Ni'Ja Whitson - "The Unarrival Experiments: Dark Dive" Program

OUR SEASON OF ANNIVERSARIES CELEBRATING 10 YEARS OF LIVE ARTS AND 40 YEARS OF THE BILL T. JONES/ARNIE ZANE COMPANY

LIVE FEED IN-PROCESS Ni’Ja Whitson The Unarrival Experiments: Dark Dive PRESENTED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH TRISKELION ARTS OCT 10, 2021 Choreographed by Ni’Ja Whitson Performed by Ni’Ja Whitson and Kirsten Davis Lighting Design by Tuçe Yasak Cover Photo by Maria Baranova Running time: 40 mins

SPECIAL THANKS To my Ancestors and my Divine ones. To the infinite and nutritive dark.

May our gathering be a healing contribution to this time, land, and one another.Thank you to Tuçe Yasak, light poet, my sister. Thank you to Kirsten, my ace, for the sharing of your embodied wisdom.

Thank you to the entire Live Arts team for your collaboration and support in this process. Thank you Janet and Kyle for your responsiveness and listening in to vision. To NPN, thank you. To all of the contributors, partners, and vision movers in The Unarrival Experiments project, thank you.

FUNDING The Live Feed Residency program is supported in part by Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Partners for New Performance.

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We acknowledge and pay respect to Lenape people, elders, and ancestors past, present, and coming in the future. We acknowledge Indigenous people who may be present right now. We acknowledge and offer deep gratitude to Lenapehoking where we are now - the land, and waters of the Lenape homeland.

BIOGRAPHIES Ni’Ja Whitson (NY/LA) is an award-winning Queer Nonbinary Trans/mogrifying multidisciplinary artist and futurist. They ignore disciplinarity through a critical intersection of the sacred and conceptual across a multitude of practices and forms, celebrating Black, Queer, and Transembodiedness. Whitson is a United States Artist Fellow, Creative Capital Awardee, twotime “Bessie” Awardee, Hermitage Fellow, an artist in residence at 18th Street (Los Angeles) and New York Live Arts. Whitson was the featured choreographer of the 2018 CCA Biennial, 20182020 Urban Bush Women Choreographic Center Fellow, and invited presenter at the 2019 Tanzkongress international festival.

Giddens, directed by Charlotte Brathwaite, to premiere at the 2022 Spoleto Festival. Their writing has been published by Contact Quarterly, Dancing While Black journal, and the anthology, Critical Black Futures (2021).

Whitson holds an MFA in performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFAW in creative writing from Goddard College. They are an associate professor of experimental choreography at UC Riverside and a sought-after speaker, consultant, masterclass facilitator and conversationalist sharing among notable institutions and organizations: Princeton University, Cornell University, Rutgers University, LAX Festival, Movement Research, American Dance Festival, Collegium for African Diasporic Dance conference (2020 keynote), and UNESCO.

Commissions include Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church, Abrons Arts Center, American Realness, the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Kirsten Davis is a Bessie Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, nominated New York based and the California African queer interdisciplinary artist.

American Museum. Whitson’s Their performative art is rooted practice extends to choreography in connectedness with spirit in conventional and experimental with an emphasis on disrupting theatre and performance, most the traditional understanding recently with Yale Dance Lab and of dance in the liturgy. Davis Omar, composed by Rhiannon earned their BA in dance from

Hunter College while performing internationally with the National Liturgical Dance Network. They have spent the last eight years as a founding company member of The NWA Project under the direction of artistic director and founder, Ni’Ja Whitson. Throughout their career, Davis has also performed with distinguished artists including Maura Donohue, Ursula Eagly, Chafin Seymour and in collaboration with choreographer, Rina Espiritu.

Tuçe Yasak has been following light in NYC since 2009, creating over 100 site-specific light installations for performance in the US and abroad. Yasak received the 2018 BESSIE (...

Memoirs of a... Unicorn by Marjani Forte-Saunders at Collapsable Hole and NYLA) and 2019 BESSIE (Oba Qween Baba King Baba by Ni’Ja Whitson at Danspace) for Outstanding Visual Design with her lighting design. She has been collaborating with Raja Feather Kelly and the feath3r theory since 2015. Among her recent collaborations: UGLY, HYSTERIA and BLUE by Raja Feather Kelly (New York live Arts, Bushwick Starr and ImpulsTanz),This Bridge Called My Ass by Miguel Gutierrez (The Chocolate Factory/ NY, Montpellier Dance Festival/ France, The Walker Center/

Minneapolis, PICA/Portland), We’re Gonna Die written by Young Jean Lee, directed by Raja Feather Kelly (2nd Stage Theater/NYC), M---ER by Autumn Knight (On The Boards and Abrons Arts Center), JoyUS JustUS by Contra Tiempo (national tour and Jacobs Pillow).

Light, movement and architecture intertwine in Yasak’s work to support space-making and storytelling. Her Light Journals were presented in March 2021 by Ars Nova NY and she is currently developing her first individual installation Wall.

Www.micoLUCO.com

LIVE ARTS CONTRIBUTORS New York Live Arts is deeply grateful to all the individuals listed below for their vital gifts to New York Live Arts over the last year: $500,000 and higher Anonymous Slobodan Randjelović & Jon Stryker $100,000-$499,999 Eleanor Friedman Ruth & Stephen Hendel Alex Katz Foundation Ellen M. Poss Jane Bovingdon Semel & Terry Semel / Semel Charitable Foundation $50,000 - $99,999 Anonymous Lorraine Gallard & Richard Levy Suzanne Karpas $25,000 - $49,999 Anonymous Patricia Blanchet / Ed Bradley Family Foundation David Dechman & Michel Mercure Zoe Eskin Adam Flatto Helen & Peter Haje Alexes Hazen James C. Hormel & Michael P. Nguyen in memory of Linda Grass Shapiro Charla Jones Amy Newman & Bud Shulman Barbara & Alan D. Marks Randy Polumbo / Plant Construction Matthew Putman Alanna Rutherford Starry Night Fund at The Chicago Community Foundation Diana Wege / Wege Foundation $10,000 - $24,999 Colleen Keegan Julie Orlando Andrea Rosen Ruby Shang Nina & Gabriel Stricker Leslie Weinberger

$5,000 - $9,999 Deborah Hellman & Derek Brown Paula Cooper & Jack Macrae Caroline & Paul Cronson Claire Danes & Hugh Dancy Anne Delaney Agnes Gund Bill T. Jones & Bjorn Amelan Jeffrey B. & Wendy Liszt Robert Longo Deborah Ronnen Melissa Schiff Soros Cindy Sherman Temple St. Clair & Paul Engler Kristalina & Jack Taylor Williams Family Foundation $1,000 - $4,999 Jody & John Arnhold | Arnhold Foundation Anonymous The Angelson Family Foundation Jonathan J. Cohen Charitable Fund Jeannie Colbert Kim Cullen Emily Dalton Joan Davidson Lil & Jim DeMarse Dobkin Family Foundation Margaret Doyle John Fitzgibbon Mimi Garrard Judith & Steven Gluckstern Michael & Deborah Goldberg Thomas & Barbara Gottschalk Jeanine Heriveaux Jenny Holzer Otho Kerr Spike Lee Nancy Meyer & Marc Weiss Susan Micari Meridee Moore & Kevin King Thomas Nichols & Daniel Chadburn Mark O’Donnell Deborah Pines Rita Salzman The Susan Stein Shiva Foundation Catharine R. Stimpson Megumi & Bruce Williams Timothy Wu & Eric Murphy

$500 - $999 Arthur Aviles Timothy Benning The Marshall Frankel Foundation Sharon Gerstel Tom Hennes Lauren Hutton Olivia Katz Kenneth Machlin Wayne Norbeck John Sansone Deborah Swiderski Gifts and commitments between 7/1/2020-6/30/2021 Support for New York Live Arts is provided by the Arnhold Foundation, Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Fund, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Ed Bradley Family Foundation, The Brant Foundation, Inc., Joseph and Joan Cullman Foundation for the Arts, Dance/ NYC, Ford Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, Harkness Foundation for Dance, Marta Heflin Foundation, Alex Katz Foundation, Lambent Foundation, Alice Lawrence Foundation, Samuel M. Levy Family Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, National Performance Network, New England Foundation for the Arts, NYC COVID-19 Response & Impact Fund in the New York Community Trust, The Poss Family Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Jerome Robbins Foundation, The Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, San Francisco Foundation The Semel Charitable Foundation, Scherman Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, Stavros Niarchos Foundation, Tides Foundation Corporate support for New York Live Arts includes Con Edison, Google, Otter AI, Tito’s Handmade Vodka.

Public support for New York Live Arts is from Humanities New York, National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Correction, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the New York State Council on the Arts.

STAFF & BOARD Artistic Leadership

Executive Leadership

Board of Directors

Bill T. Jones Artistic Director

Kim Cullen Executive Director & CEO

Stephen Hendel Co-Chair

Janet Wong Associate Artistic Director

Development

Richard H. Levy Co-Chair

Dave Archuletta Chief Development Officer

Helen Haje Vice Chair

Kyle Maude Producing Director

Ali Burke Individual Giving & Special Events Manager

Slobodan RandjeloviĆ Vice Chair

Hannah Emerson Producer

Erin Baskin Institutional Giving Manager

Veronica Falborn Producer

Candystore Development Assistant

Production

Hans Rasch Institutional Giving Assistant

Hillery Makatura Director of Production

Finance

Bjorn Amelan

Kevin Rees Technical Director

Nupur Dey Director of Finance

Sarah Arison

Olivia Edery Production Stage Manager

Manathus Dey Finance Associate

LaToya Ruby Frazier

Carson Gross Lighting Manager

Operations

Chanel Pinnock Production Coordinator

Gregory English Operations Manager

Randy Polumbo

Creative Director

Rafael Diaz Facilities Services Coordinator

Bjorn G. Amelan

Aneudy Pilier Paulino Custodial Coordinator

Matthew Putman

Community Engagement & Education

Adalid Nunez-Mendoza Custodial Assistant

Ruby Shang

Bianca Bailey Community Engagement & Education Manager

Human Resources

Programming, Producing & Engagement

Communications Tyler Ashley Director of Communications Hannah Seiden Communications Coordinator Liliana Dirks-Goodman Graphic Designer Pentagram Pro-Bono Branding

ADP TotalSource Legal Services Lowenstein Sandler, PC Pro-Bono Counsel Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company Barrington Hinds, Dean Michael Husted, Jada Jenai, Shane Larson, s. Lumbert, Danielle Marshall, Nayaa Opong, Marie Paspe, Jacoby Pruitt, Huiwang Zhang

Randjelović/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist

Alan Marks Treasurer Alanna Rutherford Secretary Bill T. Jones Artistic Director Ex-Officio Kim Cullen Chief Executive Officer Ex-Officio

Aimee Meredith Cox Charla Jones Colleen Keegan Darnell L. Moore Amy Newman Ellen M. Poss Jane Bovingdon Semel Catharine R. Stimpson Diana Wege Board Emeritus Derek Brown Terence Dougherty Eleanor Friedman Advisory Council Margaret Doyle, Chair Alberta Arthurs Beverly D’Anne Lisa Frigand Jenette Kahn Susan Micari

Faye Driscoll

Alton Murray

Raja Feather Kelly

Lorraine Gallard

New York Live Arts

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