theater and access to a robust a/v inventory to play, experiment, and create. The residency will support their new work in development, The Dumps, a performance surrounding architectural decay and ruinophilia, or the love of ruins. During the residency Rosenblit and Aughterlony will work with various stage, light, and sound collaborators, focusing on research and prototyping construction scaffolding as the skeleton material and the site for the live performance.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Jen Rosenblit makes performances based in Berlin after many years in NYC surrounding architectures, bodies, text, and ideas concerned with problems that arise inside of agendas for togetherness. Rosenblit’s works lean toward the uncanny, locating ways of being together amidst (un) familiar and impossible contradictions. The methodology supports an expanse of meaning as it emerges between things and moves toward an unwinding and a possible collapse. Desire and sexuality linger as reoccurring points of departure without demanding a singular aesthetic or representation. Rosenblit is a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow, a recipient of a 2014 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award, a 2023 La Becque (Vevey, CH) artist in residence, and currently teaches at Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz Berlin. Rosenblit has collaborated with artists including Simone Aughterlony, Miguel Gutierrez, A.K. Burns, and Philipp Gehmacher in various capacities via performer, writer, creator, and director.
Simone Aughterlony is an independent artist based in Zurich and Berlin, working predominantly in dance, performance, and visual art contexts. They have been devising queer-spirited choreographic works over the last sixteen years, engaging with alternative forms of kinship inside their process, new constellations emerge as possibilities for reconfiguring a culture of togetherness that fosters both familiar and unknown quantities. Their works playfully compose with representation and its saturation, seeping into and embracing the phenomenology of mis-recognition and the absurd. Aughterlony approaches art making as a practice where they navigate the contradiction between the domination of desire alongside the agency of all elements. They regularly teach at academic institutions such as ZHdK - Zurich University of the Arts, Manufacture in Lausanne, and DAS Art Amsterdam, amongst others, as well as devising and facilitating laboratory formats and frames for sharing and producing knowledge. In 2020 together with Marc Streit they founded Imbricated Real, an independent structure for contemporary art practice.
OPEN STUDIOS | NEW INC Workshares: elekhlekha อีเหละเขละขละ, Johanna Flato, Avneesh Sarwate and Sumanth Srinivasan, and Trevor Van de Velde
elekhlekha อีเหละเขละขละ. Photo by Thomas J. Logan. Courtesy of Institute for Electronic Arts (IEA).
Tickets: $0-$25, pay what you can
Purchase Tickets
** Advance tickets for this program are sold out. An in-person wait list will open at 6:30PM.
NEW INC, an incubator for people working at the intersection of art, design, and technology, organizes an evening of work-in-progress from its interdisciplinary cohort of artists, designers, technologists, futurists, and creative entrepreneurs, with presentations by elekhlekha อีเหละเขละขละ, Johanna Flato, Avneesh Sarwate and Sumanth Srinivasan, and Trevor Van de Velde. This OPEN STUDIOS at CPR is an extension of NEW INC’s monthly Workshares program, where cohort members receive feedback, exchange knowledge, cross-pollinate ideas, and ask for help – and the first time the public is invited to engage in these gatherings.
OPEN STUDIOS is a series of work-in-progress showings held regularly throughout the year, organized by guest curators, and serves as an incubator for new work, inviting the public into the artistic process.
View the Program
PROGRAM
elekhlekha อีเหละเขละขละ: Networked Gong Gathering
This collaborative sound-making workshop is inspired by a community gathering of gong ensembles throughout the SEA. While keeping the core of having rhythms distributed among participants, it focuses on collectively reconstructing sounds from different SEA sound cultures through networks using code.
Johanna Flato: Spatial Articulations with Tangle AR
Tangle AR App is an artist-built mobile tool for spatial annotation and poetic encounters. Currently in beta, it aims to inject critical friction into this accelerationalist AI/XR moment and seed our tech-mediated environments with a more civic, intentional, and playful dimension.
Avneesh Sarwate and Sumanth Srinivasan: Creative Coding Test Kitchen
Join Avneesh and Sumanth as they show off a new interactive audiovisual recipe! This talk/demo will show off an audiovisual work built with their new javascript libraries. They’ll explain what tooling gaps they’re trying to fill, and what new forms of art they hope enable for themselves and others.
Trevor Van de Velde: Hacking Grains
The universe is granular. Hacking Grains is a multidisciplinary performance project that reimagines the world being made of grains. This project explores the relationships between technology, ritual, and Asian futurity through amplified grains of rice. Individual grains become both sonic actuators and resonators. The sounds of rice dominate the space through custom-built synthesizers, speaker installations, and live performance.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
elekhlekha อีเหละเขละขละ is a collaborative research-based group consisting of immigrant Bangkok-born, Brooklyn-based artists, Kengchakaj–เก่งฉกาจ and Nitcha–ณิชชา. The collective delves into subversive storytelling by exploring non-hegemonic sounds and visual archives, historical research–decoding, and unlearning biases. elekhlekha’s work spans performing documents, multimedia, and technology centers to interrogate, experiment, explore, and define decolonized possibilities. elekhlekha is a Thai word that means dispersedly, chaos, all over, and non-direction to break free our practices from being labeled through a Western lens. In 2022, they were awarded the Lumen Prize Gold Award. The artists have received grants and development funds from Rhizome, the Processing Foundation, and more for their projects. elekhlekha is Eyebeam Democracy Machine Fellows, 2023–2024 AIR at CultureHub, and the NEW INC Y10 Art & Code track member.
Johanna Flato is a visual artist and creative technologist based in Brooklyn, NY and was born in San Antonio, TX. She investigates ways in which our sense of site — and in turn, locational belonging — is mediated and manipulated through language, technology, and gesture. She is the founder and developer of an augmented reality app called Tangle — a mobile tool for spatial annotation and poetic encounters. Tangle makes site-based, real-time, mixed-reality ideation and collaboration possible. It aims to inject critical friction into this accelerationalist AI/XR moment and seed our tech-mediated environments with a more civic, intentional, and playful dimension. As an ongoing research thread, Johanna coined and iteratively re-works the notion of a "syn-site" (a term updating Robert Smithson's site/non-site construct for our contemporary extended realities).
Avneesh Sarwate and Sumanth Srinivasan, spurred by their own adventures and challenges with making and sharing software-based multimedia art, want to build browser-based tools and software libraries that allow artists to more easily design, collaborate on, and share digital work. Avneesh Sarwate is a programmer, musician, visual artist, and improviser. His work focuses on using real time computer systems to enhance the gestural and impulsive elements of the creative process. A guitarist since childhood, “jamming” with computers has been a goal of his from the minute he started making art with them. Sumanth Srinivasan is an engineer, visual artist, writer, and musician. His work thus far has centered around digitizing human imperfections and playfulness in art, and the presentation of noise and degradation as an aesthetic.
Trevor Van de Velde is a composer, sound artist, instrument builder, and creative programmer based in NYC. Trevor's work focuses on exploring the relationship between technology, play, materiality, and hybridity through a combination of "hacked" electronics and live performance.
NEW INC was conceived of as a not-for-profit platform for furthering the New Museum’s ongoing commitment to new art and new ideas. Now in Year 11, NEW INC’s membership model continues to support a diverse range of creative practitioners with a values-driven program and safe space for gathering and developing new creative projects and businesses.
OPEN STUDIOS | Avatar Lilith, Coco Villa, and Candi X, curated by cy x
Clay Cosmos. Photo by Carla Escareno. Courtesy Candi X.
Tickets: $0-$25, pay what you can
Purchase Tickets
*Advance tickets for this program are sold out. An in-person wait list will open at 7:00 P.M.
Pleasure ceremonialist and dreamer cy x curates OPEN STUDIOS like they would Love Island, inviting freaky, intimate, and captivating work from friends they have work-crushes on. Emerging from their desire to support their friend’s traveling show where she fucks a flower in full eco-erotic fashion, cy invites friends and crushes Avatar Lilith, Coco Villa, and Candi X to share their work and practice in budding stages.
OPEN STUDIOS is a series of work-in-progress showings held regularly throughout the year, organized by guest curators, and serves as an incubator for new work, inviting the public into the artistic process.
View the Program
PROGRAM
Avatar Lilith: INTRAFACE 001
INTRAFACE 001 is a work in progress exploring the transitional space between membranes – where one ends and another begins. Existing as a bodily extension of Avatar Lilith, and as a flesh and sinewed tethering point, INTRAFACE 001 is a hybrid instrument that produces sonic fragments created algorithmically through Artificial Intelligence, trained off of her digital DNA, creating a type of intimacy between Avatar, meat body, and interface. By giving this algorithmic alien-other a fetish body and presence, Avatar Lilith reimagines and reframes our relationship to intangible and incoherent technocratic byproducts and systems that are inherently obscured and designed for flattening and optimizing. INTRAFACE 001 explores the power dynamic between these entities by creating a physical encasement (INTRA-/inside, rather than INTER-/between), encircling, entrapping, and perhaps un-flattening.
Coco Villa: I Am Swimming With Zaza
I Am Swimming With Zaza is an ongoing intimacy between fact and the fantastical, real and imagined. As they circulate, slow-moving sculptural gestures and rhythmic shapes become more intertwined superseding juxtapositions of you and me, then and now, and here and there. What can I do to honor you, now that it is too late? The You, and you that I come from, and the You that occasionally stands in for me.
Performed by Benin Gardner and Coco Villa
Sound Mix by Taul Katz, featuring Las Nalgas de Venus by Quixosis, DIZZY PPL BECOME BLURRY by Saya Gray, and Macorina by Chavez’s Vargas
Candi X: R.I.P. ROSY
A bright and playful piece about aliveness, love, death, and celebration, R.I.P. ROSY follows the intimate romance between Clay and Rosy (man and flower) as their bond transforms with joy even as their physical forms change. Following clear instructions left by Rosy for her commemoration party, we are asked to get silly and deeply curious about what it means to be alive. Drawing from erotic ecology philosophies, our life/death/life cycles are invited into reflection. How may we use celebration as a way to confront grief and bring ourselves into action in these times when our aliveness is needed most?
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Avatar Lilith is a multi-hyphenate artist that masquerades as an avatar using computer graphics, sound design, installations, and audiovisual performance. They seek to reject linearity and binary logic systems by existing in two or more places at once. Avatar Lilith hopes to encourage others to embrace playfulness, curiosity, and creativity by worldbuilding and embracing alternative logic systems and technologies as a critical practice through performance, installations, and research. Their work has been featured internationally in galleries and venues such as Acud Galerie (Berlin), Nunu Gallery (NYC), Basement (CPH), Stonewall Inn (NYC), and Ars Electronica (AUT).
Candi X is a performance and video artist, experience facilitator, producer, and director originally from the US currently based in Mexico City. Her work reflects deep research around the eco-erotic relationship between the human and natural world and expresses through brightly queer and colorful outputs. All of her works are equal parts accessible, embodied, intellectual, and silly – redefining the erotic by focusing on igniting the sensorial imagination. Through playful, body based experiences, performances, films, and practices she facilitates fun, connection, and curiosity that opens audiences up to new perspectives.
Coco Villa is a Jamaican-Colombian-American dancer, interdisciplinary artist and educator from Queens, currently living in Brooklyn. Tightly bound to identity, Villa leads an interdisciplinary art-research practice investigating relations between body, object, and landscape. Their work spans across disciplines of performance, fashion design, installation, photography, and film. They utilize material and movement languages to tell autobiographical stories, explore human intimacy, and build familial archives. Driven by historical and scientific discovery, Villa thrives in the ocean, in the woods, in the dance studio, darkroom, design lab, and library, playfully creating by hand.
cy x is a demon and a dreamer moved by tremendous desire and obsession with glory holes, sex cinemas, erotic horror, queer archives, and money. They study the way that erotics and space co-construct each other and the objects produced from such encounters and utilize their findings to create ritualized ephemera in the form of writing, sound, video, and performance. Their work has been shown in the Center for Art Research and Alliances, CPR – Center for Performance Research, Culture Hub, Pioneer Works, Rewire Festival, and other spaces, both digital and physical.
![OPEN AiR | x: this is not a cult I: THE COACH – Opening and Artist Talk [virtual]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fac507656ff4f3028bdb444/1725317749262-AUFYAL7ZIU21RWZQ5S7F/20221025_dan_Christopher_Nunez_LL_000.jpg)
OPEN AiR | x: this is not a cult I: THE COACH – Opening and Artist Talk [virtual]
x. Photo by Larry Levanti.
Free with RSVP
RSVP
The digital gallery will remain on view through November 30, 2024.
As an extension of their work and research as a CPR 2023 Artist-in-Residence and their trilogy this is not a cult, x aka Saint Sir Coach presents an archive of mementos, materials, and media from their fictional cult Sky Dancers, Meta Angels, and Meme Fiends – internally known as THE FAMILY – in a digital gallery hosted on CPR’s website. Focused on the charming and relatable cult leader, Saint Sir Coach, this is not a cult I: THE COACH takes its digital audience on a journey of falling in love with Coach’s witty banter, pop culture references, energy readings, and motivational speeches. Coach is the hype person of your dreams and the primary cat parent of THE FAMILY’s golden child and mascot, the gray domestic shorthair called Avignon the Grey.
At the virtual opening on November 12, Coach will lead us on a tour of the gallery which will remain on view through November 30 with a sprawling archive of delicate cat whiskers, guided meditations, spiritually polytheistic words of affirmation, and more digital goodies that have led many professional and TikTok dancers alike to dedicate their lives to the Gospel of this satirical cult that’s not a cult.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
x aka Saint Sir Coach is a trans, conceptual artist and medium that uses sound healing as Social Practice. Dismantling and simultaneously utilizing our 11 years of education in theater, 25+ years in dance, and ambiguous training in visual art, a unique practice has been born. x has shared short films, installations, and dance works in Budapest, Detroit, Ithaca, and NYC. Selected accomplishments include: Creatives Rebuild New York Artist Employment Program, New Yorkers for Culture and Arts Advocate in Residence, CPR – Center for Performance Research Artist-in-Residence, AXIS Choreo-Lab Fellow, GALLIM Moving Artist Residency, Bronx Council on the Arts Bronx Cultural Visions Fund, and New Dance Alliance Performance Mix Festival 36 and LiftOff Residency. Our first solo show high functioning x.0. premiered in August 2022 in HERE Arts Center’s Sublet: CoOp Series.
OPEN HOUSE | Election Night with Crackhead Barney
Free
RSVP encouraged
***This event is AT CAPACITY. Only those who have RSVP’d will gain entry. Please vote, stay safe, and take care of one another!
On Election Night, CPR will open its doors to screen the televised election returns in its theater, providing a space to be in community as this historic and consequential presidential election unfolds.
The evening will feature ‘live political commentary’ from performance artist, viral ambush interviewer, and political dilettante Crackhead Barney. Additional performances and activations throughout the night by Maho Ogawa, Bob Bellerue, The KLUTZ C🙂LT (Alex Romania, Stacy Lynn Smith, and Shane Jones), and Kris Lee will punctuate the drone of the endless news cycle, offering space for reflection, distraction, and care.
Bring a pillow, some snacks, and camp out at CPR amongst artists and friends.
The program also marks the culmination of Exorcism = Liberation, a public art project by Yanira Castro / a canary torsi on view in the window of CPR, with all three of the project’s banners and slogans on view.
For information about how, when, and where to vote, visit vote.gov.
Special thanks to Vine Wine and Creative Time.
View tonight’s program here.
PROGRAM
Crackhead Barney: Live Political Commentary
7:00 PM – 12:00 AM
Maho Ogawa: Japanese Tea and Ritual Room
7:30 PM and 11:30 PM
An introspective and immersive journey over Japanese tea, the Japanese Tea and Ritual Room immerses guests in a peaceful ambiance and meditative mindset as collective ritual – accepting our strength and tenderness in the community and envisioning the best for the US and the world. Performed by Maho Ogawa, Carolyn Hall, and Annie MingHao Wang.
Bob Bellerue: Physical Circuits
8:30 PM
A sonic improvisation including junk metal, bullhorn feedback, and resonating drums.
The KLUTZ C🙂LT (Alex Romania, Stacy Lynn Smith, Shane Jones): Triniverse
9:30 PM
The KLUTZ C🙂LT invites you to come on down to a relaxing noise retreat and join in multimedia chaos meditation as they lead the audience in summoning a new and exciting ending to The End.
Kris Lee: Doing my black job
10:30 PM
Yanira Castro / a canary torsi: Exorcism = Liberation
On view
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Crackhead Barney was born in Jamaica, Queens to strict religious parents who immigrated to America from Northern Nigeria. She was raised in a one bedroom apartment with her siblings in an era before wokeness and identity politics ruled the cultural landscape and was always taunted for her immigrant African roots and dark complexion. She studied Fine Arts and Media at Hunter College and was told her artwork wasn't shit. Rejected from museums and galleries, she decided to take matters into her own hands and use the streets of NYC as her canvas, painting pictures with her body across the landscape without the need to satisfy the desires of the cultural institutions. Her street performances garnered attention and she began to go viral all over the Internet with people reacting in confusion, laughter, anger, pity, concern, and all the other emotions available to humans. Rejecting any hierarchies that didn't feature her at the very pinnacle, she naturally was attracted to social media where she could form a universe centered on her performance art. She began a “Crackhead Barney and Friends” account on Instagram and TikTok where she’s developed a cult of personality supportive of her creative practice.
Bob Bellerue is a sound artist, experimental musician, sound/video curator, and A/V technician based in Ridgewood NY. Over the last 30+ years he has been involved in creating and presenting a wide range of sonic activities – experimental music, sound art, noise, junk metal percussion ensembles, soundtracks for dance / theater / video / performance art, and sound / video installations. Bob’s electronic sound work is focused on resonant feedback systems, using amplified instruments, objects, recordings, and spaces, in combination with electronics and software written in the Supercollider audio synthesis programming language.
Shane Jones is a musician whose work centers intentional dissonance as a natural phenomena, utilizing continuous glissando. Their anti-capitalistic visual art practice activates found objects into such things as cartoons, animation, nunchucks, cassette tapes, T-shirts, paintings, and sculpture. Shane has been in a bunch of different bands as well as having had stints as a farmer, a cook, a union organizer, and a factory worker/impromptu noise artist in a teddy bear sweatshop.
Kris Lee (she/they) is a New York-based dancer, performer, and home chef.
Maho Ogawa (水素co.) is a Japanese born multidisciplinary movement artist working in NY. She uses body, video, text, installation, and audience-participatory methods to discover how relationships and the environment affect individual bodies consciously and subconsciously. Her recent works partly decontextualize and research the minimum movement in Japanese tea culture. She crafts public events inspired by Japanese tea rituals to build new thinking methods about "silence," providing a quiet but active mindset to heal and unite the community. Her aim is to empower erased cultures by dismantling oppressed body gestures and their context as choreography, fighting for cultural equality in nonviolent ways. Maho's works have been presented in Asia at Korea & Japan Dance Festival (Seoul), Za Koenji (Tokyo), Whenever Wherever Festival (Tokyo), and in the US including Princeton University, Invisible Dog Art Center, JACK, Movement Research at Judson Church, and CPR – Center for Performance Research to name a few. Ogawa has received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant and creation support from Culture Push, Emily Harvey Foundation, LEIMAY, and New Dance Alliance. She is a 2024-2026 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence. www.suisoco.com @suisomaho
Carolyn Hall is a Bessie award winning freelance dancer/performer, historical marine ecologist, and scientific communication coach. She can often be found along shorelines hatching plans for creative public engagement projects around fish, water, and climate change. Some current engagements: Maho Ogawa’s Japanese Tea Ceremony series of performance investigations, the speculative future climate change project Sunk Shore with Clarinda Mac Low, and Carrie Ahern’s intimate performances examining female sexuality and society. Other hats: co-directs science communication programs for the American Fisheries Society, co-founder of Exact Communication, and Creative Programs Consultant for Genspace. Deep thanks to Maho and Annie for this continued journey together. carolynjhall.com
Annie MingHao Wang is a dancer/choreographer based in New York. She is a 2024 LMCC Manhattan Arts Grantee, a 2022-2024 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence, a 2024-2025 Topaz Arts Artist-in-Residence, and a 2024 Marble House Project Artist-in-Residence. She has also had residencies at LEIMAY, BRIC, and Atlantic Center for the Arts. Her work has been presented by Pioneers Go East Collective at Out-FRONT!, Movement Research at Judson Church, Leimay OUTSIGHT, Five Myles, CPR – Center for Performance Research, Exponential Festival, and BRIC. Annie is an active company member of Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group and also dances with Sugar Vendil, 水素co. (suisoco.), and Same As Sister. Much gratitude for Maho and Carolyn for their power and grounding energy in this work.
Alex Romania is a multidisciplinary performing artist, improviser, and filmmaker. Romania is a current Franklin Furnace Fund recipient, a 2024 Djerassi resident artist, a 2022 MacDowell fellow, a 2023 CPR – Center for Performance Research AiR, and a 2018-2020 Movement Research AiR. Some of Romania’s current projects include co-directing the film RECKONING with Stacy Lynn Smith, the multidisciplinary opera Face Eaters (Chocolate Factory Theater, May 2024), co-directorship of the experimental documentary Patch the Sky with Five Colored Stones conceived by choreographer Daria Faïn, and a collaborative short film entitled Mira, Mira, Mira! with Daniela Fabrizi and the Re Hecho community in the LES. Romania has performed in various works by Kathy Westwater since 2013, and in works by artists Simone Forti, Éva Mag, Eddie Peake, Andy de Groat, and Catherine Galasso. As a video collaborator and designer, Romania has had video designs featured within works by Antonio Ramos, and has worked on film projects with Marin Media Labs, TAAMAS/Sarah Riggs, Trixie Films/Therese Shechter, Christopher Unpezverde Nuñez, Martita Abril, and Sarah White-Ayòn. Romania is excited about how experimentation in live performance may feed developing script based films and plays, which include a budding memoir, and character based extensions of previous work.
Stacy Lynn Smith is a neurodivergent, Black mixed-race performing artist and improviser, choreographer/director, filmmaker and Green Circle Keeper at Hidden Water, a restorative justice organization by and for those affected by childhood sexual abuse (CSA). Smith’s practice synthesizes various lineages of improvisational forms, somatics, experimental theater, and butoh alongside embodied trauma research. Smith creates, devises, improvises, and performs across disciplines and genres with an array of talented artists including: DeForrest Brown Jr., Anna Homler, Karen Bernard, Thaddeus O’Neil, Rakia Seaborn, Vangeline Theater (2008-2017), Michael Freeman, Saints of an Unnamed Country, Salome Asega, GENG, Donna Costello, Bradley Bailey, Michele Beck, Jasmine Hearn, mayfield brooks, Josephine Decker, and most recently with Kathy Westwater, Jill Sigman, Emily Johnson, Joan Jonas, Peter Born, and Okwui Okpokwasili. As Psychic Wormhole (with Alex Romania), recent work includes producing and choreographing Face Eaters at The Chocolate Factory Theater. Psychic Wormhole is working towards completing their debut film, RECKONING, a visceral abstract memoir which grapples with Smith’s experiences of CSA and Complex-PTSD. Smith is a 2022-2024 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence, Glasshouse Art.Life.Lab 2024 AIR, a 2024 Djerassi AIR, and a 2025 Dance and Process (DAP) artist at The Kitchen.
OPEN AiR | Hans: Night Creatures
Hans. Photo by Elyse Mertz.
Tickets: $0-$25, pay what you can
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A new work by 2024 Artist-in-Residence Hans, Night Creatures is a love letter to all the men I have coiled my body around, to a love-hate relationship with New York, and to a constant wrestling match with a flamenco practice. A vespertine rumination of sexuality – from moonrise to sunrise – and the hunger, yearning, and fear that comes with being in love and lust of other male bodies. The work is also a technical exploration, having spent the residency year learning how to compose music using electronic, MIDI, and digital audio workspaces – composed while commuting through the vascular undergrounds of the NYC subway. The work is cradled by flamenco, using musical modes, movements, rhythms, melodies, and ideas, but deconstructs them to reflect a lived experience as a queer, fat-femme boy from the lush tropical fever-dream of Miami, living in NYC’s sticky, grimy, urban, angsty landscape. What does it feel like to dance House por Bulerias, move to the Fandangos of the L Train, and sing Tangos de Bushwick?
The performance will be followed by a conversation with Hans facilitated by leaders in the flamenco community on the nature of experimentation, orthodoxy, and framework of flamenco, and how it changes when it reflects non-Spanish folklore and experiences.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Hans is a dancer and tattoo artist from Miami, FL with a practice focused on dance as visual art. They have shared work with audiences in Florida and held artistic residencies in NYC. Hans has also participated in projects by Katy Pyle’s Ballez, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, Okwui Okpokwasili, and Peter Born. Hans describes himself and his work as the “gay lovechild of Frida Kahlo and Sailor Neptune’s lesbian love affair.”
OPEN AiR | Leo Chang: Jeonmonori
Leo Chang. Photo by Elyse Mertz.
Tickets: $0-$25, pay what you can
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Jeonmonori is an extension of a musical practice that 2024 Artist-in-Residence Leo Chang has been immersed in for the past six years, drawing on Korean folk musical practices and instruments as the basis for building new electronic instruments. The jeonmonori is an electronic adaptation of the sangmo, a hat with a long, spinning whip made of ribbon attached to its crown, which is worn and played during the sangmonori, a Korean folk tradition where the instrumentalist/performer plays and dances simultaneously with their percussion instrument. During his CPR residency, Chang created the jeonmonori by modifying a sangmo hat, replacing the spinning ribbon with a lightweight, mini microphone. While wearing the hat, he moves in the middle of four hanging gongs that are amplified with transducers. The act of the mic moving within the amplified gongs creates feedback between the transducers and the mic-ed hat-whip, resonating the gongs, while Chang’s position and the speed at which the whip is spinning, among other factors, determines musical variables of feedback such as pitch, rhythm, and dynamics.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Leo Chang is a Korean improviser, composer, and performer of experimental music. Born in Seoul, Leo lived as an expat in Singapore, Taipei, and Shanghai, until moving to the United States in 2011. His art is an act of homemaking inspired by various musical and ideological movements that have sought to question power dynamics and imagine egalitarian possibilities. His primary methods are free improvisation, written text, graphical notation, and electronic processing. Leo's projects have been presented and supported by the Vision Festival, Roulette Intermedium, Korea Foundation, Ostrava Days New Music Festival, New York City Electro-Acoustic Music Festival, Brooklyn Arts Council, and EMPAC at Rensselaer, among others. He holds a PhD in Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. www.listentoleo.com
OPEN LAB | What is your first memory of dirt?: Aural Archiving with Yanira Castro / a canary torsi
Photo courtesy a canary torsi.
Free, advance registration required
REGISTER for a 20-min time slot
On Eventbrite, please select the 1pm event, then press "Tickets," and select your desired 20-minute time slot at checkout.
With limited individual time slots available, we ask that you fully commit to the time that you register for. If you are not able to make it, please let us know as soon as possible so we can release the time to another participant. If all time slots are taken, please email info@cprnyc.org with the subject “Waiting List: Aural Archiving” and we will reach out if a time becomes available.
As part of Yanira Castro / a canary torsi’s multisite, multi-format public art project Exorcism = Liberation and in conjunction with the installation on view in the windows of CPR from September 25 through November 6, this aural archiving project will gather participants’ foundational memories of earth in an intimate, analog recording session. Responding to the prompt “What is your first memory of dirt?”, one of the project’s slogans and sound works that will be carried across the U.S. this fall on stickers, pins, lawn signs, and handmade banners during a critical American election season, participants will be guided through a private experience of listening, contemplation, and memory, recounting their first memories of dirt on a cassette tape recorder.
Participants will sign up for an individual 20-minute time slot and engage in an autonomous recording experience. Tea and cookies will be served.
OPEN LAB invites artists and scholars to facilitate theoretical discussions and embodied workshops, providing a platform for practice-based inquiry and creative exchange.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Yanira Castro's work is rooted in communal construction as a rehearsal for radical democracy. She is an interdisciplinary artist born in Borikén (Puerto Rico), living in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn), and working at the intersection of communal practices, performance, installation, and interactive technology. Castro forms iterative, multimodal projects that center land, and the complexity of citizenship and governance in works activated and performed by the public. Since 2009, she’s created and performed with a team of collaborators as a canary torsi. Her recent work includes a performance manual for reckoning, Last Audience, a performance manual; a participatory podcast to rehearse for a collective future, Last Audience: a performance podcast; and a tea ritual created with four teens from NYC Girl Scouts Troop 6000 to enact the ingestion of home/land, TIERRA. Currently, Castro is developing her ongoing interdisciplinary work, I came here to weep, a collective exorcism for territorial possession. Castro has been commissioned and presented by The Chocolate Factory Theater, New York Live Arts, MCA Chicago, The Invisible Dog Art Center, SPACE Gallery, PICA, LMCC, The Bates Dance Festival and ICA/Boston. Her work has recently been supported by Creative Capital, The MAP Fund, The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts for Dance, 2024 NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship for Interdisciplinary Art, Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, LMCC, MacDowell, Yaddo, and Marble House Project. She has received two New York Dance and Performance (aka Bessie) Awards for Outstanding Production.
OPEN LAB | Optimistic Voices: In Process with Juliana F. May (Co-Presented with Juliana F. May / MAYDANCE)
Juliana F. May. Photo by Chris Cameron.
Free with RSVP
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This group conversation facilitated by Lena Engelstein will center Juliana F. May’s choreographic process over the last 20 years as she embarks on her current work Optimistic Voices premiering in the fall of 2025. Inspired by May’s ongoing Art Group workshops which generate community around making, all are welcome and are invited to participate by listening, asking questions, and bringing their own issues surrounding creative process, autobiography, and performance and setting material.
OPEN LAB invites artists and scholars to facilitate theoretical discussions and embodied workshops, providing a platform for practice-based inquiry and creative exchange.
Optimistic Voices 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.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
A Guggenheim and New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow, Juliana F. May has created ten evening length works since 2002 with commissions and encore performances from Dance Theater Workshop, New York Live Arts, The Chocolate Factory Theater, American Realness, and Abrons Arts Center. May has been awarded grants and residencies through The MAP Fund, NYSCA, Jerome Foundation, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Gibney Dance In Process, and Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography. In 2002, May received her BA in Dance and Art History from Oberlin College, and, in 2012, she received an MFA in Choreography from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. May served as the Artistic Advisor for New York Live Arts' Fresh Tracks Residency Program from 2017-2019 and 2024-present and has been on faculty at Sarah Lawrence College since 2017.
Lena Engelstein is a dancer, performer, and choreographer. She is part of the interdisciplinary performance collective CHILD, headed by Lisa Fagan. Her work has been dubbed “The High Weird” by critics and lauded as “subtly campy and hilariously queer” by The Brooklyn Rail. Recent Choreography/Direction includes Deepe Darknesse at New York Live Arts’ Live Artery 2024 with collaborator Lisa Fagan and CHILD's 1-800-3592-113592 at Theater Mitu in March 2024. Recent performance credits include Alexa West, Barnett Cohen, Brendan Drake, Falcon Dance (company member, 2018-present), Isa Spector, Jo Warren, Owen Prum + Lili Dekker, Miguel Alejandro Castillo, and Third Rail Company’s Then She Fell (company member, 2019-2020). Engelstein currently choreographs for and performs with the band Lou Tides. She holds a BA in Mathematics from Colorado College and has taught at SUNY Brockport, Colorado Mesa University, Bard College, and The Field Center.
OPEN AiR | Endless Holes: Rebecca Patek, Alex Rodabaugh, and Anh Vo
Alex Rodabaugh. Photo by Res.
Tickets: $0-$25, pay what you can
Purchase Tickets
Tues, October 22 at 7 P.M.
Weds, October 23 at 7 P.M.
Endless Holes is a shared evening of new work in development by 2024 Artists-in-Residence Rebecca Patek, Alex Rodabaugh, and Anh Vo. Each work is a continuation of the artist’s research in multi-part or iterative performance projects: Rebecca Patek revisits Tough Titties, exploring depolarization, binary fatigue, and mystic shorelines; Alex Rodabaugh seeks to close their Break-Up Tunnel Vision Infinity project with a deep dive into nostalgia, cyberspace avatar puppetry, paranoia, and denial; and Anh Vo builds on their ongoing research into northern Vietnamese possession ritual, exploring the pussy as an energetic channel that can tune into the existential pain of others.
PROGRAM
Rebecca Patek: Tough Titties 2: View from the Other End
An offering towards the effort around depolarization. We are for and against each other, for or against objects, ideas, realities. The binary fatigue of thinking and feeling can lead us to venture further than we might otherwise travel. We seek a mystic shoreline that is spoken of, that is rumored, but can we find it? What do we have to lose? What do we have to do to get there? Can I get there? Can you? Can we? I have many questions clearly but basically I am trying and that's the best I can do.
Alex Rodabaugh: n-1
Looking for a path forward to close the Break-Up Tunnel Vision Infinity project and embrace the community that embraces me. The nth edition delves into the nostalgia that is colonizing our future, cyberspace avatar puppetry colliding with physical presence, and the paranoia or denial that arises from the perpetual threat of and participation in violence.
Anh Vo: pussy talks
pussy talks builds on Anh Vo's ongoing research into northern Vietnamese possession ritual, exploring the pussy as an energetic channel that can tune into the existential pain of others.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Rebecca Patek has created over twenty original performances. Her work is an amalgamation of comedy, theater, and dance. She is a 2024 CPR Artist-in-Residence, and was an Artist-in-Residence at Movement Research, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Fresh Tracks at New York Live Arts. Her work has been presented at MoMa PS1, The Kitchen, Impulstanz Vienna (Prix Jardin D’Europe Fan Award 2014), Museum of Arts and Design, The Chocolate Factory Theater, Abrons Art Center, Dance Theater Workshop, Movement Research at Judson Church, BAX, Triple Canopy, Prelude Festival, Performance Mix Festival, and Dixon Place, among many others. As a performer, she was most recently thrilled to appear in work by Ryan Mcnamara, and can currently be caught honing her skills at open mics around NYC.
Alex Rodabaugh is a choreographer, dancer, and performer from Lima, OH (Shawnee territory), based in NYC (Lenapehoking). Alex's work has been shown at Movement Research at Judson Church, Draftworks at Danspace, Double Plus at Gibney, PRELUDE, American Realness, and Dance and Process at The Kitchen. Alex most recently performed in Rebecca Patek’s Tough Titties. Alex has performed in works by artists such as Moriah Evans, Simone Forti, Tess Dworman, Miguel Gutierrez, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Doug LeCours, Derek Smith, and Bailey Williams, among others, including two Bessie Award-winning performances. Alex is also a Treasurer/Co-Founder of Dance Artists’ National Collective and a current Artist-in-Residence at CPR – Center for Performance Research. www.alexrodabaugh.work.
Anh Vo is a Vietnamese choreographer and writer working primarily in NYC, 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. Their formal training is in Performance Studies, studying with theorists and practitioners at Brown University (BA) and New York University (MA).
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OPEN AiR | Endless Holes: Rebecca Patek, Alex Rodabaugh, and Anh Vo
Alex Rodabaugh. Photo by Res.
Tickets: $0-$25, pay what you can
Purchase Tickets
Tues, October 22 at 7 P.M.
Weds, October 23 at 7 P.M.
Endless Holes is a shared evening of new work in development by 2024 Artists-in-Residence Rebecca Patek, Alex Rodabaugh, and Anh Vo. Each work is a continuation of the artist’s research in multi-part or iterative performance projects: Rebecca Patek revisits Tough Titties, exploring depolarization, binary fatigue, and mystic shorelines; Alex Rodabaugh seeks to close their Break-Up Tunnel Vision Infinity project with a deep dive into nostalgia, cyberspace avatar puppetry, paranoia, and denial; and Anh Vo builds on their ongoing research into northern Vietnamese possession ritual, exploring the pussy as an energetic channel that can tune into the existential pain of others.
PROGRAM
Rebecca Patek: Tough Titties 2: View from the Other End
An offering towards the effort around depolarization. We are for and against each other, for or against objects, ideas, realities. The binary fatigue of thinking and feeling can lead us to venture further than we might otherwise travel. We seek a mystic shoreline that is spoken of, that is rumored, but can we find it? What do we have to lose? What do we have to do to get there? Can I get there? Can you? Can we? I have many questions clearly but basically I am trying and that's the best I can do.
Alex Rodabaugh: 🕳n-1🕳
Looking for a path forward to close the Break-Up Tunnel Vision Infinity project and embrace the community that embraces me. The nth edition delves into the nostalgia that is colonizing our future, cyberspace avatar puppetry colliding with physical presence, and the paranoia or denial that arises from the perpetual threat of and participation in violence.
Anh Vo: pussy talks
pussy talks builds on Anh Vo's ongoing research into northern Vietnamese possession ritual, exploring the pussy as an energetic channel that can tune into the existential pain of others.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Rebecca Patek has created over twenty original performances. Her work is an amalgamation of comedy, theater, and dance. She is a 2024 CPR Artist-in-Residence, and was an Artist-in-Residence at Movement Research, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Fresh Tracks at New York Live Arts. Her work has been presented at MoMa PS1, The Kitchen, Impulstanz Vienna (Prix Jardin D’Europe Fan Award 2014), Museum of Arts and Design, The Chocolate Factory Theater, Abrons Art Center, Dance Theater Workshop, Movement Research at Judson Church, BAX, Triple Canopy, Prelude Festival, Performance Mix Festival, and Dixon Place, among many others. As a performer, she was most recently thrilled to appear in work by Ryan Mcnamara, and can currently be caught honing her skills at open mics around NYC.
Alex Rodabaugh is a choreographer, dancer, and performer from Lima, OH (Shawnee territory), based in NYC (Lenapehoking). Alex's work has been shown at Movement Research at Judson Church, Draftworks at Danspace, Double Plus at Gibney, PRELUDE, American Realness, and Dance and Process at The Kitchen. Alex most recently performed in Rebecca Patek’s Tough Titties. Alex has performed in works by artists such as Moriah Evans, Simone Forti, Tess Dworman, Miguel Gutierrez, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Doug LeCours, Derek Smith, and Bailey Williams, among others, including two Bessie Award-winning performances. Alex is also a Treasurer/Co-Founder of Dance Artists’ National Collective and a current Artist-in-Residence at CPR – Center for Performance Research. www.alexrodabaugh.work.
Anh Vo is a Vietnamese choreographer and writer working primarily in NYC, 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. Their formal training is in Performance Studies, studying with theorists and practitioners at Brown University (BA) and New York University (MA).
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OPEN AiR | Ariana Speight: cocoon
Ariana Speight. Photo by Whitney Browne.
Tickets: $0-$25, pay what you can
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cocoon is a new work in development by 2024 Artist-in-Residence Ariana Speight which journeys through metamorphosis defined as a transformative transition, and is a continual introduction to the inner workings of self through the shifting of form. With a multidimensional and interactive framework incorporating storytelling, [love] notes, questions/queries, movement, and stagnation, cocoon uncovers what hinders and what supports during the process of emergence.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Ariana Speight is a contemporary dance artist invested in researching the curiosities of life through various mediums. Originally from Los Angeles and currently based in Brooklyn, she has worked with a number of artists including Kayla Farrish, Joanna Kotze, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, Kyle Marshall, Anna Sperber, and Jessie Young. Her freelance journey has led her to perform at Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX), Chelsea Factory, Coffey Street, Dancewave, Lincoln Center Hearst Plaza, New York Live Arts, PAGEANT, Roulette Intermedium, The Shed, The Space at Irondale, The Tank, Webster Hall, among other venues in New York, Florida, and Pennsylvania. She is a BFA graduate from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University and is a certified Yoga and Pilates instructor where she continues to nurture her teaching practice.
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OPEN STUDIOS | Amando Houser, Reed Rushes, and MTHR TRSA, curated by Alessandra Gómez
Amando Hauser. Photo by Maia Saavedra.
Tickets: $0-$25, pay what you can
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*Advance tickets for this program are sold out. An in-person wait list will open at 7:00 P.M.
Organized by independent curator Alessandra Gómez, this program showcases three innovative performances that blend humor and critical social commentary, with each artist approaching their work through clowning, drag performance, or a combination of both—each form having its own distinct and rich history. Amando Houser’s DeliaDelia! is comedic performance inspired by the "witch hunt" against trans rights in America. Reed Rushes’ Twilight Zone is a drag king performance exploring birthing, domesticity, and consumption from a queer masculine perspective and MTHR TRSA’s I DON’T THINK THAT WAS MOLLY takes us on a conversational journey between inner demons, the MTA, and RuPaul. Together, these three artists illustrate how humor can serve as a powerful tool for social commentary in contemporary performance.
OPEN STUDIOS is a series of work-in-progress showings held regularly throughout the year, organized by guest curators, and serves as an incubator for new work, inviting the public into the artistic process.
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PROGRAM
Amando Houser: DeliaDelia! The Flat Chested Witch!
DeliaDelia! The Flat Chested Witch! is a solo comedic clown hour inspired by the “witch hunt” on trans rights in America. DeliaDelia is a witch from the swamps who happens to be as nasty on the eyes as she is on the basketball court. On a quest to become a “real girl” and fit into the human world to play for a team. Will she finally get to display her talents and become the greatest of all time? Or be cursed forever and turned into a serpent?
Created and performed by Amando Houser
Directed by Kedian Keohan
Research and development support from Fisher Center LAB, the Fisher Center at Bard‘s residency and commissioning program.
Reed Rushes: Twilight Zone
As night falls the living room is cast in an unfamiliar hum blue. Darkness grows the TV light, which flickers brighter casting shadows that lick the living room floor, sofa, walls. Edges begin to take new forms, shifting. Half asleep, sound distorts. From the TV, from this room, (“things get strange at night”) from this half light, Stan’s world unfolds…
Twilight Zone takes inspiration from films that explore female hysteria and body horror. Channeling the voices of both hysterical women and rebel boy icons from classic Hollywood body horror thriller movies, Rushes presents a drag king performance that examines birthing, domesticity, and consumption from a queer masculine perspective. Using drag, abstract movement, and theatrical costumes made by Kate Williams Twilight Zone is a humorous, surprising and emotionally moving experience.
MTHR TRSA: I DON’T THINK THAT WAS MOLLY
I DON’T THINK THAT WAS MOLLY reflects the collective experience of those who feel like they can never slow down, no matter how desperately they need to. It’s a disorienting energy of modern life, where nothing feels tangible or secure, and every attempt to grasp onto something is met with uncertainty. The chaotic rhythm of NYC heightens this dissonance, making us question if we are in control, or simply SPIRALING. The struggle to hold onto anything — a routine, money, stability, trans healthcare — feels increasingly futile as everything slips through our fingers, evoking a sense of panic and helplessness.
As the line between pleasure and paranoia blurs, we ask ourselves, “Was that actually Molly we just took?” There is no relief, there is no finish line, and the J train is not coming. The overwhelming sense of burnout becomes palpable. The opinionated demons and insecurities begin to march into the room alongside the haunting voice of RuPaul and the allure of queer success. Just another impossible standard! A reminder of how even within queer spaces, the forces of capitalism and conformity press down upon us.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Alessandra Gómez is an independent curator based in New York. She recently served as a curator for Luna Luna, the world’s first art amusement park, originally created in 1987. Gómez was part of the core curatorial team for Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy and worked on the early development of new artist-designed rides, attractions, and games. From 2018–2023, she was part of The Shed’s founding curatorial team, where she developed over seventy-five visual arts and performance commissions during her tenure including shows by Shayne Oliver & Anonymous Club and Maxwell Alexandre. She currently serves as the guest curator for public art at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and is working on a number of forthcoming curatorial projects, including one with NIKE.
Amando Houser is a trans-masculine clown and actor born and based in NYC. Following a sold-out run at The Brick, their solo show DeliaDelia! The Flat Chested Witch! debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and will have its US premiere at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Off Broadway: Midnight Coleslaw! Tales From Beyond The Closet! (The Tank); Snatch Adams and Tainty McCracken (Soho Rep). They have performed in and devised work at venues and variety nights around town as well as at The Signature, The Elysian, New York Theatre Workshop, Vox Populi Gallery, The Wild Project, JACK, and The Richard B. Fisher Center at Bard College. Amando is a recent graduate of École Philippe Gaulier in France and has trained with Pig Iron Theatre Company in Philadelphia, and Julia Masli (ha ha ha ha ha ha).
Reed Rushes is a British-American performance artist living and working in Queens, NY. Rushes has a multimedia performance practice that centers queer fantasy. Combining drag, movement, video, found and self made objects Rushes’ performances unpick the hierarchical distinctions between human bodies, emotional affect and objecthood. Rushes graduated with a Masters in Fine Arts from Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts Bard College New York (2022) and holds a Bachelor's Degree in English Literature and Performance with honors from Queen Mary University London (2015). They began their performance art practice in London's queer club and drag scene. Their work has now shown at Park Avenue Armory, Performance Space New York, CPR – Center for Performance Research, The Yard Theatre London, Rich Mix London, BOFFO, and Art Omi and has been supported through public funding by Arts Council England. They cofounded and curated Low Stakes Festival London and collectively run the performance residency at Otion Front Studio New York.
MTHR TRSA IS A PERFORMANCE ARTIST, PHOTOGRAPHER, CHOREOGRAPHER, STYLIST, DIRECTOR, MODEL, DJ, LAWYER, DOCTOR, SECURITY GUARD, THERAPIST, FREE LANCER, ACCOUNTANT, CHIEF & PROFESSIONAL COMPLAINER.
![OPEN LAB | Sympoietic Breath with agustine zegers [virtual]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fac507656ff4f3028bdb444/1722964369239-S4L9L4LLUVMO7YANGV82/agustine%2B-%2Bcrop.jpg)
OPEN LAB | Sympoietic Breath with agustine zegers [virtual]
Photo courtesy agustine zegers.
Free with RSVP
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Facilitated by olfactory artist agustine zegers, Sympoietic Breath invites a deeper awareness of how smells reveal our embeddedness in systems of ecological collapse and emergence. With one inhale, our body awakens to an incorporated cosmos. Ancient molecular exchanges, traces of industry, traces of plant breath, and traces of decaying life all transit through the pleura of our lungs. Odorant molecules also join in, entering the continuous lubricated movement of our breaths. These smelly compounds reveal the ever-enfolding complexities of air, allowing us to decode its composition through our olfactory bulbs and opening us up to intelligences at the scale of the invisible. As such, our sense of smell – animated by the breath – can be activated as a collaborative sensemaking tool for an ever-shifting planet.
Participants will be introduced to ecological and olfactory terminology and will be guided through an olfactive exercise to help us put collaborative breathing and smelling into practice.
OPEN LAB invites artists and scholars to facilitate theoretical discussions and embodied workshops, providing a platform for practice-based inquiry and creative exchange.
This program will take place virtually via Zoom. Auto-generated captions will be available.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
agustine zegers (b. Santiago, Chile) is an olfactory artist and student of atmospheric biopolitics. Their work attends to the nourishing and noxious transcorporealities we share as inhabitants of Earth, offering forms of communion with ecological collapse at the scale of the molecule and breath. Their work has scented and been exhibited across the Global North and South at venues such as Prairie, Chicago (2024); 52 Walker, New York (2024); the Chilean Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Venice (2022); Lagos, CDMX (2020); Galería Jaqueline Martins, São Paulo (2018); and Galería Metropolitana, Santiago (2015).
![OPEN LAB | DIGITAL ARCHIVE with Ariana Speight [virtual]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fac507656ff4f3028bdb444/1724346921984-QMIGDLH4QFZXI78DP6IF/CPR.jpg)
OPEN LAB | DIGITAL ARCHIVE with Ariana Speight [virtual]
Ariana Speight. Photo courtesy the artist.
Free with RSVP
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As an extension of 2024 Artist-in-Residence Ariana Speight’s research for their new work cocoon which will be presented in development as part of OPEN AiR on October 20, DIGITAL ARCHIVE will be a gathering of sharing and processing data, memory, and content that has shaped us. During this generative workshop, participants will build a written archive through dialogue and note-taking, documenting noteworthy movies, television, and music. Together we embrace the rough edges, the crispy bits that make us unique. What brought you here? How did you get here? Where is home for you? Are you home?
Storytelling. Processing through dialogue. Loss of history. Nostalgia. Connection. Coming together to share stories. Kiki if you will. Memory. Sentimentality. Focusing on content. Keeping track. Making memories. Reminiscing. Restoration. [tldr]
Participants are encouraged to bring any comforts you may need. Take breaks. Zoom in, zone out. Camera on, camera off. Come as you are. Tangents are welcome with resources and support available.
References include: Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Claudia Pinkola Estés, Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, Spongebob Squarepants, and many more.
OPEN LAB invites artists and scholars to facilitate theoretical discussions and embodied workshops, providing a platform for practice-based inquiry and creative exchange.
This program will take place virtually via Zoom. Auto-generated captions will be available.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Ariana Speight is a contemporary dance artist invested in researching the curiosities of life through various mediums. Originally from Los Angeles and currently based in Brooklyn, she has worked with a number of artists including Kayla Farrish, Joanna Kotze, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, Kyle Marshall, Anna Sperber, and Jessie Young. Her freelance journey has led her to perform at Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX), Chelsea Factory, Coffey Street, Dancewave, Lincoln Center Hearst Plaza, New York Live Arts, PAGEANT, Roulette Intermedium, The Shed, The Space at Irondale, The Tank, Webster Hall, among other venues in New York, Florida, and Pennsylvania. She is a BFA graduate from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University and is a certified Yoga and Pilates instructor where she continues to nurture her teaching practice.
OPEN STUDIOS | If I Must Die: Zekkereya El-magharbel, Muyassar Kurdi with gabby fluke-mogul, and Alex Zhang Hungtai, curated by Muyassar Kurdi
Zekkereya El-magharbel. Photo by Alex Inglizian.
Tickets: $0-$25, pay what you can
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Palestinian-American artist Muyassar Kurdi invites artists Zekkereya El-magharbel, Muyassar Kurdi with gabby fluke-mogul, and Alex Zhang Hungtai to share new work, experiments, and collaborations through embodied sound and improvisation. The program’s title If I Must Die is inspired by Refaat Alareer’s poem of the same title, and is in honor of the martyrs in Falastin, uplifting their voices and stories. Through indigenous ways we heal our communities and remain steadfast. If I Must Die is an attempt to reclaim our bodies and narrative. Imagination as the ultimate freedom: a future without a colonizer.
In lieu of a traditional Q&A, after their individual presentations, the artists will engage in a series of improvised collaborations.
OPEN STUDIOS is a series of work-in-progress showings held regularly throughout the year, organized by guest curators, and serves as an incubator for new work, inviting the public into the artistic process.
View the Program
If I Must Die
by Refaat Alareer
If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself—
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale
إذا كان ال بّد أن
أموت إذا
إذا كان ال بّد أن أموت
إذا كان ال بّد أن أموت
فعلي َك أن تحيا
لِتق ّص ق ّصتي
لِتبي َع أشيائي
لِتشتري قطعة قماش
و بضعَة خيوط
)بيضاء بذي ٍل طويل(
ن ما في غزة
حتى طف ٍل، في مكا
يحّد ُق بالسماء
ينت ُظر أباه، الذي غا َدر على عجل-
بال أن ي ّودع أحد
حتى جسده
حتى نفسه -
يرى الطائرة الورقية، طائرتي التي صنعَتها،
تحل عالًيا ّ ُق
و ي ُّظن لوهلة أن مال ًكا عالًيا
يعيد الح ّب
إذا كان ال بد أن أموت
لتجعلها تجل ُب األمل
لتجعلها قصة
Translated to Arabic by @TameeOliveFern
PROGRAM
Zekkereya El-magharbel: Notes on Matisse
The influence/appropriation of North African textiles and architecture by turn of the century Modernists is widely documented, yet barely discussed; on one hand, the decontextualization and subsequent disparagement of the African Orient by Western Imperialists, evidence of our incivility, on the other, beautiful planes of color sweeping across the canvas dancing celestial. This work explores the links between musical practices of Modern Europe and North Africa using reappropriating works from Henri Matisse as graphic scores for performance.
Muyassar Kurdi with gabby fluke-mogul: A Lullaby for the Children of the Sun
This is a sound dedicated to the children of Gaza. Glory to the martyrs. A Lullaby for the Children of the Sun is embodied/performed from a graphic score (ink on paper) for violin and voice, and was originally commissioned for a string quartet.
Alex Zhang Hungtai: Divining Youth
Divining Youth derives from the Hokkien word khí-tâng, a Chinese folk tradition akin to a spirit medium or a Shaman. A khí-tâng is believed to be a person to have been chosen by a particular Shen (Chinese Deity) or spirit as the earthly vehicle of divine expression. The universal ritualistic components of drums, reeds, repetition, and trance-inducing rhythms relay back to ancient folk technology, facilitating the exploration of the human unconscious and the gravitational pull towards the dark matter of the cosmos.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Zekkereya El-magharbel is a visual artist, trombonist, and composer from Los Angeles, CA. They have been a member of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra for over a decade and have worked with such luminaries as Angel Bat Dawid, Jaimie Branch, Moor Mother, Kierra Sheard, Cory Smythe, Tyshawn Sorey, Wendell Harrison, Wendy Eisenberg, among others. As a visual artist they have shown animated works internationally and have exhibited paintings accross the country. Their current research centers on interrogating Pan-Arabism within in parallel to African identity.
gabby fluke-mogul is a New York-based violinist, improviser, composer, educator, organizer, and doula. Weaving within the threads of avant and free jazz, with deep roots in improvised and experimental music, their music has been described as “embodied, visceral and virtuosic” and “the most striking sound in improvised music in years.” gabby is humbled to have collaborated with Nava Dunkelman, Joanna Mattrey, Ava Mendoza, Charles Burnham, Fred Frith, Luke Stewart, Zeena Parkins, Tcheser Holmes, Lester St. Louis, William Parker, and Pauline Oliveros among many other musicians, poets, dancers and visual artists. gabby facilitates improvisation and composition workshops, curates programming for Creative Music Studio, and is a current Roulette Jerome Artist in Residence.
Muyassar Kurdi is a Palestinian-American NYC-based interdisciplinary artist. Her work encompasses sound art, extended vocal technique, performance art, movement, painting, analog photography, and film. Her practice honors the futuristic and ancient through meditative movements and sonic sound explorations. Centered on embodiment with a non-linear approach rooted in improvisation, she explores memory, displacement, and the body in relation to nature. Kurdi received the American Composer Forum Create 2024, Brooklyn Arts Fund 2024, and was a finalist in the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship for Combined Disciplines 2023. She was awarded a Roulette Intermedium 2020 commission and 2022 artist residency with support from Jerome Foundation, and is also a recipient of the Queens Fund New Works Grant, NYFA City Artist Corps grant, and Puffin Foundation grant. Recent residencies include Harvestworks and The Watermill Center with OPERA ensemble. Love is Blue, Kurdi’s solo interdisciplinary exhibition, opened in the Fall of 2023 at La MaMa Gallery in NYC. Performance highlights include Poetry Project, Roulette Intermedium, CPR – Center for Performance Research, Lincoln Center, The Rubin Museum of Art, ISSUE Project Room, Cafe OTO, Chicago Cultural Center, Center for Contemporary Art Laznia, Fridman Gallery, Zaratan - Arte Contemporânea, and Judson Memorial Church as well as exhibitions and film screenings (solo and group works) at VIERTE WELT, Trieze Gallery, Knockdown Center, Queens Museum, Spectacle Theatre, and Anthology Film Archives. She taught workshops in movement and voice most notably in Portugal at Zaratan - Arte Contemporânea, Bilgi University and Cultur in Istanbul Turkey as well as at MoMA PS1 in NYC.
Alex Zhang Hungtai is a multi-disciplinary artist focused on improvisation and its correlation with the unconscious. After retiring his project Dirty Beaches, Zhang has been focusing on explorations of improvised music, free jazz, and his role as a composer. His newer compositions predominantly work with saxophone and drums, delving into electronic music. Besides his solo work, some past collaborators include: Tashi Dorji, Che Chen, Chris Williams, Sam Shalabi, David Maranha, and Gabriel Ferrandini. Zhang currently works as a composer for film soundtracks, along with acting in independent films. He has appeared in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return alongside Dean Hurley and Riley Lynch under the fictitious band Trouble. His latest film score “Godland” by Hlynur Pálmason, was in competition at Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard. He currently lives in NYC.
OPEN DOOR | Yanira Castro / a canary torsi: Exorcism = Liberation (on view)
Digital image by Alejandro Torres Viera and Luis A. Vázquez O’Neill. Courtesy a canary torsi.
On view in the window of CPR’s administrative offices at 361 Manhattan Avenue, Brooklyn.
Free and open to the public.
Exorcism = Liberation is a public art project by Yanira Castro / a canary torsi that investigates our relationship to land, self-determination, migration, and climate disaster, and utilizes familiar forms of political media campaigns such as stickers, pins, lawn signs, and handmade banners to immerse the public in sonic experiences. Through collective citywide experiences between NYC, Chicago, and the Connecticut River Valley of Western Massachusetts, the American public is invited to imagine alternative futures through the lens of Puerto Rican culture and the U.S.' ongoing colonial history. Exorcism = Liberation is an act of intervention, a rehearsal for collective action during a critical American election.
At CPR, handmade banners with the project's slogans "Exorcism = Liberation", "I came here to weep", and "What is your first memory of dirt?" will be on view on rotation in the window of CPR’s street-level offices, inviting the public to interact with each of three distinct sound works via a QR code which engage listeners in various forms of resistance, embodiment, and memory.
On October 25, a companion program OPEN LAB: What is your first memory of dirt?: Aural Archiving with Yanira Castro / a canary torsi will gather participants’ first memories of dirt in an intimate, analog recording session. On November 5, as part of OPEN HOUSE: Election Night with Crackhead Barney, all three banners will be on display and free pins and stickers will be distributed.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Yanira Castro's work is rooted in communal construction as a rehearsal for radical democracy. She is an interdisciplinary artist born in Borikén (Puerto Rico), living in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn), and working at the intersection of communal practices, performance, installation, and interactive technology. Castro forms iterative, multimodal projects that center land, and the complexity of citizenship and governance in works activated and performed by the public. Since 2009, she’s created and performed with a team of collaborators as a canary torsi. Her recent work includes a performance manual for reckoning, Last Audience, a performance manual; a participatory podcast to rehearse for a collective future, Last Audience: a performance podcast; and a tea ritual created with four teens from NYC Girl Scouts Troop 6000 to enact the ingestion of home/land, TIERRA. Currently, Castro is developing her ongoing interdisciplinary work, I came here to weep, a collective exorcism for territorial possession. Castro has been commissioned and presented by The Chocolate Factory Theater, New York Live Arts, MCA Chicago, The Invisible Dog Art Center, SPACE Gallery, PICA, LMCC, The Bates Dance Festival and ICA/Boston. Her work has recently been supported by Creative Capital, The MAP Fund, The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts for Dance, 2024 NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship for Interdisciplinary Art, Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, LMCC, MacDowell, Yaddo, and Marble House Project. She has received two New York Dance and Performance (aka Bessie) Awards for Outstanding Production.
OPEN CALL: 2025 Artist-in-Residence Program
Design by Anna Muselmann.
CPR - Center for Performance Research invites applications for the 2025 Artist-in-Residence Program. Click here to apply.
Application deadline: Wednesday, August 28, 2024 at 5:00 P.M. EST.
Email applications@cprnyc.org with questions.
ABOUT CPR'S ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAM
CPR – Center for Performance Research’s year-long Artist-in-Residence (AiR) Program seeks to support NYC-based artists working within various perspectives of contemporary dance, performance, and time-based forms. CPR values experimental approaches to content, form, and aesthetic, and encourages risk-taking and the unexpected.
The residency creates an open environment for experimentation, exploration, embodiment, and exchange, providing ten artists each year with research and presentation opportunities, subsidized rehearsal space, curatorial and project support, and peer dialogue. The program is intended to nurture the individualized creative process, and prioritizes artists for whom the opportunity will make an impact on the growth and evolution of their work and career.
Applications are solicited through an OPEN CALL, and resident artists are selected by an independent panel of artists, curators, and arts leaders. With this approach, CPR aspires to create a more accessible and equitable selection process, and to increase visibility, opportunities, and resources for a more diverse range of artists in the field.
CPR is committed to supporting artists from every background and maintains an expansive approach to performance. We strongly encourage BIPOC artists, LGBTQ+ artists, immigrant artists, artists with disabilities, and artists across generations to apply.
RESIDENCY DETAILS
Ten NYC-based artists are selected for a year-long residency from January to December 2025. AiRs will have opportunities for presentation, community engagement, and creative exchange through CPR’s curated Public Programs, and will receive curatorial support and feedback from CPR staff and fellow artists throughout the year. In addition, AiRs receive advance access to CPR’s rehearsal booking calendar, and may book up to 150 subsidized rehearsal hours in either of CPR’s studios during the residency year. Each AiR receives a $1,500 stipend, and participation in CPR Public Programs comes with additional artist fees and resources, including access to technical equipment and production support.
ELIGIBILITY
Eligible applicants have previously had their work publicly presented, and have not been selected as a CPR Artist-in-Residence within the last 5 years.
Individual artists, companies, collaborative projects or collectives may apply, but each applicant/application will be considered as a single residency.
The residency is exclusively for New York City-based artists. CPR cannot provide US visas, travel, accommodations, or other living expenses in connection with the residency.
Current undergraduate students are not eligible to apply.
THE SPACE
CPR occupies a 4,000 sq. ft. ground floor facility in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and has two flexible studio spaces. The Large Studio is an 1,875 sq. ft., flexible rehearsal and performance space, outfitted with an LED theatrical lighting system, full-range sound, projection capabilities, and a sprung wood dance floor with white marley, and can seat up to 68 people. The Small Studio functions as a rehearsal studio, gallery, and meeting space, and features floor-to-ceiling storefront windows looking out onto the street, track lighting, and a sprung wood dance floor. CPR is a fully ADA-compliant and accessible venue with two all gender restrooms, one being wheelchair-accessible. A floor plan, images, and technical specifications can be found here.
SUPPORT
CPR's AiR Program is directly supported by Dance/NYC’s NYC Dance Rehearsal Space Subsidy Program made possible by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Harkness Foundation for Dance, Howard Gilman Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and public funds from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
APPLICATION TIMELINE
Applications will be accepted until Wednesday, August 28, 2024 at 5:00pm EST. Late submissions will not be accepted. Notifications will be made in November 2024.
The panelists look forward to reviewing your application!
Email us at applications@cprnyc.org with any questions.
CPR SUMMER BREAK (studios and offices closed)
Sermon with Nocturnal Medicine. Presented as part of OPEN LAB on April 3, 2024. Photo by Elyse Mertz.
CPR’s studios and administrative offices will be closed for an annual Summer Break from Monday, August 12 through Sunday, August 18, 2024.
All space rental requests that come into our inbox during this time will be answered in the order they were received after we return to the office on Monday, August 19.
All requests can be made by email to spacerentals@cprnyc.org, and you can check our Booking Calendar for availability.
Happy Summer from CPR!
![[POSTPONED] OPEN AiR | Dorchel Haqq: Untitled Work-in-Progress (Gallery Hours)](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fac507656ff4f3028bdb444/1706967584415-PF02ZD9O2MIREFVSBM7T/image_123650291.JPG)
[POSTPONED] OPEN AiR | Dorchel Haqq: Untitled Work-in-Progress (Gallery Hours)
Dorchel Haqq. Image courtesy the artist.
This program has been postponed until Fall 2024. Please stay tuned for CPR’s 2024 Fall Season announcement in September.
Saturday, June 22 from 5–8 P.M. | Opening and Offering
Tickets $0-$25, pay what you can
Purchase Tickets
Sunday, June 23 from 1–5 P.M. | Gallery Hours
Free and open to the public
2024 Artist-in-Residence Dorchel Haqq builds a domestic installation with live performance activations and audience invitations. In this offering, Haqq is exploring the home body.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Dorchel Haqq, raised in Harlem, began to embody history at Dance Theater of Harlem. With experience from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts then later at the Conservatory of Dance at Purchase College SUNY, Haqq initiated her discovery of the body as a political statement. While studying at Purchase College, Haqq’s education expanded at Korea National School of the Arts. While exploring the world, Haqq found collaborations with Johannes Wieland, Stefanie Batten Bland, Maxine Doyle, Loni Landon, Sidra Bell, and Kayla Farrish. These relationships aided the development of Haqq’s movement practices inducing an imaginative world with a focus on the care of the nervous. Haqq explores fantasy and abstracts the echo of transgenerational trauma in her body of culture through film, sound exploration and object investigation. Haqq is a Springboard-curated recipient of the Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation Founder’s Residency and a City Artist Corps Grant recipient. Along with being an adjunct lecturer at Purchase College, Haqq has performed with A.I.M by Kyle Abraham and in Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, Shanghai. Haqq is expanding her sensory research in 2024 as an artist in residence at CPR – Center for Performance Research and Baryshnikov Arts Center.
[POSTPONED] OPEN AiR | Dorchel Haqq: Untitled Work-in-Progress (Opening and Offering)
Dorchel Haqq. Image courtesy the artist.
This program has been postponed until Fall 2024. Please stay tuned for CPR’s 2024 Fall Season announcement in September.
Saturday, June 22 from 5–8 P.M. | Opening and Offering
Tickets $0-$25, pay what you can
Purchase Tickets
Sunday, June 23 from 1–5 P.M. | Gallery Hours
Free and open to the public
2024 Artist-in-Residence Dorchel Haqq builds a domestic installation with live performance activations and audience invitations. In this offering, Haqq is exploring the home body.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Dorchel Haqq, raised in Harlem, began to embody history at Dance Theater of Harlem. With experience from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts then later at the Conservatory of Dance at Purchase College SUNY, Haqq initiated her discovery of the body as a political statement. While studying at Purchase College, Haqq’s education expanded at Korea National School of the Arts. While exploring the world, Haqq found collaborations with Johannes Wieland, Stefanie Batten Bland, Maxine Doyle, Loni Landon, Sidra Bell, and Kayla Farrish. These relationships aided the development of Haqq’s movement practices inducing an imaginative world with a focus on the care of the nervous. Haqq explores fantasy and abstracts the echo of transgenerational trauma in her body of culture through film, sound exploration and object investigation. Haqq is a Springboard-curated recipient of the Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation Founder’s Residency and a City Artist Corps Grant recipient. Along with being an adjunct lecturer at Purchase College, Haqq has performed with A.I.M by Kyle Abraham and in Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, Shanghai. Haqq is expanding her sensory research in 2024 as an artist in residence at CPR – Center for Performance Research and Baryshnikov Arts Center.
OPEN CALL: Fall Movement 2024
CPR - Center for Performance Research invites proposals for live performance works to be presented as part of Fall Movement on December 6 and 7, 2024.
Click here to apply.
Application deadline:
Tuesday, June 18 at 5:00 PM EST.
Please email applications@cprnyc.org with any questions.
Fall Movement is an opportunity for artists to present new work in dance, performance, and time-based art in a shared program, and is curated by an independent panel of artists through an Open Call. The program will be presented at CPR on December 6 and 7, 2024 at 7:00 PM.
Individual artists, collectives, and companies may propose a live performance work that is 15-20 minutes in length. CPR encourages applicants to submit work with experimental approaches to content, form, and aesthetic, and values risk-taking and the unexpected.
CPR is committed to supporting artists from every background, at various stages of their artistic careers, and across generations, and maintains an expansive approach to performance. We strongly encourage BIPOC artists, LGBTQ+ artists, immigrant artists, and artists with disabilities to apply.
Please be sure to read through the program details and application criteria in its entirety before submitting your application. We strongly recommend drafting narrative responses in a separate document.
PROGRAM DETAILS
Fall Movement will take place at CPR on Friday, December 6 and Saturday, December 7, 2024 at 7:00 PM. Five works will be selected and presented on both evenings. Each selected work will receive a 2-hour technical rehearsal with CPR production staff, 2 hours of complimentary rehearsal time in one of CPR's studios (based on availability), and an honorarium of $350.
ELIGIBILITY
Individual artists, collectives, or companies may apply, but each applicant/application will be considered as a unique project, and will receive a single honorarium of $350.
While Fall Movement is not limited to NYC-based artists, CPR cannot provide US visas, travel, accommodations, or other living expenses in connection with the presentation.
Current undergraduate students are not eligible to apply.
Artists who have been presented in Fall Movement or Spring Movement at CPR within the last 5 five years may not apply.
THE SPACE
CPR's theater (also known as the Large Studio) has white walls and a sprung wooden floor covered by white marley, with a playing space that is 45 ft wide by 26 ft deep, and is outfitted with an LED theatrical lighting system, full-range sound, and projection capabilities. The house seats up to 65 people. We are open to unique ways of using CPR's space and a variety of formats, including proposals for the Small Studio/Storefront Gallery (45 ft x 15 ft) for installation-based work, which would override the 15-20 minute length requirement. CPR is a fully ADA-compliant and accessible venue with two all gender restrooms and one wheelchair-accessible restroom. A floor plan, images, and technical specifications can be found at www.cprnyc.org/spaces.
APPLICATION TIMELINE
Applications will be accepted until Tuesday, June 18, 2024 at 5:00pm EST.
We expect to send notifications in August 2024 and to announce the program in September 2024 along with the announcement of CPR's 2024 Fall Season
Please email applications@cprnyc.org with any questions. The panel looks forward to reviewing your application!
OPEN STAGE: Spring Movement | Giving You the Best That We Got: The Ayana & Tsedaye Variety Show (with Tsedaye on Video)
Images courtesy the artists.
Tickets $0-$25, pay what you can
Purchase Tickets
Episode 1: Fri, June 14 at 7 P.M.
feat. Candice Hoyes, Kamikaze Jones with geo blake, and Autumn Knight
Episode 2: Sat, June 15 at 7 P.M.
feat. Alicia Grullón, Kat Sotelo, and Martha Wilson
For CPR's annual Spring Movement, Ayana Evans curates Giving You the Best That We Got: The Ayana & Tsedaye Variety Show (with Tsedaye on Video). This talk show-style performance extravaganza will be like Oprah meets Miami Vice… but more neon! In previous iterations collaborator and co-creator Tsedaye Makonnen was involved as a co-host and curator; this time Makonnen will be our video correspondent.
The Variety Show at CPR – filmed before a live studio audience! – will feature live performances by artists working at the intersection of performance and visual art across two unique episodes, featuring Candice Hoyes, and Kamikaze Jones with geo blake, and Autumn Knight on Friday night’s episode and Alicia Grullón, Kat Sotelo and Martha Wilson on Saturday night’s episode. Get ready for commercial and yawn breaks, shag carpeting, and emotional sit-and-talks with everyone’s favorite performance artists!
In addition to the live Variety Show, the Premier American Performance Art Museum (PAPAM), founded by Esther Neff in 2024, will be on view in CPR’s Storefront Gallery beginning at 6pm each night. Works on view will include relics and ephemera by Marcelline Mandeng Nken, Dominique Duroseau, and more artists to be announced.
View the Program: Episode 2
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Ayana Evans is a NYC-based performance artist. Her guerilla-style performances have been staged at El Museo del Barrio, The Barnes Foundation, The Bronx Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum, Newark Museum, Queens Museum and a variety of free public locations. Her performances have been reviewed in The New York Times, Bomb Magazine, ArtNet, Hyperallergic, and New York Magazine's The Cut. She was a 2017-18 awardee of the Franklin Furnace Fund for performance, 2018 New York Foundation of the Arts (NYFA) Fellow for Interdisciplinary Arts, 2021-22 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, 2021-22 Professor of the Practice at Brown University, and 2022 Chamberlain Award winner at Headlands Art Center. Her past residencies include Yaddo, Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Vermont Studio Center, and Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop. Evans' current projects include an upcoming performance and class visit at Wellesley College as part of the Taking Off the White Gloves showcasing the work of Lorraine O’Grady and the development of a arts focused career fair that has welcomed over 200 formerly incarcerated individuals and transformed the job hunting space into a fun environment. Evans is currently a professor at Fordham College and NYU.
This program is made possible, in part, by a Late Stage Stipend from the Mertz Gilmore Foundation.
OPEN STAGE: Spring Movement | Giving You the Best That We Got: The Ayana & Tsedaye Variety Show (with Tsedaye on Video)
Images courtesy the artists.
Tickets $0-$25, pay what you can
Purchase Tickets
Episode 1: Fri, June 14 at 7 P.M.
feat. Candice Hoyes, Kamikaze Jones with geo blake, and Autumn Knight
Episode 2: Sat, June 15 at 7 P.M.
feat. Alicia Grullón, Kat Sotelo, and Martha Wilson
For CPR's annual Spring Movement, Ayana Evans curates Giving You the Best That We Got: The Ayana & Tsedaye Variety Show (with Tsedaye on Video). This talk show-style performance extravaganza will be like Oprah meets Miami Vice… but more neon! In previous iterations collaborator and co-creator Tsedaye Makonnen was involved as a co-host and curator; this time Makonnen will be our video correspondent.
The Variety Show at CPR – filmed before a live studio audience! – will feature live performances by artists working at the intersection of performance and visual art across two unique episodes, featuring Candice Hoyes, and Kamikaze Jones with geo blake, and Autumn Knight on Friday night’s episode and Alicia Grullón, Kat Sotelo and Martha Wilson on Saturday night’s episode. Get ready for commercial and yawn breaks, shag carpeting, and emotional sit-and-talks with everyone’s favorite performance artists!
In addition to the live Variety Show, the Premier American Performance Art Museum (PAPAM), founded by Esther Neff in 2024, will be on view in CPR’s Storefront Gallery beginning at 6pm each night. Works on view will include relics and ephemera by Marcelline Mandeng Nken, Dominique Duroseau, and more artists to be announced.
View the Program: Episode 1
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Ayana Evans is a NYC-based performance artist. Her guerilla-style performances have been staged at El Museo del Barrio, The Barnes Foundation, The Bronx Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum, Newark Museum, Queens Museum and a variety of free public locations. Her performances have been reviewed in The New York Times, Bomb Magazine, ArtNet, Hyperallergic, and New York Magazine's The Cut. She was a 2017-18 awardee of the Franklin Furnace Fund for performance, 2018 New York Foundation of the Arts (NYFA) Fellow for Interdisciplinary Arts, 2021-22 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, 2021-22 Professor of the Practice at Brown University, and 2022 Chamberlain Award winner at Headlands Art Center. Her past residencies include Yaddo, Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Vermont Studio Center, and Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop. Evans' current projects include an upcoming performance and class visit at Wellesley College as part of the Taking Off the White Gloves showcasing the work of Lorraine O’Grady and the development of a arts focused career fair that has welcomed over 200 formerly incarcerated individuals and transformed the job hunting space into a fun environment. Evans is currently a professor at Fordham College and NYU.
This program is made possible, in part, by a Late Stage Stipend from the Mertz Gilmore Foundation.
2024 Spring Benefit: RITUAL
Hymnals! Libations! Processionals! & more!
Please join us at CPR – Center for Performance Research on Wednesday, June 5 for our 2024 Spring Benefit, which gathers artists and friends for an evening of RITUAL with communal rites, flowing libations, and ecstatic offerings to celebrate CPR.
PROGRAM
7:00 PM | Libations, Victuals, Interludes
8:00 PM | Performances, Ceremonies, Divinations
9:00 PM | Dessert, Music, Revelry
Friendly Ghost
River L. Ramirez
Ritos de primavera
Antonio Ramos
Simple Offering for Everybody
Beth Gill
Performance
Ethan Philbrick and Anh Vo
Valley of the Wind
Johann Diedrick
w/ Temar France, Caleb Giles, and Alex Smith
Research
Ayano Elson
w/ Matt Evans, Amelia Heintzelman, and Jade Manns
Uh Toast-Prayer
Sibyl Kempson
Void Hymnal
Kamikaze Jones
Al Centro Pa Dentro
Martita Abril
DJ
pure xtra (aka Raymond Pinto)
Food, Drink, Florals
Food by Cozy Royale
Dessert by Fortunato Bros.
Wine by Zev Rovine Selections
Beer by EBBS
Jellies by Solid Wiggles
Mezcal by Madre Mezcal
Flowers by Rosehip Social
Raffle
works by:
Maria Baranova
Jibz Cameron / Dynasty Handbag
Barnett Cohen
Raymond Pinto
Danh Vo (donated by an anonymous benevolent witch)
Dress Code
Ascetic Aesthetics, Witch Haus, Devotional Drag, etc.
READ ABOUT THE ARTISTS
BENEFIT COMMITTEE (in formation)
Salome Asega
Maria Baranova
Sidra Bell *
Randall Bourscheidt *
Taja Cheek
Barnett Cohen
Alison Cuzzolino
Moriah Evans
Jonathan Gardenhire
Pati Hertling
Nick Hockens *
Ishmael Houston-Jones
John Jasperse *
Tommy Kriegsmann & Shanta Thake
Jessica Massart
Juliana May
Tamara McCaw
Sarah Michelson
Azikiwe Mohammed
Kathleen O’Connell *
Annie-B Parson & Paul Lazar
Brian Rogers
Ali Rosa-Salas
Amber Sasse *
Amanda Singer & Severin Sorel
Martha Sherman *
Alex Sloane & Carlos Vela-Prado
Anna Sperber
Megan V. Sprenger *
Meiyin Wang
Emily Wexler
* CPR Board of Directors
TICKETS
$750 | DEVOTIONAL DEMIGOD
$600 | BLESSED BENEFACTOR
$400 | PIOUS PATRON
$250 | SACRED CELEBRANT
$150 | COVEN (for artists & arts workers) [limited]
Tickets are 100% tax-deductible and include all food, drink, and merriment. All proceeds benefit CPR’s artists and programs – and the divine act of experimentation and embodied practice.
Please consider buying an additional COVEN ticket for an artist or arts worker to join the celebration!
If you can’t attend this year, you can also make a tax-deductible donation to CPR via Eventbrite, PayPal, Zelle (no fees) to alexandra@cprnyc.org, or check.
*Tickets may be purchased without additional fees incurred by Eventbrite by making payment via Zelle to alexandra@cprnyc.org. Please include the ticket level and number of tickets in the memo (including any raffle tickets or Consecrate a Chair add-ons – more info below!).
Barnett Cohen: 43.6568605, -73.9766392, digital media on acrylic mirror, 12x12 in, 2023
RAFFLE: $25
Enter to win an artwork donated by CPR artists and friends:
Maria Baranova
Fifth Ave, New York City (2021)
C-Print on RC Paper, 11x14 in, printed in darkroom by the artist, signed & dated, framed
value: $1,500
Jibz Cameron / Dynasty Handbag
Cops, Coyotes, Cars, Crows (2023)
Gicleé print, original mediums: watercolor, whiteout, pencil, 18x24 in, unframed
Barnett Cohen
43.6568605, -73.9766392 (2023)
digital media on acrylic mirror, 12x12 in, framed
value: $4,000
Raymond Pinto
the zebra goes wild, where the sidewalk ends (2023)
monotype transfer from 8mm film, edition 1/1, 16x20 in,
framed
value: $300
Danh Vo (donated by an anonymous benevolent witch)
2.2.1861 (2009)
Handwritten letter by Phung Vo generated upon sale, 11¾x8¼ in, framed
value: $325
Raffle tickets are $25 and anyone can enter (even if you are not attending). Enter as many times as you can! The drawing will take place live at CPR’s Spring Benefit on June 5, and tickets will be drawn for each artwork at random. Purchase 4 or more raffle tickets, and receive a limited-edition CPR tote bag!
Raffle tickets may be purchased online before 2PM on Weds, June 5 via Eventbrite (as an ‘add-on’ at checkout) or via Zelle (no fees) to alexandra@cprnyc.org. They can also be purchased on-site at the Spring Benefit via Eventbrite, Zelle, cash, or check.
Terms and restrictions: Raffle winners must arrange to pick up their artwork at CPR’s offices in Brooklyn within 1 month of the drawing. The Danh Vo work will be created and mailed to the winner by the artist's father, Phung Vo, upon confirmation to CPR of name and address, with the frame available in advance. Unfortunately, CPR cannot arrange shipping. Tote bags can be mailed within the US if an address is provided, however the preference is to pick one up at CPR, where you can also select your preferred color and size! Please note raffle tickets are NOT tax-deductible.
CONSECRATE A CHAIR
As a special addition to your Spring Benefit experience, you can Consecrate a Chair for one year with an additional tax-deductible donation of $100. To commemorate your divine support, we’ll place a plaque on your chair with a dedication – naming you as its benefactor, or dedicated to a loved one, friend, pet, place, or thing of your choosing.
Orders placed by May 23 will have their plaques affixed by the Spring Benefit, so that you may admire and recline in your good will as we party the night away. While not required, we hope that you will continue to worship your chair with a meaningful donation in subsequent years.
You can Consecrate a Chair as an ‘add-on’ at checkout via Eventbrite, or send your donation via PayPal or Zelle (no fees) to alexandra@cprnyc.org. Please be sure to complete this order form to confirm your dedication or email Alexandra Rosenberg at alexandra@cprnyc.org with the details.
LOCATION AND ACCESSIBLITY
CPR – Center for Performance Research
361 Manhattan Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11211
CPR is easily accessed by public transportation or car. For detailed directions, please visit www.cprnyc.org/contact-directions.
CPR is located on the ground floor in a fully accessible and ADA-compliant venue, with two single use all-gender restrooms, one being wheelchair-accessible.
Technical Residency: Nile Harris (closed to the public)
Nile Harris. Photo by Victor Jeffreys II.
The Technical Residency is closed to the public.
Nile Harris has been selected as CPR’s Spring 2024 Technical Resident, where he will develop minor b, a commission for The Shed invited as part of their 2023-24 Open Call program. During his residency, Harris will further develop the choreographic and scenographic elements of the production in collaboration with designers Marie de Testa, Dyer Rhoads, and composer Kwami Winfield, working from the biography of early Jazz cornetist Buddy Bolden, aka King Bolden, as an inception point. For the performance, the collaborative team will create an architectural response to Hudson Yards, positing The Shed's black box theater as a parallel to asylum where King Bolden spent the majority of his life playing his cornet from his storied window.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Nile Harris stages meditated confrontations between performer and audience that collage various modes of communication: choreography, reappropriated and scripted text, improvisation, spatial design, and clowning. His work has been presented at the Abrons Arts Center, Palais de Tokyo, The Watermill Center, New York Live Arts, Grace Exhibition Space, and Movement Research at Judson Church. As a performer, Harris has originated roles in works by Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, 600 HIGHWAYMEN, Tina Satter, Robert Wilson, Young Boy Dancing Group, Anh Vo, Malcolm-x Betts, Crackhead Barney, and Alex Tartarsky. Harris is a member of the Artistic Leadership Team at Ping Chong and Company.
OPEN STUDIOS | Oren Barnoy, Dominica Greene, Seta Morton, and Stevfni.XYZ, curated by Sarah Michelson
Dominica Greene. Image by Laura Carella.
Tickets: $0-$25, pay what you can
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Hi Sarah,
Following up to check in about curatorial language—Do you think you could put together 1-3 sentences by the end of the week? This short event description might include your curatorial framing of the evening, and/or why you chose these particular artists, etc. If you'd prefer to send over bullet points, we'd be happy to edit together for you.
Let us know, we look forward to hearing from you.
Thanks,
x
Anna
Dearest Anna
well to be honest i don’t feel myself as a curator - or maybe thats redundant to say since y’all did ask me and then i did ask some artists if this might be a good moment for them to share their practices in this context -I thought to be honest and with deepest respect that the cash amount for them is modest- so for whom might this opportunity be useful right now- maybe for varying reasons -
These artists are all people that work very specifically and on their own terms - They are all people I have connected with deeply and have some understanding of the very specific spaces that their work can hold- spaces I have deep curiosity about -all these artists are -as I understand the term- dancers -
Thank you for this opportunity
OPEN STUDIOS is a series of work-in-progress showings held regularly throughout the year, organized by guest curators, and serves as an incubator for new work, inviting the public into the artistic process.
PROGRAM
Oren Barnoy: (Radio Edit)
A meditation on inspiration from those who are no longer with us.
Dominica Greene: lover
to be inflicted with pain and marked forever
what does the body remember of those it has loved
while being inflicted with pain
and marked forever
while remembering
those it has loved
while remembering
love
to be inflicted with pain
and marked forever
love
to be
forever
Performed with SoupTatu
Seta Morton: madzoon
A hero on my grandmother’s table, madzoon (or yogurt) was the only word I learned in Armenian before English. Madzoon is a fermentation of milk made by mothers and grandmothers, an ancient cure-all, a vessel for live active culture(s). A transmutation of individual, collective, and ancestral grief and love—madzoon is a dance and movement research project about intergenerational alchemy. With this work in process, I consider what fermentation—as a method for both preservation and change—can teach about archiving ephemerality, cultural memory, ancestral knowledge, and intergenerational healing.
Stevfni.XYZ: A Portrait for Sailor
Since the loss of my cat, Sailor, I disallowed myself the space to mourn and grieve her passing, due to heartbreak. I choose to offer myself my own condolences to her and I through this portraiture of my belated familiar. Acknowledging the time allotted does not encapsulate the entirety of the sorrow I feel, it is a moment for me to observe stillness as a dynamic process of movement and mourning. I offer this piece to Center as a moment of solace and as a reckoning of difficult emotions.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Oren Barnoy is a dancer and choreographer from Brooklyn where he lives and works.
Dominica Greene is a bi-racial Caribbean-American artist harnessing the elements, spirit, and womanness into an existence rooted in love, community, and regeneration. Residing on the unceded lands of the Munsee Lenape people, Greene creates conceptual, body-based art guided by her philosophy that dance is a ubiquitous energetic entity encompassing anything that moves. Her work seeks to reflect nature, human and otherwise, as a way of highlighting humanity and the stark sameness and differences—and sameness in the differences—between all of us.
Seta Morton is an interdisciplinary performance curator, producer, writer, and dance artist based in Lenapehoking (NYC). She is the Program Director/Associate Curator at Danspace Project and the editor of Danspace’s print and digital publications. With Danspace and Executive Director and Chief Curator, Judy Hussie-Taylor, Seta has published over a dozen print and digital publications and curated numerous artist commissions, public programs, residencies, and artistic research fellowships, and has co-organized four Danspace Project Platforms, including, Platform 2020 with Okwui Okpokwasili and Platform 2024 with Kyle Abraham. Independently, she has guest-curated and produced an evening of performance and ritual, V E S S E L L / / FERMENT: archive alchemy (make it a prayer), this year at PAGEANT, and is guest curating the first solo exhibition for Yves B. Golden at the Feminist Center for Creative Work this summer in LA. Seta’s writing has been published with Danspace and in the Gibney Journal, and she has had the pleasure of performing with choreographers including iele paloumpis and Miguel Gutierrez. Seta’s curatorial practice is grounded in somatics, collaborative practice, and Black feminist thought, and her written and embodied works live in the tremble between iteration, fermentation, and intergenerational memory.
SoupTatu (aka Charlie Diman) is a self-taught tattoo artist based in Brooklyn who specializes in black and grey pseudo realism.
Stevfni.XYZ (aka Stev) is an emerging new media artist and academic hailing from the NYC metropolitan area. Born in ’93 to immigrant Trinidadian parents and raised across both sides of the Hudson River during the 2000s, Stev’s work plants roots within themes experienced by the urbanized cultures of the Afro-Caribbean and Latinx folks within her immediate area and community, primarily filtered through her own lens of trans-femininity. As a child influenced by the turn of the new millennium, Stev’s artistic style is encapsulated within the early Internet aesthetic of that era. She often communes with topics of self-identity and shared traumatic experiences, as well as interpersonal connectivity and the complex social intricacies that lead us to nuanced intrapersonal discoveries. As a black trans futurist storyteller, Stev combines spoken and written word and distorted abstract symbols and markings, including the presence of her live or pre-recorded physicality, interacting with a variety of digital technologies to share stories that reflect and explore trans activism, Afrofuturisim, and the African diaspora, and their relationships to ecomodernism and urban development.
Sarah Michelson (curator) is a dancer- dance maker based in Brooklyn.
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OPEN AiR | Malcolm-x Betts: what happens when things become undone?
Malcolm-x Betts. Image courtesy the artist.
Tickets: $0-$25, pay what you can
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an improvisational duet on Blackness, abstraction, love, and grief.
Performed by 2024 AiR Malcolm-x Betts and Ella Dawn W-S.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Malcolm-x Betts is a New York-based visual and dance artist, and a CPR 2024 Artist-in-Residence, who believes that art is a transformative vehicle that brings people and communities together. His artistic work is rooted in investigating embodiment for liberation, Black imagination, and directly engaging with challenges placed on the physical body. He has a community engagement practice allowing artistic freedom and making art accessible to everyone.
Ella Dawn W-S is a dancer, choreographer, and gymnastics teacher living in Brooklyn. She presents work under the name Dancews. Her dances consider the relationship between internal and external body conditions, investigating the interplay of structure and aspiration. As a performer, she's had the honor of working with Josie Bettman, Lu Yim, Vita Taurke, Lavinia Eloise Bruce, SECT, inc., Erik Thurmond, Phoebe Berglund, and Kiera Bono.
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OPEN AiR | Rebecca Patek: Tough Titties
Rebecca Patek. Photo by Vincent Lafrance.
Tickets: $0-$25, pay what you can
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You will be guided into a space of receptivity. We will be together but apart. The experience will be time and space specific yet also will shirk those boundaries. It may cause you to say something like "I saw a show, and it was a show that was for me." That is the goal and the aim.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Rebecca Patek has created over twenty original performances. She is a 2024 CPR Artist-in-Residence, and was an Artist-in-Residence at Movement Research, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and New York Live Arts / Fresh Tracks. Their work has been presented at MoMA PS1, The Kitchen, Impulstanz Vienna (Prix Jardin D’Europe Fan Award 2014), Museum of Arts and Design, The Chocolate Factory Theater, Abrons Arts Center, Dance Theater Workshop, Movement Research at Judson Church, BAX, Triple Canopy, Prelude Festival, Performance Mix Festival, and Dixon Place.
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![[CANCELED] OPEN AiR | x: this is not a cult](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fac507656ff4f3028bdb444/1706129688972-ZQ6BW048GIQ3M50CN188/x%252Bby%252BDolor%252BDivina.jpg)
[CANCELED] OPEN AiR | x: this is not a cult
x aka Sir Coach. Photo by Dolor Divina.
Due to personal reasons, this program has been canceled.
From the source that brought you Heaven’s Gate, crystals, and Beyoncé, comes a new Oracle who will lead us into a blissed out future. In the Temple of Sir Coach, secular devotees learn about care work, harm reduction, mutual aid, and (Black) Anarchism as the way out and forward. Best known for hys collective energy readings and unsolicited advice, Sir Coach inspires, ignites, and encourages us all to be our best, truest, most authentic selves, and cultivates a safe container for cathartic transformations, spiritual awakenings, naps, and crafts! In this is not a cult, we gather for Lessons in Liberation to learn that once we are compassionate to ourselves we then have greater capacity to share that compassion to all living beings, with Metta loving-kindness, Gworlboss Energy, and intuitive empathy.
ACCESS NOTES
ASL and Audio Description will be provided.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Crip Punk and neuro-spicy, as a small fat, second generation Chinese-Jamaican, AuDHDer, Indigo Child, and trauma survivor, x aka Sir Coach has faer community and Hyp-ACCESS to thank for being alive today. When Coach isn’t sporadically falling to the ground or fainting after a bath, they are struggling with a million other comorbidities that they can’t afford to take care of fully. Hir extreme level of lifelong adversity that ze has been forced to “overcome” has challenged hymn to share knowledge and resources with as many people as he can; finding purpose when it feels like everything else is pointless. Coach is a Black Anarchist and Abolitionist who heavily supports mutual aid and grassroots activism of direct peer support. Coach is not a feminist and does not vote in political elections— feel free to ask themme why (not)! Coach creates a web across their art, identity, and lived experiences. We gravitate towards performance as it is natural and naturally occurring to be performative. We create multimedia installations for immersive experiences. Hope lies in the transcendent, visceral, and cathartic. Sir Coach’s known for faer very elegant, iconic, adorable, and cuddly emotional support animal that he is very allergic to named, Avignon :) (smile)
OPEN STUDIOS | Money Ruined the World: Nicolas Baird, A.L. Steiner, cy x (as hell hooks), and agustine zegers, curated by Anna Muselmann
Nicolas Baird. Photo by Juan Luis Matos.
Tickets: $0-$25, pay what you can
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CPR Programs Manager Anna Muselmann curates OPEN STUDIOS with artists whose work engages ecosensuality and erotics, micro- and macro-ecologies, and mutualistic relationships. The practices of artists Nicolas Baird, A.L. Steiner, cy x (as hell hooks), and agustine zegers each require deep and intimate material research, and examine the strange desires, adaptations, and interdependencies of our ‘more-than-human’ nature. Through learning behaviors, structures, and survival tactics beyond our human imagination, Money Ruined the World begins to conceive of an interspecial collaborative future that is not only more sustainable, but more sensual, pleasurable, and playful.
OPEN STUDIOS is a series of work-in-progress showings held regularly throughout the year, organized by guest curators, and serves as an incubator for new work, inviting the public into the artistic process.
PROGRAM
Nicolas Baird: In the beginning…
We move through deep time in a prose poem. This story is a meditation on endings-as-beginnings, a reflection on climate change and heartache, and an excavation of ecosystems, memory, and loss.
A.L. Steiner: Schwierige Gendanken/Difficult Thoughts.v3
No storage space reasonable. No cloud supple enough. No scrapbook sweet enough. No media responsible enough. No book complete enough to mold these contents.
cy x as hell hooks: GARDEN OF HELL
It's your lucky day. hell hooks will give you a super exclusive tour of their private garden of supersensual delights! Listen carefully, pay attention, and prepare to open all your holes.
agustine zegers: corriente etérica
corriente etérica is a guided, somatic practice incorporating olfactory elements. We will follow the currents pulsating through our bodies as channels of inter- and intra-habitat connections leading us from our own holobiont to that of the submarine cables that host our telecommunications along the ocean floor, encountering aqueous and plastified kinship through them.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Nicolas Baird is an artist, evolutionary biologist, writer, and dancer interested in the relationships between bodies and their landscapes. He makes art and science that frame more-than-human life as a diverse network of strange kin. In art, he uses poetry, performance, and photography to explore mutability and adaptation in a multispecies world. In science, he studies the evolution of mammals in the context of long-term climate change. Since 2017 he has woven these practices together as co-director of the Institute of Queer Ecology, an ever-evolving, collaborative organism producing interdisciplinary art as a tool for critical optimism and queer futurity in the face of vanishing “nature”. He is studying for a doctorate in earth and environmental science.
A.L. Steiner is an artist and educator based in New York. She utilizes constructions of photography, video, installation, collage, collaboration, performance, writing, and curatorial work as seductive tropes channeled through the sensibility of a skeptical queer ecofeminist androgyne. Steiner is co-curator of Ridykeulous, co-founder of Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.) and collaborates with numerous writers, performers, designers, activists and artists. She is Faculty and Director at Yale University's School of Art. Upcoming projects include Ridykes' Cavern of Fine Inverted WInes and Deviant Videos with MIT Press and Detroit's 2024 Queer Biennial: I'll be Your Mirror.
cy x (hell hooks) is a demon and a dreamer moved by tremendous desire and obsession with glory holes, sex cinemas, erotic horror, queer archives, and money. They study the way that erotics and space co-construct each other and the objects produced from such encounters and utilize their findings to create ritualized encounters through writing, sound, video, and performance. Their work has been shown in the Center for Art Research and Alliances, Culture Hub, Pioneer Works, Rewire Festival, and other spaces, both digital and physical.
agustine zegers is a Chilean olfactory artist and writer. Their work studies molecular biopolitics and anthropocene atmospherics, attending to the complex nodes of interdependence we share as inhabitants of Earth. By way of queer and microbial methodologies, zegers deploys care practices that reach microscopic dimensions by incorporating bacterial communities, aromatic molecules, and food absorption in their artistic projects, creating tools to reflect on ecocide, interspecies and intrahuman belonging, and care itself. Their work has been exhibited and published internationally at venues such as the Venice Biennale, Galería Jaqueline Martins, Sharjah Art Foundation, Olfactory Art Keller, and DIS Magazine.
Anna Muselmann (curator) is a visual and performing artist, curator, producer, and stylist from Tulsa, OK. In addition to assisting visual and performance artists in Providence, Berlin, San Francisco, and NYC, Muselmann has worked for SIGNAL Gallery, Regina Rex, the WYE (Berlin), Otion Front Studio, Performance Space New York, and Danspace Project, and is currently the Programs Manager at CPR – Center for Performance Research. Her own performance work investigates social and relational dynamics through research in personal daily gestures and habits, more-than-human behaviors, durational group shaking, and group play; and she has performed and shown work at galleries, museums, and venues in San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, Tulsa, and NYC. In 2021, she organized and co-curated Clouds Gathering, a 5-day performance residency-retreat for 85 multidisciplinary artists in New Lebanon, NY; and in 2023 she initiated Play Practice, a weekly group meeting of queer and trans artists that explores the relationships between play and games, rules and freedom, leading and following, desire and consent, and power and authority. Muselmann has a BA in Visual Arts and Modern Culture + Media from Brown University.
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