Hapo Na Zamani

ONGOING ACTIVATIONS

Film Screening of works by Stefanie Batten Bland Colonels Room

Screening of three films by interdisciplinary artist Stefanie Batten Bland: , a dance cinema piece examining how we create definitions to justify systems that exploit and oppress, created in collaboration with installation artist Conrad Quesen; Due Monde

Film Screening of Library

Working from Upstate New York, through river tributaries, interdisciplinary artist Stefanie Batten Bland marshals an intimate configuration of her company to explore underlining historical and present day directional Upstate/Downstate tensions in the region during the COVID-19 pandemic in her dance film

A Devil’s Ivy

Board of Officers Room and First Floor Hallway

Live performance by interdisciplinary artist Shantelle Courvoisier Jackson accompanied by dancers anna thompson (slowdanger), Darnell Weaver (Maestro FLux), Justin Faircloth, Light McAuliffe, Maddie Wariner, Samantha Lysaght, Shiloh Hodges, taylor knight (slowdanger), and Ron’Dale Simpson.SECOND FLOOR

Art as Liberation: An Exhibition of Works by Park Avenue Armory Youth Corps Parlor

Arts Education at the Armory draws on this program for its Armory Art Together initiative this spring semester, which commissions original works of art from students in the Armory’s Youth Corps. Over the past four weeks, Youth Corps members have been exploring the works of various artists from the Black Arts Movement—notably Thulani Davis, Kay Brown, Benny Andrews, Max Roach, and Adrienne Kennedy—and the idea of artmaking as a tool for liberation. Their final commissions have been collected in a digital exhibition for viewing in person at today’s event and digitally through the adjacent QR code.

CONVERSATION SERIES: MAKING SPACE AT THE ARMORY HAPO NA ZAMANI (BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT PAST AND PRESENT)

saturday, may 20, 2023

8:00pm & 9:30pm

performances by Vernon Reid and Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber , inspired by the greats of the Black Arts Movement and honoring the musical legacy of the late writer and intellectual Greg Tate

7:00pm – 10:30pm

Activations by Stefanie Batten Bland , Shantelle Courvoisier Jackson , Park Avenue Armory Youth Corps , and more

Special guests include Nona Hendryx, Somi, and Wunmi

Carl Hancock Rux Chief Curator and Curator of the Exhibition

Tavia Nyong’o Executive Curator

Vernon Reid Music Curator

C o - presented with h arlem s tage as part of their Black Arts Movement: Then and Now C onferen C e

Support for Park Avenue Armory’s artistic season has been generously provided by The Thompson Family Foundation, the Charina Endowment Fund, the Donald A. Pels Charitable Trust, The Shubert Foundation, the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, the Marc Haas Foundation, the Prospect Hill Foundation, the Reed Foundation, Wescustogo Foundation, the Leon Levy Foundation, the May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, Gregory Annenberg Weingarten, GRoW @ Annenberg, The Emma and Georgina Bloomberg Foundation, the Richenthal Foundation, and the Isak and Rose Weinman Foundation. Additional support has been provided by the Armory’s Artistic Council. Public support for this program is provided, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature. This series is supported, in part, with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Cover image: Kolonial by Stefanie Batten Bland (2021). Photo by Maria Baranova.

CURATORIAL STATEMENT

BY CARL HANCOCK RUX AND TAVIA NYONG’O

“In traditional African thought ... peoples have no ‘belief in progress,’ the idea that the development of human activities and achievements move from a low to a higher degree. The people neither plan for the distant future nor ‘build castles in the air.’ The centre of gravity for human thought and activities is the Zamani (past) period, towards which the Sasa (present) moves. People set their eyes on the Zamani, since for them there is no ‘World to Come’.”

– John Mbiti, “The Concept of Time” in African Religions and Philosophy

The Black Arts Movement was a cultural movement in the late 1960s to 1970s rooted in music, literature, drama, and visual arts, led by Black artists, activists, and intellectuals. It was the cultural intersection that moved and shaped the ideologies of Black identity and politics. According to one of its most outspoken founders, poet Leroi Jones, soon to be known as Amiri Baraka, the Black Arts Movement began “the day after the high-profile assassination of Civil Rights leader, Malcolm X” in February 1965. Baraka proclaimed the art born out of these events as “nationalist art…The Art is the National Spirit. That manifestation of it. Black Art must be the Nationalist’s vision given more form and feeling, as a razor to cut away what is not central to National Liberation. To show that which is. As a humanistic expression it is itself raised. And these are the poles, out of which we create, to raise, or as raised.”

In the season-long Harlem Stage series Black Arts Movement: Examined, Associate Artistic Director/Artist-in-Residence

Carl Hancock Rux proposed programming that would dive into the importance of the movement and explore it’s enduring significance. Exploring its profound and innovative successes, this contemporary dialogue also turned a critical eye toward the exclusionary principles, which managed to alienate a culture unable to embrace values of violence, misogyny, homophobia, and historical humiliation. The series at Harlem Stage also attempted to reawaken a critical discourse regarding Black aesthetics, while challenging, clarifying, contextualizing, and questioning the evolution and legacy of a significant arts movement. The global multicultural “Black Lives Matter” protest belongs to a continuum of Black resistance to racial inequality in the United States, and taps into an underrecognized tradition of Black American artistic and spiritual practice, one that stresses the importance of freedom, self-determination, and equal protection under the law.

“Go back and find it” is the Sankofa motto taken up by afrofuturists seeking to find in our past resources for Black life today. Coming at the apex of a three-day symposium dedicated to this heritage, tonight’s event goes back to the 1960s and 1970s to find “it”: that spirit of the changing same, as Baraka would have it. Hapo na Zamani is a happening in the here and now that celebrates the there and then of the Black Arts Movement. To identify a definitive beginning and ending of the movement of Black Art and protest is as futile as trying to contain God, or to frame the life force. All we can say for sure is that the militancy of mid-20th century America—ignited by the brutal murder of Emmet Till in Money, Mississippi; the Freedom Riders protest organized by the Congress on Racial Equality; the US Supreme Court decision in Boynton v. Virginia (1960) ruling the segregation of interstate transportation unconstitutional; the 1963 murder of four schoolgirls in Birmingham, Alabama; and the assassinations of Patrice Lumumba, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr.—created a seismic shift in Black culture in America (and around the world) that did not simply end in 1975.

Happenings emerged on the outskirts of the art world, and their ephemeral, word-of-mouth, one-time-only nature has endowed them with the grandeur of myth. We think of legends like Allen Kaprow, Carolee Schneemann, and David Hammons. But as the

“You know, I know. One question is who is responsible? Another is can you read?.”

– Toni Morrison, Beloved

artists involved with tonight’s program understand, a happening can happen at any moment, and at any time. You just have to be ready. Whether fueled by Jean Genet’s 1958 production of Les Nègres at the Théâtre de Lutèce in Paris (exposing racial prejudice and stereotypes while exploring Black identity, and later becoming one of the most successful and longest running Off-Broadway plays in America); or the 1959 tour of the South African blockbuster musical King Kong, starring Hugh Masekala and Miriam Makeba (later produced in London’s West End) drawing attention to the brutality of South Africa’s apartheid State; or the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, where 69 protestors were shot dead in South Africa as the government banned gatherings of ten or more people; or the release of the seminal 1961 jazz album We Insist! (Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite) featuring Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln—the Black Arts Movement focused on pan-African liberation following hundred years of the blood, tears, and toil.

The movement can also be said to have evolved out of the post-civil rights Umbra movement, a 1960 Black nationalist literary organization developed from On Guard for Freedom, a famous protest at the United Nations of the American-sponsored Bay of Pigs Cuban invasion and active in support of the Congolese liberation leader Patrice Lumumba (assassinated only one year later). The movement may have begun with the OBIE award winning allegorical plays of The Dutchman by Baraka and Funny House of a Negro by Kennedy (both developed in workshops with playwright Edward Albee, and presented together at the Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village in New York City). Or it may trace its beginnings to the modernist genius of the Harlem Renaissance, or even before that, amongst centuries of unnamed Black artists. The fact is, long before Baraka established the Black Arts Repertory Theatre School (BART/S) in Harlem following the assassination of Malcolm X and dedicated it to politically engaged work that explored the African American experience (inspiring many others to create similar organizations across the United States), and long before the 1967 Visual Arts Workshop of the Organization of Black American Culture (composed of several visual artists who later formed the AfriCOBRA artist collective) painted the “Wall of Respect” in Chicago, representing Black culture and creativity, and inspiring the installation of over 1,500 murals painted in Black neighborhoods across the country—long before there was a contemplative practice of disruption moving around the planet’s atmospheric circulation, heated by the sun, affecting change and inspiring creative convection, rising and falling, swelling to spinning, available to us all. The Black Arts Movement is the advent of Blackness as a location in space possessing so much gravity, nothing—not even light—can escape its pull. It is a happening through the pain and struggle of human existence, toward a destination of resonant affirmation. It is an articulation, without beginning or end, constantly challenging what we think we know, and confronting everything that insults our souls.

armoryonpark.org | @ParkAveArmory

MEET THE PARTICIPANTS

ARMORY YOUTH CORPS

The Armory’s creativity-based arts education programs provide access to the arts to thousands of students from underserved New York City public schools, engaging them with the institution’s artistic programming and outside-the-box creative processes. Youth Corps, the Armory’s year-round paid internship program, begins in high school and continues into the critical post-high school years, providing interns with mentored employment, job training, and skill development, as well as a network of peers and mentors to support their individual college and career goals. Youth Corps members for the Spring 2023 semester include Kenny Amesquita, Darling Batista, Eden Battice, Victoria Braga Dos Santos Casey, Britney Carryl, Issbel Collado, Aya Elfatihi, Laisha Estevez, Deborah Figueroa, Annalisa Fortune, Safinaz Ishrar, Alan Munoz, Denivia Rivera, and Naomi Santos.

STEFANIE BATTEN BLAND

2023 Creative Capital Awardee and 2022 BAM NEXT WAVE commissioned artist Stefanie Batten Bland is a global maker who exhibits a unique blend of African American flamboyance and European sensibility. She situates her work at the intersection of immersive & dance-theatre in live and cinematic settings. Based in New York City, she founded Company SBB in France in 2008 and is a longstanding Baryshnikov Arts Center Artist in Residence. KOLONIAL, her 2021 dance film, has won 13 film festival awards and was nominated for three Bessies. SBB serves as Casting and Movement Director for Emursive’s McKittrick productions, Performance and Identity Consultant for Sleep No More, and Movement Director for Eve’s Song, Public Theater. Previously, SBB was Head Choreographer of the Paris Opera Comique. As a performer, Batten Bland has danced for Pina Bausch Tanztheater Wüppertal, PunchDrunk, Bill T. Jones/ Arnie Zane Dance Company, Compagnie Georges Momboye, Compagnie Linga, and Pal Frenak. SBB received her MFA in interdisciplinary arts (concentration performance creation) from Goddard College, is an Assistant Professor at Montclair State University’s Department of Theatre and Dance, and lives in SoHo with her family.

BURNT SUGAR THE ARKESTRA CHAMBER

In 2023, Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber continues to celebrate “never playing anything the same way once.” As always, BSAC gives tribute to their sonic Sensei, Maestro Lawrence Butch Morris (1947-2013) for showing them “THE WAY” of Conducted Improvisation and to their founder and co-leader Gregory Stephen Ionman Tate (1957-2021) for creating the caramelized spaceship allowing BSAC access to a many-splendored and darkly energetic celestial realm of cosmic noise & riddim. Now in its 24th year of existence, BSAC is led by Jared Michael Nickerson, BSAC’s electric bubble bassist, business manager, and co-leader since its inception. As Greg Tate used to say BSAC is “a territory band, a neo-tribal thang, a community hang, a society music guild aspiring to the condition of all that is molten, glacial, racial, spacial, oceanic, mythic, antiphonal and telepathic.”

Vernon Reid Conductor

Shelley NicoleVocals/Conduction

Bruce Mack Vocals/Synthesizer/Conduction

Ms. Olithea Vocals and Vocal Soundscapes

Lewis “Flip” Barnes Trumpet

V. Jeffrey Smith Soprano/Tenor Sax

Avram Fefer Alto Sax

Dave “Smoota” Smith Trombone

“Moist” Paula Henderson Bari Sax

Leon “Misha” Gruenbaum Electric Keys/Samchillian

Ben Tyree Electric Guitar

Jason Tobias DiMatteo Acoustic Bass

LaFrae Sci Trap Drums

Jared Michael Nickerson Electric Bubble Bass

NONA HENDRYX

Art-rock vocalist, composer, technologist, and multidisciplinary artist Nona Hendryx’s career spans decades of sound and style evolution. She is a founding member of the rock, gospel, RnB Afrofuturistic group Labelle, responsible for the No.1 hit “Lady Marmalade (Voulez Vous Coucher Avec Moi Ce Soir?).” An ambassador for Berklee College/Boston Conservatory, she is currently developing music driven AI/AR/VR applications and immersive installations premiering 2024 in New York and abroad. Her audio-visual productions inspired by Afrofuturism have been presented by The Metropolitan Museum, Mass MOCA, MoMA, Park Avenue Armory, Moog Fest, Art Basel Miami, and London’s Serpentine Gallery and Somerset House. Hendryx is passionate about music, visual art, and technology and continues to be a prolific artist.

SHANTELLE COURVOISIER JACKSON

Shantelle Courvoisier is the Artistic Director of loveconductors. Her work is informed by her teacher/mentor Laura Clarke Stelmok. She has presented work at Issue Project Room, The Kitchen, JACK, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Chez Bushwick, and BkSD. Jackson has performed with Deeply Rooted Dance Theater, Urban Bush Women, Paloma Mcgregor, Daria Faïn, luciana achugar, Antonio Ramos, Walter Dundervill, Mia Habib, slowdanger, and Maestro Flux. She would like to thank her collaborators for their support and artistry: anna thompson (slowdanger), Darnell Weaver (Maestro FLux), Justin Faircloth, Light McAuliffe, Maddie Wariner, Samantha Lysaght, Shiloh Hodges, taylor knight (slowdanger), Ron’Dale Simpson, and Katie West.

VERNON REID

Guitarist and two-time Grammy Award recipient Vernon Reid has been a musical force for four decades. Though best known as the leader of the groundbreaking rock band Living Colour, who debuted in 1988 with the double-platinum album Vivid, Reid has displayed his musical diversity through solo projects (Masque, Yohimbe Brothers), studio work (Lady Gaga, The Roots, The Ramones, Public Enemy), and film scores (Paid in Full, Ghosts of Attica). Breaking through on the avant-jazz scene on the Lower East Side with Decoding Society and Defunkt, Reid has been musically building on that groundwork ever since. In 1985, he co-founded the much-needed Black Rock Coalition to confront racism in the music industry. Additionally, Reid also worked with leading choreographer Bill T. Jones in 1994 on the two-part dance project Still/Here. Always moving forward, Reid is currently working on a variety of ventures, including a new solo album, a new soundtrack for the latest film directed by Brad Lichtenstein, and a book of his photographs. This summer Reid will be on the road with his band Living Colour, whose last album Shade was released in 2017.

SOMI

Vocalist, composer, and playwright Somi Kakoma is the daughter of immigrants from Uganda and Rwanda. Known in the jazz world simply as “Somi,” her fifth studio album, Zenzile: The Reimagination of Miriam Makeba, is a companion project to her critically acclaimed original musical Dreaming Zenzile, which paid tribute to the great South African singer and activist. At the height of the 2020 lockdown, Somi released the live album Holy Room featuring the Frankfurt Radio Big Band; this earned her a 2021 Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album and made her the first African woman ever nominated in any Grammy jazz category. Awards include: a 2023 Doris Duke Artist Award; two NAACP Image Awards for Best Vocal Jazz Album; the inaugural Jazz Music Award for Best Vocal Performance; and Soros Equality, United States Artist, TED, and Sundance Theatre fellowships. Somi is Founder of Salon Africana, a boutique cultural agency and record label. BA Cultural Anthropology/African Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, MFA Performance Studies NYU Tisch, PhD Harvard Department of Music ongoing. In her heart of hearts, she is an East African Midwestern girl who loves family, poetry, and freedom.

WUNMI

Meet Wunmi, the Afrobeat-inspired singer, songwriter, performer, and fashion designer who draws inspiration from her childhood in Nigeria and her teen years in London. With roots in Afrobeat and a love for soul, rare grooves, and broken beat, Wunmi’s music and fashion designs are one of a kind. She has worked with legends like Roy Ayers and has been featured on tracks by top House music producers. Wunmi’s contributions to mainstreaming Afrobeat in America are immense, and her debut album, A.L.A., was hailed as essential by Giles Peterson. Look out for her eagerly awaited second album, SHEE MI, SEE ME

PRODUCTION ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Galina Mihaleva Costume Designer

Jahdiel Rodriguez Stage Manager

Adonai Jones, Silas Rodriguez Production Assistants

Sascha von Oertzen Audio Engineer

SPECIAL THANKS

Backline provided by Boulevard Carroll

Audio equipment by Masque Sound

Dianne Smith

Carrie Mae Weems

DJ Belinda Becker

ABOUT HARLEM STAGE

I have been a loyal fan of the work of the Park Avenue Armory for many years. The fact that our mutual love of exciting, mind expanding art has brought Rebecca Robertson, Tavia Nyong’o, and the Armory team together with Carl Hancock Rux and the Harlem Stage team is a kind of miracle. Hapo Na Zamani is a perfect way to celebrate the conclusion of our Black Arts Movement Examined series and our Then and Now Conference. In a world that seems increasingly fractured, our work together embodies our commonly held belief that art heals and has the power to unite in joy.

— Pat Cruz, CEO and Artistic Director

Harlem Stage is the performing arts center that bridges Harlem’s cultural legacy to contemporary artists of color and dares to provide the artistic freedom that gives birth to new ideas.

For nearly 40 years our singular mission has been to perpetuate and celebrate the unique and diverse artistic legacy of Harlem and the indelible impression it has made on American culture. We provide opportunity, commissioning, and support for visionary artists of color, make performances easily accessible to all audiences and introduce children to the rich diversity, excitement, and inspiration of the performing arts.

With a long-standing tradition of supporting artists and organizations around the corner and across the globe, Harlem Stage boasts such legendary artists as Harry Belafonte, Max Roach, Sekou Sundiata, Abbey Lincoln, Sonia Sanchez, Eddie Palmieri, Maya Angelou, and Tito Puente, as well as contemporary artists like Mumu Fresh, Jason “Timbuktu” Diakité, Xian Scott aTunde Adjuah, Tamar kali, Vijay Iyer, Mike Ladd, Meshell Ndegeocello, Jason Moran, José James, Nona Hendryx, Bill T. Jones, and more. Our education programs serve over 2,300 New York City schoolchildren each year.

The New York Times has saluted Harlem Stage as “an invaluable incubator of talent” and we have been hailed as an organization still unafraid to take risks. Our investment in this visionary talent is often awarded in the early stages of many artists’ careers and we proudly celebrate their increasing success. Five members of our artist family have joined the ranks of MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship awardees: Kyle Abraham (2013), Vijay Iyer (2013), Jason Moran (2010), Bill T. Jones (1994), and Cecil Taylor (1991).

We fulfill our mission through commissioning, incubating, and presenting innovative and vital work that responds to the historical and contemporary conditions that shape our lives and the communities we serve.

Harlem Stage’s Black Arts Movement: Examined series is supported by the Mellon Foundation.

ABOUT PUBLIC PROGRAMMING AT THE ARMORY

Park Avenue Armory’s Public Programming series brings diverse artists and cultural thought-leaders together for discussion and performance around the important issues of our time viewed through an artistic lens. Launched in 2017, the series encompasses a variety of programs including large-scale community events; multi-day symposia; intimate salons featuring performances, panels, and discussions; Artist Talks in relation to the Armory’s Drill Hall programming; and other creative interventions.

Highlights from the Public Programming series include: Carrie Mae Weems’ 2017 event The Shape of Things and 2021 convening and concert series Land of Broken Dreams, whose participants included Elizabeth Alexander, Theaster Gates, Elizabeth Diller, Nona Hendryx, Somi, and Spike Lee, among others; a daylong Lenape Pow Wow and Standing Ground Symposium held in the Wade Thompson Drill Hall, the first congregation of Lenape Elders on Manhattan Island since the 1700s; “A New Vision for Justice in America” conversation series in collaboration with Common Justice, exploring new coalitions, insights, and ways of understanding question of justice and injustice in relation moderated by FLEXN Evolution creators Reggie (Regg Roc) Gray and director Peter Sellars; Culture in a Changing America Symposia exploring the role of art, creativity, and imagination in the social and political issues in American society today; the 2019 Black Artists Retreat hosted by Theaster Gates, which included public talks and performances, private sessions for the 300 attending artists, and a roller skating rink; 100 Years | 100 Women, a multiorganization commissioning project that invited 100 women artists and cultural creators to respond to women’s suffrage; a Queer Hip Hop Cypher, delving into the queer origins and aesthetics of hip hop with Astraea award-winning duo Krudxs Cubensi and author and scholar Dr. Shante Paradigm Smalls; the Archer Aymes Retrospective, exploring the legacy of emancipation through an immersive art installation curated by Carl Hancock Rux and featuring a concert performance by mezzo soprano Alicia Hall Moran and pianist Aaron Diehl, presented as one component of a three-part series commemorating Juneteenth in collaboration with Harlem Stage and Lincoln Center as part of the Festival of New York; legendary artist Nao Bustamante’s BLOOM, a cross-disciplinary investigation centered around the design of the vaginal speculum and its use in the exploitative and patriarchal history of the pelvic examination; and Art at Water’s Edge, a symposium inspired by the work of director and scholar May Joseph on artistic invention in the face of climate change, including participants such as Whitney Biennale curator Adrienne Edwards, artist Kiyan Williams, Little Island landscape architect Signe Nielsen, eco-systems artist Michael Wang, and others.

Notable Public Programming salons include: the Literature Salon hosted by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, whose participants included Lynn Nottage, Suzan Lori-Parks, and Jeremy O. Harris; a Spoken Word Salon co-hosted with the Nuyorican Poets Cafe; a Film Salon featuring the works of immersive artist and film director Lynette Wallworth; “Museum as Sanctuary” led by installation artist and Artist-in-Residence Tania Bruguera, curated by Sonia Guiñansaca and CultureStrike, and featuring undocu-artists Julio Salgado and Emulsify; a Dance Salon presented in partnership with Dance Theater of Harlem, including New York City Ballet’s Wendy Whelan and choreographer Francesca Harper, among others; and Captcha: Dancing, Data, Liberation, a salon exploring Black visual complexity and spirit, led by visionary artist Rashaad Newsome and featuring Saidiya V. Hartman, Kiyan Williams, Dazié Rustin Grego-Sykes, Ms.Boogie, Puma Camillê, and others.

Artist Talks have featured esteemed artists, scholars, and thought leaders, such as: architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron in conversation with Ai Wei Wei, moderated by Juilliard president Damian Woetzel; director Ariane Mnouchkine and Pulitzer Prizewinning playwright Tony Kushner in conversation with New Yorker editor David Remnick; director Ivo van Hove in conversation with James Nicola, Artistic Director of New York Theater Workshop; artist William Kentridge and his collaborators Philip Miller and Thuthuka Sibisi in conversation with Dr. Augustus Casely Hayford, Director of the Smithsonian, National Museum of African Art; Lehman Trilogy director Sam Mendez and adapter Ben Powers in conversation with playwright Lynn Nottage; artist and composer Heiner Goebbels in conversation with composer, vocalist, and scholar Gelsey Bell; choreographer Bill T. Jones in conversation with architect Elizabeth Diller and designer Peter Nigrini, moderated by vocalist and performance artist Helga Davis; composer, librettist, and director Michel van der Aa in conversation with conceptual and performance artist Marina Abramović; director Robert Icke in conversation with Harvard University Professor of the Classics and Comparative Literature Emily Greenwood; and composer, conductor, and multi-instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey in discussion with visual artist Julie Mehretu, flexn pioneer Reggie (Regg Roc) Gray, and baritone Davóne Tines, moderated by director Peter Sellars

armoryonpark.org | @ParkAveArmory

NEXT IN THE SERIES

SALON: HIDDEN CONVERSATIONS

june 18

In celebration of Juneteenth Day, Park Avenue Armory partners with National Black Theatre to illuminate and share the wisdom of the forebearers of culture and society. This event will create cultural awareness and fresh excitement around hidden cultural moments that shaped thoughts, experiences, and visions for the future.

CORPUS DELICTI

october 7

At a moment of maximum anxiety and backlash over the fundamental human rights to autonomy, expressivity, modification, and self-transformation of the body, this convening of artists, activists, and intellectuals imagines and enacts transgender art and music as a vehicle for dialogue across differences. Presented in conjunction with Mutant;Destrudo, Armory’s new commission by the multifaceted artist and creator Arca that continues her practice of addressing themes of psychosexuality, science fiction, and gender identity.

NEXT AT THE ARMORY

RECITAL SERIES PAVEL

KOLESNIKOV, PIANO

may 22 & 24

Hailed as “a poet of the piano” (Bachtrack), Pavel Kolesnikov opens his two-concert Armory residency with one of the most challenging works for a pianist—J.S. Bach’s towering classical keyboard masterpiece the Goldberg Variations—and then looks upward with a program of works by Scarlatti, Chopin, Scriabin, Messiaen, and others theatrically curated in an homage to artist Joseph Cornell’s orrery Celestial Navigation, which invokes the myths, images, and theories once used to explain the predictable yet baffling patterns of the night sky.

THE DOCTOR

june 3 – august 19

north american premiere

Visionary director and playwright Robert Icke returns with the North American premiere of this gripping moral thriller following lauded runs at London’s Almeida Theatre and West End. This scorching examination of our age, a striking reimagining of the 1912 play Professor Bernhardi by Arthur Schnitzler, utilizes the lens of medical ethics to examine urgent questions of faith, identity, race, gender, privilege, and scientific rationality. Olivier Award-winner Juliet Stevenson stars as the doctor at the center of the drama where nothing is quite what—or who—it seems. A galvanizing piece of theater, the production serves as a stark health warning for an increasingly divided nation, where clashing views about the way we see ourselves and the world we live in today only magnify the complexities of life.

RECITAL SERIES

JULIA BULLOCK, SOPRANO

september 11 & 13

Known for “communicat[ing] intense, authentic feeling, as if she were singing right from her soul” (Opera News), American soprano Julia Bullock returns to the after the North American premiere of Michel van der Aa’s technologically ambitious chamber opera Upload in 2022 for an intimate program in the Board of Officers room that beautifully showcases her versatile artistry and probing intellect.

DOPPELGANGER

september 22 – 28

world premiere, park avenue armory commission

Franz Schubert’s Schwanengesang (Swan Song) traverses a myriad of emotions, from despair and delusion to ecstasy and love, to form a series of masterful snapshots of all that life can offer. These emotive works are given a thrilling new life in the world premiere of a theatrical staging by Claus Guth. Performed by tenor Jonas Kaufmann with pianist Helmut Deutsch, the heart-melting collection of songs is amplified by additional Schubert repertory, an evocative soundscape, and transformative light and video projections to create a production that is part performance and part installation art. Named for the last song “Der Döppelganger,” in which a soldier comes to terms with death, this Armory commission explores the hunger for life and the idea that death is not a sudden moment but a last journey.

ABOUT PARK AVENUE ARMORY

Part palace, part industrial shed, Park Avenue Armory supports unconventional works in the performing and visual arts that cannot be fully realized in a traditional proscenium theater, concert hall, or white wall gallery. With its soaring 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall—reminiscent of 19th-century European train stations—and an array of exuberant period rooms, the Armory provides a platform for artists to push the boundaries of their practice, collaborate across disciplines, and create new work in dialogue with the historic building. Across its grand and intimate spaces, the Armory enables a diverse range of artists to create, students to explore, and audiences to experience epic, adventurous, relevant work that cannot be done elsewhere in New York.

The Armory both commissions and presents performances and installations in the grand Drill Hall and offers more intimate programming through its acclaimed Recital Series, which showcases musical talent from across the globe within the salon setting of the Board of Officers Room; its Artists Studio series curated by Jason Moran in the restored Veterans Room; Making Space at the Armory, a public programming series that brings together a discipline-spanning group of artists and cultural thought-leaders around the important issues of our time; and the Malkin Lecture Series that features presentations by scholars and writers on topics related to Park Avenue Armory and its history. In addition, the Armory also has a year-round Artists-in-Residence program, providing space and support for artists to create new work and expand their practices.

The Armory’s creativity-based arts education programs provide access to the arts to thousands of students from underserved New York City public schools, engaging them with the institution’s artistic programming and outside-the-box creative processes. Through its education initiatives, the Armory provides access to all Drill Hall performances, workshops taught by Master Teaching Artists, and in-depth residencies that support the schools’ curriculum. Youth Corps, the Armory’s year-round paid internship program, begins in high school and continues into the critical post-high school years, providing interns with mentored employment, job training, and skill development, as well as a network of peers and mentors to support their individual college and career goals.

The Armory is undergoing a multi-phase renovation and restoration of its historic building led by architects Herzog & de Meuron, with Platt Byard Dovell White as Executive Architects.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Chairman Emeritus

Elihu Rose, PhD

Co-Chairs

Adam R. Flatto

Amanda J.T. Riegel

President

Rebecca Robertson

Vice Presidents

David Fox

Pablo Legorreta

Emanuel Stern

Treasurer Emanuel Stern Wade F.B. Thompson, Founding Chairman, 2000-2009

Marina Abramović Sir David Adjaye OBE

Abigail Baratta

Joyce F. Brown

Cora Cahan

Hélène Comfort

Paul Cronson

Jonathan Davis

Tina R. Davis

Jessie Ding

Sanford B. Ehrenkranz

Roberta Garza

Andrew Gundlach

Samhita Jayanti

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

Edward G. Klein, Brigadier General NYNG (Ret.)

Ralph Lemon

Jason Moran

Janet C. Ross Joan Steinberg

Peter Zhou

Directors Emeriti

Harrison M. Bains, Jr.

Angela E. Thompson

Avant Garde Chair

Adrienne Katz

Pierre Audi, Marina Kellen French Artistic Director

armoryonpark.org | @ParkAveArmory