Artist Talk: Illinoise

MAKING SPACE AT THE ARMORY ARTIST TALK: ILLINOISE

Thursday, March 14, 2024 at 9:30pm veterans room featuring director and choreographer Justin Peck

in conversation with American writer and academic Hua Hsu

SEASON SPONSORS

PUBLIC SUPPORT

Illinoise is generously supported, in part, by the Blavatnik Family Foundation, Slobodan Randjelović and Jon Stryker, Jody and John Arnhold, and the Harkness Foundation for Dance. Support for Park Avenue Armory’s artistic season has been provided by the Thompson Family Foundation, Charina Endowment Fund, the Donald A. Pels Charitable Trust, The Shubert Foundation, Wescustogo 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, Mary W. Harriman Foundation, the Reed 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 is provided by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature as well as the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council under the leadership of Speaker Adrienne Adams.

Armory board members include Chairman Emeritus Elihu Rose, PhD; Co-Chairs Adam R. Flatto and Amanda J.T. Riegel; President Rebecca Robertson; Vice Presidents David Fox and Pablo Legorreta; Vice President and Treasurer Emanuel Stern; Marina Abramović; Abigail Baratta; Joyce F. Brown; Cora Cahan; Hélène Comfort; Paul Cronson; Jonathan Davis; Tina R. Davis; Jessie Ding; Sanford B. Ehrenkranz; Roberta Garza; Kim Greenberg; Branden Jacobs-Jenkins; Samhita Jayanti; Edward G. Klein, Brigadier General NYNG (Ret.); Ralph Lemon; Jason Moran; Janet C. Ross; Stephanie Sharp; Joan Steinberg; Dabie Tsai; Avant-Garde Chair Adrienne Katz; Directors Emeriti Harrison M. Bains, Jr. and Angela E. Thompson; and Wade F.B. Thompson, Founding Chairman, 2000–2009.

Cover image by Stephanie Berger Photography.

MEET THE PARTICIPANTS

JUSTIN PECK

Justin Peck is a Tony Award-winning choreographer, director, filmmaker, and dancer based in New York. He is currently the acting Resident Choreographer of New York City Ballet. Peck has created and developed over 50 dance and theater works for stages around the world, including Lincoln Center, Broadway, Palais Garnier, Sydney Opera House, and Brooklyn Academy of Music. He has created extensively for film, most notably choreographing Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story (2021). Honors include the Tony Award for Best Choreography for Carousel (2018), National Arts Award (2018), Golden Plate Honor from the Academy of Achievement (2019), Bessie Award for Outstanding Production for Rodeo (2015), and World Choreography Award for the film West Side Story (2021).

HUA HSU

Hua Hsu is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of Stay True, which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He teaches at Bard College and serves on the boards of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and Critical Minded. He also publishes Suspended in Time, a series of zines about life and music.

ABOUT MAKING SPACE AT THE ARMORY

Held in our historic period rooms and spaces, this insightful series of cutting-edge conversations, performances, and installations provide a unique forum for bridging art and culture. These happenings—curated by writer and scholar Tavia Nyong’o—make space for new points of view and unique perspectives from a diverse array of artists, scholars, cultural leaders, and social trailblazers. Interrogating the forms of artistic expression that challenge and inspire audiences, these gatherings foster the art of dialogue that comes out of various art forms and urgent questions of our day.

NEXT IN THE SERIES

RICHARD KENNEDY: GUTTURAL ( CONDUCTED CONTACT )

April 12

As a capstone of the Radical Practice of Black Curation symposium in collaboration with Princeton University, multidisciplinary artist Richard Kennedy presents a musical encapsulation of the African diaspora in the Armory’s historic rooms. Titled Guttural (Conducted Contact), this new work opens a portal of participatory gathering as truth emerges through song, dance, and a series of wordless conversations with Afro-Brazilian dancer Vera Passos.

ANTAGONISMS: A GATHERING

June 1

Led by playwright and poet Claudia Rankine, this symposium is punctuated with performances, panels, investigations of group dynamics, as well as imagined conversations between revolutionary thinkers. Participants include renowned postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha , acclaimed cultural historian Saidiya Hartman , and Guggenheim fellow and choreographer Shamel Pitts