2022 OUR SEASON OF ANNIVERSARIES CELEBRATING 10 YEARS OF LIVE ARTS AND 40 YEARS OF THE BILL T. JONES/ARNIE ZANE COMPANY
Kenyon Adams Prayers of the People RELEASED JAN 17, 730PM Conceived by Kenyon Adams Directed by Kenyon Adams and Bill T. Jones Sound design by Sam Crawford Lighting design by Lauren Libretti Production Stage Manager, Veronica Falborn Text excerpts from Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King, Jr. April 16, 1963 Cantors: Kenyon Adams, Padraic Costello, Vinson Fraley, Jr., Rebecca L. Hargrove, Cynthia Hopkins and Walker J. Jackson with Alex Scully, Isobel Grand Rodriguez, Gabriela Hayes, Ahlaam Ibrahim, Fiona Jarvis, Kaya Jarvis, Lourdes Lezcano, Dani Nzonou Grimdo, Mieke Matteson, Nyah Rapaso, Beatrice Thompson, & Winter Willis Cover image by Kenyon Adams Running time: 85 mins This performance was part of Live Ideas 2018: Radical Vision.
SPECIAL THANKS Special thanks to Hannah Cullen and Cullen+Them, Susan Micari, Ellen Robbins. Kenyon would like to thank Bill T. Jones, Janet Wong, Reverend Matthew Larsen, Maggi Dawn, Martin Jean, Elise Morrison, Emily V. Adams, Daniel Moody, Kate Marvin, New York Live Arts, Yale Institute of Sacred Music, Marquand Chapel, Yale School of Drama, Yale Cabaret, Grace Farms Foundation.
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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 Bill T. Jones (Artistic Director/ Co-Founder/Choreographer: Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company; Artistic Director: New York Live Arts) is the recipient of the 2014 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award; the 2013 National Medal of Arts; the 2010 Kennedy Center Honors; a 2010 Tony Award for Best Choreography of the critically acclaimed FELA!; a 2007 Tony Award, 2007 Obie Award, and 2006 Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation CALLAWAY Award for his choreography for Spring Awakening; the 2010 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award; the 2007 USA Eileen Harris Norton Fellowship; the 2006 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Choreography forThe Seven; the 2005 Wexner Prize; the 2005 Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement; the 2005 Harlem Renaissance Award; the 2003 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize; and the 1994 MacArthur “Genius” Award. In 2010, Mr. Jones was recognized as Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government, and in 2000, The Dance Heritage Coalition named Mr. Jones “An Irreplaceable Dance Treasure.” Mr. Jones choreographed and
performed worldwide with his late partner, Arnie Zane, before forming the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company in 1982. He has created more than 140 works for his company. Mr. Jones is the Artistic Director of New York Live Arts, an organization that strives to create a robust framework in support of the nation’s dance and movement-based artists through new approaches to producing, presenting, and educating. Kenyon Adams is an interdisciplinary artist and creative director. Through performance-based practices, he seeks to reclaim or expand embodied ways of knowing, towards imagining and constructing sustainable futures. Kenyon’s performance work, PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE, invites audiences to sit, kneel, and chant King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail. His work is concerned with notions of citizenship, locating pleasure and satisfaction within the scope of justice. For this work, the artist engages text, photography, music and performance; as well as foodways, devised liturgies, and site-specific interventions. COMMUNION, a ritual of nourishment and commemoration,
premieres at the Fisher Center in 2022. Kenyon is a Senior Fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center, and founder of FUTURE SOLITUDE, an art project and lifestyle brand that examines and speculates modes and sites of leisure.
Padraic Costello is active as both soloist and ensemble singer in New York City. He is invested in the social and cultural impact of music and performance as both a performer and advocate. Costello is a committed performer of new Kenyon has contributed art works by living composers, and and thought leadership to regularly collaborates with artists Live Ideas (New York Live and composers from the United Arts), the Fisher Center at States, East/Southeast Asia, and Bard College, Yale School of Polynesia. He is part of a new Drama, the Langston Hughes music collective in Hawaii with Project, Louis Armstrong House several artists from East Asia and Museum, YoungARTS, Grace the United States, and continues Farms Arts, the National Arts to collaborate with this group on Policy Roundtable (Americans improvisational projects exploring for the Arts), and the Schomburg social identity, agency, and cultural Center for Research in Black interaction through performance. Culture. He studied Religion & Costello received graduate Literature at Yale Divinity School, degrees in voice performance and Theology of Contemporary and ethnomusicology from the Performance at the Yale Institute University of Hawaii, where his of Sacred Music. Kenyon has research focused on new music performed nationally as a vocalist, and theater by composers living songwriter, and blues harmonica in Japan. In New York, Mr. Costello player, making his feature film sings in the professional choir of debut as Jason in Golden Globe men and boys at Saint Thomas Award-winning director Lee Isaac Church Fifth Avenue, which is Chung’s narrative feature Lucky regarded by many as the leading Life, which premiered at Tribeca ensemble of its kind in the United Film Festival. Kenyon served as States. Recent solo engagements Artist in Residence at the Yale include: Narrator in Antonio Institute of Sacred Music for the Draghi’s Oratorio di Giudetta 2015-16 academic year. His multiwith the Academy of Sacred media performance works have Drama, Endimione in Francesco addressed issues of legibility, race, Cavalli’s La Calisto with dell’Arte and American memory. Opera, Ottone in G.F. Handel’s
Agrippina with Opera NEO, and Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Hawaii Opera Theater. Mr. Costello is also trained in traditional Japanese music performance, and studies the Japanese koto as a member of the Sawai Koto Kai school. Vinson Fraley, Jr. hails from Atlanta, Georgia. He began his training at the age of 14 under the direction of Lynise and Denise Heard. Vinson studied at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and was most recently a company dancer for Abraham.In.Motion. Vinson has been fortunate enough to work with many choreographers and instructors including Rashaun Mitchell, Cora Bos-Kroese, Gus Solomons Jr., Cindy Salgado, Sean Curran and many more. Vinson joined the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company in 2017. Rebecca L. Hargrove is a classically trained Soprano, Actress, and Model. She has been featured on stage with New York City Opera, New York City Center Encores!, Spoleto Festival USA, Carnegie Hall, David Geffan Hall, The Garden State Philharmonic, and the John F. Kennedy Center. Rebecca has received distinguished awards from the National Young Arts Foundation,
Opera Ebony, The NSAL Shirley Rabb Winston Vocal Competition, and The Ebony Classical Singer’s Competition. Her television and film experience includes appearances on season one of the Netflix Original Series House of Cards and HBO’s Black Rest. She also serves as a correspondent for NBCblk’s Pathfinders and hosts Manhattan Neighborhood Network’s The Artist’s Forum AFTV. Rebecca can next be seen on the upcoming web series Single Record as Sheila Kenner. Cynthia Hopkins is an internationally acclaimed musical performance artist: she writes songs, records albums, and creates tragicomic performance works that intertwine truth and fiction. She has produced eight performance works, eight albums of original music, and one museum installation. Her work has been honored with many awards, including a 2015 Doris Duke Artist Award and a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship. Ms. Hopkins also collaborates with others as a performer, composer, and musician; and currently works with behavioral health hospital patients as a board certified music therapist. Her new musical endeavor Fellwalker recently released their debut album Love is the Means.
Walker J. Jackson, native of Atlanta, GA, is an emerging tenor in New York City. In 2017, he made his Carnegie Hall solo debut in performances of Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, as well as Forrest’s Requiem for the Living with Mid-America Productions. Also in 2017, he served as a Tenor Emerging Artist for the Festival of the Aegean in Syros, Greece, where he performed Goro in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. Additionally, he served as tenor soloist for Mozart’s Requiem in Vienna, Austria with Mid-America International Productions.
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
Ali Burke Chief of Staff
Richard H. Levy Co-Chair
Programming, Producing & Engagement
Development
Helen Haje Vice Chair
Dave Archuletta Chief Development Officer
Slobodan RandjeloviĆ Vice Chair
Erin Baskin Institutional Giving Manager
Alan D. Marks Treasurer
Candystore Development Assistant
Alanna Rutherford Secretary
Kyle Maude Producing Director Hannah Emerson Producer Veronica Falborn Producer Production Hillery Makatura Director of Production Zaire Baptiste Interim Technical Director Carson Gross Lighting Manager Chanel Pinnock Production Manager Creative Director Bjorn G. Amelan Community Engagement & Education Bianca Bailey Community Engagement & Education Manager Communications Tyler Ashley Director of Communications Hannah Seiden Communications Coordinator Liliana Dirks-Goodman Graphic Designer Pentagram Pro-Bono Branding
Hans Rasch Institutional Giving Assistant Finance Nupur Dey Director of Finance Manathus Dey Finance Associate Operations Gregory English Operations Manager Aneudy Pilier Paulino Custodial Coordinator Adalid Nunez-Mendoza Custodial Assistant Human Resources 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
Bill T. Jones Artistic Director Ex-Officio Kim Cullen Chief Executive Officer Ex-Officio Willard Ahdritz Bjorn Amelan Sarah Arison Aimee Meredith Cox LaToya Ruby Frazier Charla Jones Colleen Keegan Darnell L. Moore Amy Newman Randy Polumbo Ellen M. Poss Matthew Putman Jane Bovingdon Semel Ruby Shang Catharine R. Stimpson Diana Wege Board Emeritus Derek Brown Terence Dougherty Eleanor Friedman Advisory Council Margaret Doyle, Chair Alberta Arthurs
Randjelović/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist
Beverly D’Anne Lisa Frigand
Faye Driscoll
Jenette Kahn Susan Micari Alton Murray Lorraine Gallard Lois Greenfield Martha Sherman
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