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 WEEKSVILLE HERITAGE CENTER JUN 21, 8PM Choreographed by Ni’Ja Whitson Performed by Ni’Ja Whitson and Kirsten Davis Lighting Design by Ni’Ja Whitson Stage Manager: Davin DeCicco 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 that New York Live Arts is located in Lenapehoking, the Lenape homeland. We offer our gratitude and care for its land and waters, and we acknowledge and pay respect to Lenape peoples, and to all Indigenous people, past, present and future, here and everywhere.
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. Weeksville Heritage Center is a community-oriented arts organization and cultural center located on the historic site of the first and largest autonomous Black community in Brooklyn, founded prior to the United States Civil War. WHC aims to document, preserve, engage, and protect the past, present, and future of Black liberation practices in Central Brooklyn & beyond. weeksvillesociety.org. Weeksville Heritage Center (WHC) is a member of NYC’s Cultural Institutions Group. The People of the City of New York provide major funding for WHC’s operations through the City’s Department of Cultural Affairs. The combined generosity of WHC’s Members,
Trustees, and visitors, as well as that of corporate, foundation, government, and individual donors, underwrites WHC’s programs and activities each year.
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 Marks Treasurer
Candystore Development Assistant
Alanna Rutherford Secretary
Kyle Maude Producing Director Hannah Emerson Producer Veronica Falborn Producer Production Hillery Makatura Director of Production Grady Shea Technical Director Chanel Pinnock Production Manager Megan Dechaine Production Stage Manager Creative Director Bjorn G. Amelan Community Engagement & Education Bianca Bailey Community Engagement & Education Manager Communications Tyler Ashley Director of Communications Augustus Cook Digital Marketing Manager Hannah Seiden Communications Coordinator Liliana Dirks-Goodman Graphic Designer Pentagram Pro-Bono Branding Randjelović/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist Faye Driscoll
Finance Nupur Dey Director of Finance Manathus Dey Finance Associate
Bill T. Jones Artistic Director Ex-Officio Kim Cullen Chief Executive Officer Ex-Officio Bjorn Amelan Willard Ahdritz Sarah Arison
Operations
Aimee Meredith Cox
Gregory English Operations Manager
LaToya Ruby Frazier
Marcus Retegues Facilities Coordinator
Colleen Keegan
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
Charla Jones 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
Front of House Staff
Beverly D’Anne
Lydia Perakis, Julia Antinozzi, Kiara Williams, Johnny Mathews, Kat Sauma, Cristina MoyaPalacios, Salma Kiuhan, Camden Loeser, Rafaela Oliviera, Makenna Finch, Taylor Adams, Anna Ticknor
Lisa Frigand Jenette Kahn Susan Micari Alton Murray Lorraine Gallard Lois Greenfield Martha Sherman
New York Live Arts
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