FLEXN program by Park Avenue Armory

A NOTE FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR I first encountered flex with the artist Jason Akira Somma at a community center in Brooklyn, while researching a Jiří Kylián project. What I saw that day profoundly moved me. Dance, imbued with poetry and a spiritual core, being created and performed by self-taught dancers and choreographers. When I met their pioneer Reggie (Regg Roc) Gray, I asked in which arts establishments flex had been performed. He remarkably replied, “nowhere really.” From that moment, it was clear that the Armory should commission and present these exceptional local talents. For this their first-full length production, I introduced Reggie and the flex dancers to one of this countries true originals, the stage director Peter Sellars. Since the middle of last year, they have been working together to develop this new work. These dancers’ movements — at times near super-human — reveal a depth of emotion that can create a vehicle for storytelling to explore themes of empowerment, confinement, and breaking free. At the end of last year, Peter cast flex dancer Banks in John Adams’s The Gospel According to the Other Mary, who subsequently gave a “show stealing performance” at London’s English National Opera. These remarkable flex dancers are a constant reminder of that precious and unique talent. The ability to create — to try to find meaning about who we are and who we might be.

Alex Poots Artistic Director, Park Avenue Armory

A NOTE FROM THE PRESIDENT & EXECUTIVE PRODUCER We are so proud to welcome this remarkable group of flex dancers and directors Reggie Gray and Peter Sellars to the Armory for an extraordinary production that approaches through art some of the pressing issues of our time. Art can touch people in so many ways. Sometimes it is the unspoken gesture, the movement of the human body, that best expresses the depth and complexity of a story. Peter, Reggie, and the dancers have done just that — created a moving and brilliant work that is timely, harrowing, and real. For the conversations that precede each performance, we are so grateful to Peter, curator Avery Willis Hoffman, and all the people from the De Blasio administration, social justice organizations, media outlets, and all other participants from around the city who are contributing to these dialogues. A huge thank you goes out to Reggie, Peter, Ace, Android, Banks, Brixx, Deidra, Dre Don, Droid, Droopz, Karnage, Klassic, Nicc Fatal, Nyte, Pumpkin, Sam I Am, Scorp, Cal, Shellz, Slicc, Tyme, Vypa, and YG.

Rebecca Robertson President & Executive Producer, Park Avenue Armory

FLEXN WORLD PREMIERE

A Collaboration of Reggie (Regg Roc) Gray, Peter Sellars, and Members of the Flex Community LIGHT SCULPTURE & LIGHTING DESIGN BEN ZAMORA SOUND DESIGN GARTH MACALEAVEY COSTUME DESIGN GABRIEL BERRY MUSIC EPIC B

PERFORMANCES wednesday, march 25 at 8:00pm thursday, march 26 at 8:00pm friday, march 27 at 8:00pm saturday, march 28 at 8:00pm sunday, march 29 at 3:00pm wednesday, april 1 at 8:00pm thursday, april 2 at 8:00pm friday, april 3 at 8:00pm saturday, april 4 at 8:00pm

FLEXN CONVERSATIONS: RACE AND THE CITY Public conversations held prior to performances that include young people, public figures, educators and community leaders in discussion on some of the most pressing issues explored in FLEXN, including making neighborhoods safe for play, solitary confinement, “broken windows” policies, and reforming the juvenile justice system. Running time: 1 hour and 30 minutes without intermission Commissioned and produced by Park Avenue Armory

S ea son S p o n sor s

p rod u ction s p on sor S

Support for this production has been provided by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. This production is supported in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Support for Park Avenue Armory’s artistic season has been generously provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Booth Ferris Foundation, The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, The Shubert Foundation, the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, The Marc Haas Foundation, The Leon Levy Foundation, and the Isak and Rose Weinman Foundation.

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CONVERSATIONS FLEXN CONVERSATIONS: RACE AND THE CITY Public conversations held prior to performances that include young people, public figures, educators and community leaders in discussion on some of the most pressing issues explored in FLEXN. wednesday, march 25

Sunday, March 29

race still matters

judging the juvenile justice system

» Charles M. Blow, Op-Ed columnist, The New York Times » Ritchie Torres, New York City Council Member, 15th District (Central Bronx)

» Hernan Carvente, Research Assistant, Vera Institute of Justice; senior, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York » Michael A Corriero, Former New York State Judge; Executive Director and Founder, New York Center for Juvenile Justice » Soffiyah Elijah, Executive Director, Correctional Association of New York

Thursday, March 26

making neighborhoods safe for play » Majora Carter, Urban revitalization strategy consultant and real estate developer » Susan Herman, Deputy Commissioner for Collaborative Policing, New York Police Department » Reverend Dr Alfonso Wyatt, Founder and CEO, Strategic Destiny: Designing Futures Through Faith and Facts Friday, March 27

reforming rikers » Mary E. Buser, Former Assistant Chief of Mental Health, “The Bing”, Rikers Island » Sister Marion Defeis, Former Chaplain, Rikers Island » Ismael Nazario, Case Worker, The Fortune Society » Jennifer Parish, Director of Criminal Justice Advocacy, Mental Health Project, Urban Justice Center

Wednesday, April 1

informing and reforming: rikers » Jennifer Gonnerman, Staff Writer, The New Yorker » Robert Sanchez, Facilitator & Case Worker, Working It Out Program, Strive » Michael Schwirtz, Reporter, The New York Times Thursday, April 2

college or prison? » Shawn Dove, CEO, The Campaign for Black Male Achievement » Rachel Gilmer, Associate Director, African American Policy Forum » Ron Tabano, Principal, John V. Lindsay Wildcat Academy Charter School

Saturday, March 28

Friday, April 3

profiling stop & frisk

policing the neighborhood

» Jeanette Bocanegra, Family and Community Organizer, Community Connections for Youth » Eli Silverman, Professor Emeritus, John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center of City University of New York » Benjamin B. Tucker, First Deputy Commissioner, New York Police Department

» Rukia Lumumba, Director of Youth Programs, CASES » James O’Neill, Chief of Department, New York Police Department » Marlon Peterson, founder and chief re-imaginator of The Precedential Group » Jumaane Williams, New York City Council Member, 45th District (Brooklyn) Saturday, April 4

restorative justice » Victoria Sammartino, Founder, Voices UnBroken » Danielle Sered, Director, Common Justice, Vera Institute of Justice List complete as of press time. Additional participants to be announced. Special thanks to Herb Sturz, Joan Steinberg, Susan Herman, Danielle Sered, Gwen Norton, and Wendy Belzberg for all of their help in making possible these conversations.

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FLEXN HISTORY OF FLEX IN AND OUT OF LOVE SAM’S STORY: COLLEGE OR JAIL SLICC’S STORY: UNDERRATED REBIRTH SCORP: FEDEX DELIVERY MAN SCORP AND HIS DAUGHTER CHARLENE CAL AT WAR DRE: WALGREENS CASHIER KARNAGE ANGEL IS SHOT AND COMFORTS HIS PARENTS COURTROOM COMMUNITY RESPONSE: BREAK THE WINDOWS SOLITARY DANCES D.R.E.A.M. Ring

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FLEXAPEDIA Flexn:

B.A.:

A celebration of a great move

BOGLE:

A dance created by Gerald “Bogle” Levy, who later on became the creator of many dances in dancehall reggae. His style consisted of a lot of fluidity in his movement (which we call body grooving today).

BONE-BREAKING:

(Pioneer: Nugget) A style that looks like its name: the illusion that a person’s bones are breaking. Usually the dancer makes it look harder and more difficult to do bone-breaks and uses a larger amount of flexibilty to create illusions and tell stories in all directions using arms and body.

BRUK UP:

CONNECTING:

DANCEHALL:

DIRTY: FINESSE/JETTE ADORE: FOUNDATION: GET-LOW:

GLIDING:

HARD:

Created by Rocky and Sandra Cummings and derived from Flex N Brooklyn, a cable-access show that was established in the early 1990s that showcased flex movement.

A dance started by George Adams, aka Bruck Up, originally from Jamaica. His style consisted of character and popping of the shoulders, and is the foundation of flexn along with the dancehall style. (Pioneer: Gutta) A style that links together different concepts, body movements, foot placements, and flex genres in a consecutive flow with dance moves seamlessly creating different ways of physical storytelling. Hand-based connecting is when a person uses angles, puzzles, and shapes as their way of linking and flowing things together. A genre of Jamaican popular music that originated in the late 1970s; a more sparse version of reggae than the roots style which had dominated most of the 1970s. Not to be messed with; extremely skilled Good vibes; a calm modd The beginning; the secret scrolls to becoming a full flexer (Pioneer: Reem) A style based on using crouching, knee pivots, knee glides, hand/body to floor moves and movements, animations, and illusions in relation to the floor. (Pioneer: Brian) A style that is based on the concept and illusion of air-walking, sliding, and floating using different patterns, foot placements, body movements, and hand gestures; creating stories using different alternating upper and lower body movements and patterns. The power of a move

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HAT TRICKS:

ILLUSION: INNOVATORS: ITS’ OVA/ZODDED/CHEWED/CHOMPED/ MASHED/FIXED/SENT TO MARS: LABBIN’: LET’S GET IT!: MODD (THAT’S MODD):

(Pioneer: Gutta/Popcorn) A style that uses the hat to do flips, spins, finger illusions, animations, flows, rhythms, concepts, and also uses any part of the body to maneuver and make moves with the hat. The style is usually done with fitted caps and moves are usually blended with other flex styles. Expansion of your imagination through movement The ones who adopt the genre and its originality then further the style with their own creativity and skills, thus enhancing the way the style is done, adding to its history. You can’t come back; you got beat; a very bad loss Experimenting; working on your craft; can be both physically and mentally; chemistry Let’s get to work Something spectacular; it’s mazal tov; exciting; eye candy; oh he’s goin’ modd

O.D.:

Overdose move

O.G.:

A pioneer in the flex community

PAUZIN:

RAW: RIDIN’:

(Pioneer: Regg Roc) A style that looks like the original inspiration for the concept: pressing play and pause on dance moves and movement. A person exaggerates different effects and animates stories with an added pauzin effect. The pauzin look is usually honed to become extremely hard with every pauze, but can also be done lighter with a softer beat becoming mini-pauzes. Something natural; raw talent; something organic Going with the beat of the song

SHOTTA:

A dancehall dancer

SMOOTH:

Calm movements

SWAG:

The way you carry yourself; your definition; your style

WACK:

Corny

WAVING:

WORD:

When your body is waving, or you’re waving certain points of your body, or the wave is going from one point of your body to another point of your body — like a wave In agreement; I agree

For more information on flex, visit DREAMRINGXPERIENCE.com armoryonpark.org

COMPANY Ace .............................................. FRANKLIN DAWES Android ...................................... Martina Lauture Banks .......................................... James Davis Brixx ........................................... Sean Douglas Cal ............................................... Calvin Hunt Deidra ........................................ Deidra Braz Dre Don ....................................... Andre Redman Droid ........................................... Rafael Burgos Droopz ........................................ Jerrod Ulysse Karnage ...................................... Quamaine Daniels Klassic ........................................ Joseph Carella Nicc Fatal ................................... Nicholas Barbot Nyte ............................................. Ayinde Hart Pumpkin ...................................... Sabrina Rivera Regg Roc ..................................... Reggie Gray Sam I Am ...................................... Sam Estavien Scorp .......................................... Dwight Waugh Shellz ......................................... Shelby Felton Slicc ............................................ Derick Murreld Tyme ............................................ Glendon Charles Vypa ............................................. Khio Duncan YG ................................................. Richard Hudson The dancers are freestyling — improvising and creating their own moves in the moment in every performance, every night. No two performances of FLEXN will ever be the same.

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MEET THE DANCERS My name is Franklin Ace Dawes.

it, and there’s not many people that understand it. Where it comes from, what we’re doing with it, and the techniques — certain people don’t understand the technique that hat trick is even a style of dancing, but it is. I also want to thank my dance team, Funeral Squad, even though only three of us is here and the rest of them is out there working. If you want to see it, you’ve got to see it with a clear-eyed view. That’s what I say.

Hi, my name is Martina Android Heimann.

I’m 22. I dance a style called flexing. I’m from Brooklyn, New York — East New York. I’ve been living there all my life. If you’re from Brooklyn, you’re flexing. Flexing is a Brooklyn thing, like lite feet is a Harlem thing, like popping and b-boying is a Bronx thing. I do hat tricks, bone-breaks, gliding, waving. I got started back in high school, 11th grade. I was playing basketball, everybody was playing basketball. I found out there were people dancing in the world — everybody had a different style. There are so many places I can go with dancing, so many things I can do with it. Like travel, make a living off it. It’s easy to teach people, to teach it to one another. Ringmasters is an elder generation of MainEventt, then there’s my team, Funeral Squad. There’s three of us here, — Droid, Nicc, and me. I made decisions in my life, all types of decisions. I made big decision. I made wrong decisions. I made right decisions. I danced to save me from the bad decisions I made. I want to dance. I know I made mistakes in my life, but I always dance now. In my solitary piece in FLEXN, I’m in a box. I can’t control my anger. I lash out. The only thing I’ve got that makes me feel complete is my hat when I’m in there. I can’t do what I want to do, because it’s a small box. It’s hard to maneuver when the walls are so close. I play a tune called Creep Street. I choose it because there’s a lot of pandemonium when it plays. That’s how I feel when I’m in there, everything just so live, I’m just so boxed in. It’s like all my energy and anger is just bouncing off the walls. All my emotions, just bouncing. We have a big community. We all respect each other because we do the same type of dance. We compete with one another, we push each other to the extent, so we can always keep the style advanced, always keep something buzzing. Everybody’s like family. We all know each other. I want to thank Regg for looking out. He didn’t have to do it. I want to thank the people that put it together, Peter and the Armory because y’all actually seen what this dance style is. Y’all actually tryin’ to understand

I’m at that age where you don’t talk about age anymore. I was born in Germany. I grew up in Weißwasser for the first 10 years. It’s right on the Polish border. My first contact with dance was in the circus and seeing people dancing on a horse or on a tightrope. From then on I wanted to dance, but there were no dancing groups or freestylers around. At eight years old, I got a flyer to audition for a professional dance school, the Palucca Schule Dresden. I wanted to audition. My parents thought, “…let her try. She’s going to see that she has no chance since she’s never danced before.” To their surprise, I made it and finished eight years of dance studies. At school they taught me ballet, contemporary, modern dance and jazz. But everything else — hiphop, flexn, bone-breaking, or any other styles didn’t exist. I didn’t have it around me like you have it here in New York, where even if you don’t have TV you’re still going to see it on the subway in front of you sooner or later or you’re going to see it on the street. It was literally nowhere around me. The most common dances you might see were Christmas style folk dances. At six, I decided I wanted to become a dancer. I thought about quitting dance when I was 14, then my mom asked, “Are you sure you want to live with the thought of not being a dancer?” And I was like, “Nah, I don’t want to live with that,” so I kept on going. It was hard, all my friends quit along the way, but I finished it. I earned a diploma in stage dancing, it’s like a masters of dance. At 18, I worked in a theater. I was responsible for making the costumes, cleaning costumes, performing on stilts, dancing, acting and everything in between that nobody else wanted to do. I had three bosses, each tried to make the next one suffer. We worked 80 hours a week, they really used us like modern slaves, so after nine months I left. I had to hustle to survive, I was living on the street.

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Eventually, I saved enough money and moved to the next city, but there was no dance scene. Then I saw break dancing and one of the dancers introduced me to popping and locking. He invited me to a workshop with Storm aka Niels Robitzky. He’s a legend in Europe known for break dancing. He gave a workshop intensive for three days — all the basics in locking, popping, and break dance. My mind was blown. I was like, what the fuck? I had no idea that there was whole system behind it, a culture, that there were steps, not just “jumping around”, like what the ballet and contemporary people say. No, it’s a real style, a dance which you actually can learn. I was so impressed by it. After three years I was teaching 12 classes a week, subbing, choreographing for others and doing solo performances but I still wasn’t satisfied. So I moved to Berlin, where I finally had the opportunity to study directly with teachers who taught popping and locking. After two or three years I was performing with a jazz dance company and doing solo performances, but I still needed to teach to survive. I wanted to leave Berlin. I wanted to finally just live as a dancer. In order to get out of the country, I would have to save a lot of money. There was nobody to support me. My family didn’t have money to support me nor did I want to ask them. I had to save the money. I went to a call-center job five hours every morning. In the evening, I taught four or five classes. I wanted to go to New York because there were more dance styles there, I wanted to be inspired, I wanted to find my freestyle. When I got to New York, I was taking classes, but then I got stuck in the combinations when I tried to freestyle. I stopped taking classes, and I went to the underground. Marjory Smarth was a legendary founder of house dance, an inspiration for life. She was like, “Hey, come to Soulgasm at Sin Sin.” The first day I went to this club, I saw everybody dancing — from house to hip-hop, there were voguers, break dancers, poppers and lockers — it was high level and low level. I was nervous because I wasn’t a house dancer. They made me and everyone else feel welcomed. Everybody just had fun and shared. Later, I moved to LA and then Japan. On this trip I travelled alone for nine months, eventually I got my dance vocabulary together. After Japan I went back to Germany, taught in a school for nine months, I tried to save money to go to New York, because New York was the only city that literally made me feel inspired constantly. It’s the art that’s around you here. You’re never really alone here. You can walk on the street and be inspired. There’s always something. All cultures come together. There’s this intercultural mix that meets here and supports each other right from the beginning. In Germany, the way I see it now, I think the passion for living has been lost. Literally the living is not there anymore. Everything has to be so organized and disciplined. But I think it’s also the reason why we survived. There’s nothing bad about it. I just think we had to have a structure, otherwise we wouldn’t survive the winter, but the passion got lost along the way. In Germany, you don’t have this kind of spontaneous street culture around you — the passion is missing. In the popping world, I am a popper, but I was the only one in popping who had actual power moves, and the power moves came through ballet that I combined. In popping, they accepted me, but it was hard for them to accept that I put other things in it and won competitions. 8

Poppers and flexers, I think they had the biggest problems in the beginning, because poppers were telling the flexers that they don’t do the popping right, but flexers were never trying to do popping. Because I was the weird one, I was always jumping in front of their faces. The flexers were constantly battling me anywhere where I was — in a circle, in Union Square, in a club, in my face. I was in their faces too. I was doing my power moves and I got more and more into that, and they were coming back with dope moves. That inspired me to go deeper into my style. Soraya, a hip-hop dancer in New York, asked me if I would do a choreography battle, called D.R.E.A.M. with another girl, Sophie. I would partner up with her. That was my first flexn battle ever. The people liked my freestyle so much that they asked me if I would come again and battle alone. Reggie, Reem, Ghost, the people who organized the events — BattleFest, D.R.E.A.M. and Loud — everyone came to me and asked if I would like to battle someone by myself. This community was the first community that gave me the passion for dancing. Flexn is the first dance style where I could feel myself able to do whatever I wanted to do and add to the music what I felt. Flexn gives me what I was looking for the whole time — to let myself be free and create. In FLEXN, the piece I dance with Banks is very personal. It’s about hate and love. It’s about the person who’s going through your head when you actually don’t want them to anymore. I’m still married, but he’s my future ex-husband, (I have to say that). The problem for us was, we literally had a hate/love relationship. We couldn’t be with each other, and we couldn’t be without each other. I am basically expressing what I went through in this time. I think people will see it when they see the piece and feel the energy. I think working on FLEXN is a totally new process. This group of dancers are so creative and so individual in their own styles — you can’t choreograph it. We all have our own movements. I love that we support each others’ energy. Everything is made in the moment. I love the way freestyle really gets you to be free, but at the same time has a storyline where we know where to go. I want to be accepted and respected. My goal is that dancers, especially street dancers, can be seen as full artists not just as background support. I want flexn to be accepted as a full-blown art. I think the issues in the show are not just in America. I think they are in the world. Right now we are all so connected over the Internet (like wildfire) that I think there is no separation among people with these problems. I go to battle and still get judged because I’m a white person, so, nobody expects me to be capable of dancing. I have racism in the other direction as well. It goes both ways. If people stopped looking at colors, we could finally have solutions instead of fighting about what should be done. We could communicate instead of building up barriers. Dancing for me, flexn, just shows that we’re all the same. It doesn’t matter where you come from. I did not come from this culture, but this culture has given me so much freedom in my dance that I can live in it, it makes me more me. Moving to America was not that easy. I didn’t know what to do or how to do it. I did street and subway shows for three years. It was crazy ridiculous. We never knew if we were going to make $20, $50, or $100. We never knew if the police were going to catch you and kick you out of the country or not. I came a very long way.

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Just follow your dreams. That’s all I can say. And let your art speak for you.

I didn’t spaz as much as I did. That’s what dancing is to me: It’s very, very therapeutic. It’s good because holding things in can eventually hurt you and the people around you.

Shout out to my brothers, my sisters, and my parents. The pieces I create in the show are glimpses of the experiences I’ve had in my life. Not saying that my whole life is pain, but in a way, I feel like when I dance I switch characters so much. Most of it is pain because, you know, seeing a father pass before you is really, really difficult to handle. A lot of people have lost parents, but I feel like it’s different when the parent goes in front of your eyes. I’m not going to say it’s harder, but it was really hard for me to get over. I’m cool with it now, because it’s been a while and I pray and all that — but it still affects me a little bit. So I put all of that into whatever I’m doing.

My name is James Banks Davis.

I really never choreograph anything too much because it takes away from the feeling. That’s why I love flex so much, everything is just raw and it’s in your face. I take experiences from my life and just make them into movements.

I’m 25. I’ve been dancing for 15 years. I’m from Queens, and I moved to Brooklyn when I was about 13. I started dancing there in a group called Vision of Praise. My sisters used to dance, and they got me into the whole hip-hop scene. Since I was young, I loved hip-hop but I never did it. I didn’t have the guts to do it. I felt like anyone that did hip-hop was amazing, because it was so hard. It’s got so many different grooves. As I got older, I picked up hip-hop in high school — ninth grade. We had a little dance group. The school I went to was Nazareth Regional High School, it was a Catholic school. I was doing football. I played quarterback, wide-receiver, defensive end, running back. I played a lot. I played many positions because our football team was so wack, the good ones were used a lot. Eventually I quit the football team and started dancing. When I quit the football team, I was hitting 12th grade, and that’s when I got shot in my leg. It was one night, Halloween night — my friends and I were playing around on 14th Street Union Square. A fight broke out, we were just at the wrong place at the wrong time. Somebody started shooting. I got shot twice in my knee, and my friend got shot in his shoulder. I did my own rehab. I just kept on dancing, after that I really couldn’t play football anymore. My passion switched, or it had been switched. But the thing is, I couldn’t make up my mind on what I wanted to do, but after I got shot, my mind was totally switched. I was like, “you know what? I’m going to start dancing”. I knew that God had saved my leg for some reason. I’m still standing and still dancing, fortunately. So I took that in, and I just thanked him. Right there I was like, “you know what? I probably was meant to dance”. I was 17. Dance has helped me so much. It’s like a high, almost. It just takes me away from what I’m going through in life, and also it helps me to release things I shouldn’t keep in. My father died when I was 13, he died in front of my eyes, right in front of the whole family. He had a heart attack in front of us. I had a big problem right after my father died. I had a lot of anger built in. As I started dancing, I realized that a lot of my anger was leaving.

In one piece, my solitary dance, that’s to my father. I’m kind of pissed because I feel like he left me too soon. A 13-year-old boy needs his father. That’s when things start getting crazy, and you start smelling yourself. You need guidance. My mom did an excellent job, but you still need your pops. I feel like I really needed him around at that age. If my father hadn’t died, I probably wouldn’t be dancing right now, to be honest. I feel like God set this, like it was meant for this to happen in order for me to grow — because I was very spoiled as a child. Very spoiled. My parents did everything for me. Things happen for a reason. It was just his time to go. I just have to accept it and learn from it and grow. To be honest… I’ve seen a lot of domestic violence. I haven’t been through it. My parents never touched each other. Never. You know, parents yell at each other sometimes. You get into arguments. But my father never put hands on my mom or anything. The piece with Android isn’t really just about domestic violence — husband on wife — it’s about violence, period. Violence isn’t the answer. There are different ways. There are other ways to solve problems and to get your point across. It shows that if you do put your hands on anyone, things can go wrong for you. I try to use a lot of styles, but it’s hard to use everything. The styles I use the most are get low, pauzin, and connecting. I feel like get-low and pauzin go with krumping very well. The get-low style, reminds me of modern. I used to take modern, ballet and African, back in the day when I was younger. It’s way more expressive, and you can really tell stories with that style. It doesn’t really hold you back — not that these styles hold you back, but I feel like you get your point across. You get your story out more with the get-low style. I want to shout out my second grade teacher, Debora Martin. She taught me how to dance in gym. In school, we had a whole gym period where we had dance and different activities. Serena West is her daughter, she taught me different hip-hop and modern techniques. Then after that, I went to this modern school called Creative Outlet. Kevin Joseph, Gemelle Gaines, and Lakai Rowelle were the heads of the school. I learned a lot of my technique and stuff from them. I went into hip-hop, where I met my friend Jared Louis. Me and Jared, we knew each other since nurses. My mom was our first teacher. That’s pretty cool. Jared taught me how to do choreography and stuff. Then I moved into this group called Illusions. The leader of that group is

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Kevin Hunt. He actually was a finalist in the top 20 of So You Think You Can Dance? I went to hip-hop, then to krumping, and then to flex. After Kev, after hip-hop, I was getting bored. I want to do something else. Then I seen this movie called Rise. This was a film about krump, the feeling of krump, what krump means to people. After that, I was like, I have to start krumping, because maybe this can help me in my life. And it did. It definitely did. It put me on a right path, or somewhat on a right path. I’m still getting there.

MY NAME IS SEAN DOUGLAS AKA BRIXX.

Then I got into this group called EO Squad — Entertainers Only. That’s my krump group. The head leaders of that are Joshua Stayton aka Zeo and Dreams aka Brian Henry. I didn’t give up on krump. But I wanted to add something, give my krump a little spice, because everyone in the krump world were looking the same. I started to get into flex. I just wanted to see what it was, so I went to a couple Flex N Brooklyn shows and stuff. It really didn’t appeal to me like krump did, so I left. Then I met up with Regg and he liked my style. He was like, “Yo, you should learn how to pause.” He taught me the whole scrolls and the whole development of flex and what flex meant to him. You can’t be fake with krump or flex. If you’re fake, everyone will know. Gospel of the Other Mary was totally different from anything I’ve done ever in my life. That was really crazy — in a good way. I’ve never done an opera before, ever. I’ve never been to the opera, never experienced it. God blessed me with that one. And it actually gave me a whole new look on opera, and it made me respect it. Peter gave me so much free space. He just said, “You know what? Create.” And I created. Seeing my son happy is everything for me. I want him to have everything I didn’t have. I want him to experience whatever I’m experiencing. His name is Micah, the one who resembles God in Hebrew. He’s four. Before I left for London, he wasn’t really into the dancing thing. But when I left, his mother showed him a video of me dancing in the opera and he started dancing as he was watching it. He was copying my moves and stuff. That kind of brought a tear to my eye. After that, he loved dancing. He’s dancing all the time. That pushed me even more. I want my son to have a great life. If you really put your mind to something and you really want it, all you have to do is ask the universe for it. I didn’t believe it at first, but it is so true. Prayer and just believing in yourself, believing in your passion, and believing that God gave you this talent for a reason — just believing that is so good. I’ve wanted to travel all the time and it wouldn’t happen. I prayed about it. My mom was like, “Pray. Just pray. Things’ll happen. Things’ll come for you.” And out of nowhere, I get to do the Armory. Then I meet Peter, and he asks me, “Yo, you want to go to London?” And I’m in London. If you really put your mind to it and you pray about it, things can happen for you.

I’m from East New York. I got my name many, many years ago when I was about 13. I’m a glider. I was practicing with another MainEventt member. I’d been just dancing around, gliding, and he had bricks around his front yard. I started to do different outlines with my feet pertaining to the bricks and then doing different moves and punchlines with my feet. I’m a glider. I started dancing when I was actually 12 or 13. I was always a free-styler. I did some tap. I did some choreo. Flexing was around East New York, Brooklyn, that’s where it originated from. That’s where it’s based off of, Brooklyn. A Brooklyn dance style that has grown throughout the years and I was just around the neighborhood, grew up around flexing. The pioneers lived in East New York. I saw how much flexing had to offer. I just ran with it. I’m doing this style for the rest of my life. My family was supportive of it when they saw I was getting serious. Mama Dukes just wanted everything to be all good in your life. At first she didn’t know how serious I was about it. I did some videos. I did a lot of college shows and I showed her how much it’s meant to me. I felt it and I just said you know what, this is a career. This is not just a hobby. I always wanted to be a chef but being a chef is not really a place I want to be right now. I’m just going to start dancing. Dancing is really what I want to do, the career I want to pursue.

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I’m the youngest one in MainEventt. Being the youngest one in the group is dope because you get to show people how, even though you’re young. Deidre and everybody else in my group are great role models. I saw the passion they had. I saw everything that they wanted to do with their life, flexing. I saw they wanted to make a career, they made me want it more as I grew up around them. They made me want to strive more. As their style has grown, my style has grown as well just because of the fact that they keep elevating. Like once they’re elevating, I’m automatically elevated. That’s how it is with the team. I’m always inspired by my team or the people around me that have positive energy. I’m an artistic person. My solitary dance is based on kids in jail. So I ran with it and made it into how relates to younger folk when they’re going through those times. Younger folks go through a lot. Although we’re living at home and don’t have bills to pay it’s a lot of stuff that we still go through. A lot of anxiety, kids being bullied, stuff like that.A lot of things going on in our lives even though we just started. There’s a lot of things that kids go through in their lives. So I can relate to them. I can relate to people not listening to them. I can relate to not being heard or not being paid attention to. “Heat” is my solitary song. I just like the music. I just like the way it all comes down because it’s different. It brings out a different emotions in me in a way I can relate to gliding. It brings out a different side of gliding I never really touch on. Passion, pain, and being 100%. Although it’s a slow song, it brings out a different side that I can relate to in life. I play Slicc’s brother in the piece as well. Slicc has different struggles in his life and I’m the one trying to help him out. I’m like the angel. We’re trying to get him into dancing and away from the gang related things that he’s going through. Although it’s in the show, some of the stuff in the show happens in real life. People just don’t know. I play the angel in Sam’s piece I persuade him to do good as well. I’m trying to persuade Sam to come to the light. Trying to tell him he could do good things in his life. I would like to just keep dancing all of my life, keep inspiring people. Never let someone tell you you can’t do what you want to do. Just do what you like to do and stick to that. Make sure that it’s positive. I love different things, different art forms. I’m a flexer. I love art. I love fashion. That inspires me as well. I love Picasso. Music as well. Without music I can’t dance. I want to shout out my family, my mom, Mama Dukes, my older brother Hashim. I want to shout out my grandmother, Nana. I love her. I love her to death. My little bros. Regg, Nyte, MainEventt. For the pioneers for keeping flexing alive — they made up flexing. If it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t be doing this at all. Most importantly, shout out to God for helping me wake up every day and giving me the ability to dance how well I am.

In a world, one man, one desire…

MY NAME IS CAL AND I’M A FLEXER. MY FULL NAME IS CALVIN HUNT.

Yep, that’s me. I love to dance. I love to flex. I’m 23 years old, the golden age. This has been the best year ever for me and when I turn 24 it’s going to get even better. When I turned 23, all the cool things started happening with The Armory and my team MainEventt, its just been a great year in total. Rehearsals have been good. From August to now, we were like in a crawl space. We were in the drawer. Now we’re at full speed. My oldest sister used to do Michael Jackson impersonations when I was like six — she would do Thriller and Billie Jean. I just got to watch her dancing in the house and as I got older every year I would experience more of her love for Michael Jackson. I would copy her. She got better and then I got better from watching her. She used to moonwalk. She’s the only girl I know that can moonwalk and it actually looks like Michael Jackson. I was doing little talent shows in school, and that’s how it began. In the late ‘90s going into 2000 Flex in Brooklyn was happening, my cousin Mohammed used to go to the showcases that Regg and everyone else was performing in. One time, I snuck in the car to see if I could get there. I think I was nine. When they got there they realized I was in the backseat. They were like, “No, you can’t go,” so I had to go back home. Another time, my dad went to go pick them up. I was in the car and saw them outside battling each other. I thought my cousin was fighting but then I saw that he was dancing. I was excited, then I started copy him. He was dancing on the floor so I was trying to do that. His name was Paco. He’s from Bushwick. He was the first flexer I met that knew every style. He knew how to glide, pause, bone break and he had a really strong bruck up foundation. After meeting him, I had a team called Borderline because we lived on the borderline between Queens and Brooklyn. We were going around to flex sessions and battling, trying to get a name for ourselves. I met Regg at the Flex house. It’s funny. I’m MainEventt now, but when I first stepped on the flex scene I got into a battle with a MainEventt member and got chewed real bad. I’ll never forget that night. I took it like a champ. I wasn’t sour or anything about it. I knew I wasn’t that good and he was really good. That’s kind of how I got my foot in the door and years later I found out that Regg actually was watching me.

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When I was 17...maybe 18, I finally got some place where my team was okay. We went to the flex house, battled and lost, that was cool. I went back to the flex house again to battle again and I ended up battling Nyte. I beat him there. We battled again at D.R.E.A.M. and that was my first flex war battle that’s on tape. It’s on YouTube. That was my debut. The judges said I won. I felt good about it. I got the trophy at home. I’m a floor dancer — get low. I started off as just a glider. Regg knew how it was supposed to look so he showed me a lot of stuff. He still does. He’ll tell me, “Oh, it would look better if you do this or do that same move and exaggerate, throw your hips out, throw your leg out.” He helped me build a lot of my foundation. I owe a lot to Regg because he gave me things nobody else did. Regg gave me the blueprint. He probably didn’t realize that. I’m definitely thankful for that. The flex community is big...it’s like an apartment complex. Everybody knows everybody’s business. You know who’s downstairs laughing. You know who’s upstairs that just lost a battle and feels like crap. You know which person is on the penthouse floor, the top floor. MainEventt, we’re all the way up there. That’s just a little plug for my team. Yeah, everybody knows what’s going on so it’s good and bad but I see the good in it because we’re a strong building if you really look at it. There’s a lot of other styles and cultures. They’re tight knit but they’re not flex. I think what flex is going through right now is just like a phase where everyone’s at each other throats, but we’re also becoming stronger. We’re the best at what we do. It’s just pure. It’s unique. We deal with the drama and we deal with everything, fights, everything, but at the end of the day, we flex, so it usually ends in a good way. We don’t try like to clean up for the camera or anything like that. We’re just real. It’s just life. It’s a lifestyle. My mom always supported me. I owe a lot to my mom. My mom is crazy excited right now. She shares all of my videos with people in Africa, Bermuda, Russia, Australia. They’re like, “Bermuda loves you!” “Africa loves you!” It’s crazy.

on with life? I could not explain to them in words other than I’m just dancing, dancing my life back. That was the hell that I was in and this is what I have to do to get out. These are the people I’ve lost and this is the mind frame I was in. That’s life in the overseas military. In my FLEXN solitary piece, I’m in jail for life but I love somebody and I’ll never get another chance to argue with them or anything like that. There are so many things I didn’t get to do. It’s haunting me now I’m in this jail. That’s to a song called See You In My Nightmares by Kanye West. I like that we get to do that in this show. We don’t have a limit. You know, Peter’s not telling us, “Guys don’t do that. It’s going to offend someone.” We really get to go there. In my overseas piece, I’m in the sand. Crawling around in some buildings I don’t know whose building it is or whatever. I’m definitely with all my guys. It’s just like I’m there. I put myself there, but at the same time I still have a foot back here — because I’m okay now. Let’s go through all of this again, deal with it, but dance it out. See where you can go then. Every time it’s a new experience. I tap into 100% feeling and it’s fun. It’s fun doing that. In June, a group of us are going to Manchester that’s going to be crazy. I flew over England. I didn’t get to go to England. I always wanted to and now I get to and we’re leaving on my birthday! I’m not going anywhere else on a plane unless it’s to dance. I get to go back overseas to dance and that’s what I said I wanted when I left Qatar. Thank God. Moderation is for cowards — don’t moderate, don’t settle. You know what you really want to do, so go for it. Don’t slack. Don’t take a step back. Go forward and go mod. Shout-out to God, because if it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t be able to be here or have this talent — my family, love them, my mom, sister, my little niece Dakota. She’s not even one yet but she’s my favorite girl now. My team, MainEventt — which is also family. Regg, all the OGs that took a role in my development. They know who they are. I’m thankful. All my friends, my close friends from church. Everybody that thought I wasn’t going to make it. Here I am. Come to the show. You can sit in the front.

My dad passed away when I was in high school and even before my dad got sick or anything he always would tell me, “You dance crazy, you dance like your uncle,” my uncle Kenny. My dad saw me perform once or twice, he would tell how proud of me he was. I want to make sure I’m doing good and doing all the right things because my family is definitely watching me. From 15 to 17 I made tons of wrong choices. Everything from girls to hanging with the wrong people — then at a certain point in time everything changed. I was 18 when I joined the military. Even though I don’t regret it, it took me away from dancing for a long time. My piece is like combat, it’s just everyday. Waking up you never know, am I going to step outside, is there’s going to be a building gone, are we’re under attack? You just don’t know. What’s it going to look like when I jump out of this plane? What am I going into? It’s dark outside. I can’t see anything. There’s just a whole bunch of things that I’ve been through. So to sit and think of everything I went through piece by piece then put it to music, put it to dance, it’s like therapy that nobody will ever know. It just feels so good. When I came back, a lot of people would ask me, how are you dealing with it? How’s everything going? What have you been doing to move 12

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I want to pass flexn on. I feel like I have a strong point I would like to pass. I don’t want to (god-forbid) die with this talent. I want to be able to hand it over. There’s that saying. I can’t remember exactly, but it’s like, when you get to the pearly white gates and you speak to God, you want to be able to say, “I gave my all and I used everything you have given me.” Meaning I used all of my God given talent and I have nothing left. You don’t want to die with your talent still in you. You want to have given it and spread that knowledge and spread that talent to as many people as possible. I speak to a lot of the dancers, when they ask me questions for advice, I gladly give it to them because I want them to evolve into the best possible dancers they can be.

My name is Deidra “Dayntee” Braz.

The dancers of this show, I am so proud of them and have told them that they’ve amazed me during these rehearsals because I’ve seen how much some of them have evolved tremendously from when I first saw them dance till now. With hard work and dedication, it only goes up from here.

I’m born and raised in Flatbush, Brooklyn. Still residing there until this day, the essence of where dancehall and the bruck up came straight from Jamaica. I’ve been dancing since I was eight, starting with the street dances of hip-hop. If I had to say what influenced my start it would be Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody”, doing the wop and running man all over the house. My father taught me my first reggae dances, the bogle, butterfly, the pepperseed. What made me continue was family telling me I’m good at it alongside my growing love for it. The love for it grew into a passion so deep it was something I wanted to do in every second of my free time. I started to become more known with dancing when I finally became bold enough to perform other places besides my living room mirror. The first time I remember performing was at a block party, around age 12. Then, later on performing at high school shows planted another seed to keep going. The reaction and uproar from an audience made the passion for dance grow even stronger. Bruck up became one of the most known dances in Brooklyn, I learned it from the best by watching the top Flatbush dancers like Deshawn, Tito, Weber, Ricardo, Bingi, and a few others. That’s how I really caught the swag of the bruck up, watching them. Being a tomboy really helped because the bruck was such a guy thing — aggressive and raw. The bruck up and even flexn really saved a lot of lives. I knew a lot of gang members, drug dealers, and street guys that were doing bruck up, heading to the YMCA every Friday night to battle instead of doing things they weren’t supposed to do. Fast forward, I came to Flex N Brooklyn in March 2001 with my group, UnXpected. The whole feel for dance and the crowd was different back then. It would feel like a Madison Square Garden audience the way they would go crazy if you did something they liked on stage. With that crowd, you knew if you’re wack, you’re wack and if you’re hot, you’re hot. They’d let you know!

For me, watching people from the new generation to our generation, everything has to do with presence — how you present things. On our walk here Sam asked me, “Why you think the female dancers of flexn aren’t the top-notch of their title? They have one or two women, but why you think the females don’t have names the way males do or how women did back in your time?” And I told him this, “Presence is everything. So when you step in that circle and you know — I am the shit. I’m the best person in this room. I’m the best person in this circle. It shows. And if you don’t feel that way, that shows also.” To me, presence is everything. That’s what I go by. When I’m getting ready to get in the circle, I’m looking everybody in their eyes, to grab everyone’s attention and have them wonder, “Okay, what the hell is Deidra about to do next.” Once you step in that circle, you step on that stage, it’s the confidence that shows. If that doesn’t show, the audience will know that as well. Confidence is everything. Presence is everything. That’s the first thing, to me. I want to acknowledge my family. They support me in everything I chose to do and have from the very beginning. I’ve heard horror stories about parents who don’t allow their kids to really take on the arts and make a career of it, and my parents are the very opposite. Never questioning my decisions to not work a conventional 9 to 5 and take on dancing, believing in everything I do or at least allow me to take risks and see for myself. I love them with all my heart for the support they’ve given me. I also want to acknowledge anyone who has had some influence or any type of inspiration for me to keep dancing. From the streets of Flatbush, watching the best of the best to my close friends and group members labbing in my living room with me every day for years! Being around the girls I majored in dance with at college had an influence on my fusion of modern dance and flexn at times. And last but not least, coming to Flex N Brooklyn, all of the competition had me hungrier than ever to be better! That also being the place I met the director, Reggie. His passion for flexn and wanting to share and spread the knowledge of it is unlike any other.

I am very grateful to be a part of the history of flexn, there from when it started, originated and being one of the first females to do it because now it’s making its stamp all over the world and is world-known which is amazing to me. armoryonpark.org

My name is Andre Dre don Omar RedmAn.

my mom think that. I’d come in the house late sometimes, and then my mom was screaming at me like I was outside gang banging or something like that. I’m like, “Yo, I’m not doing nothing wrong. I was just chilling with my group like we usually do, dancing like we usually do, not doing anything.” It’s like everything I do, she doesn’t approve unless it’s schoolwork — unless I just get my education. The thing is, I graduated high school. I was in college, but I didn’t finish because I felt like I was going just to please my mom. I was going there for mechanical engineering. Then one day we just talked and cried, then she said, “I’m sorry.” Ever since that day, we’ve been the best of friends. She’s always a part of me, my dance career, everything that I do. The feeling is mutual with me: Whatever my mom wants to do, I’ll support her 100,000%.

I’m from Brooklyn, New York — Flatbush. I’m 23. I’ve been flexn since I was 15. I was doing just regular dance-hall Jamaican shotta movements. It was a hobby. I always knew how to dance for some reason. I just picked up certain dance moves, whatever was hot at the moment in the area. I always felt like dancing was a part of me. As a kid, being in dance class in elementary school to junior high, I was always the top of the class when I danced. And having people around me teaching me how to dance was always fun and easy for me to pick up. I always was a shy person. I never liked dancing in front of anybody unless I had to. I really, really hated being on the spot in front of everybody. Having people watch me perform was hard for me. Growing up, I was always angry. I was angry with everyone, but I kept it to myself. I feel like I had a bunch of rage in my body — I just never let it out. Now, as I understand myself better, I’m able to express myself, keep the anger out and let people feel my emotions in a positive way. I was angry about life. My mom, she’s married. I feel like ever since my stepfather came in, he just broke us all apart. Before he was living here, it was me, my older brother, and my mom. Then when she got married, she had my little sister. Ever since my little sister came, I felt like they tried to exclude my brother and me. My brother, he always did his own thing, he was always his own person. After a while, he moved to my aunt’s house, so it was just me. My stepfather also has two daughters, my older stepsisters. I always felt excluded. I just didn’t feel a part of the family. After a while I just said ‘F--it,’ I’m just going to stick to myself. It hurt to see them getting better treatment than me. I always felt it was unfair in the house. And for years I kept to myself, until I started dancing. Then that’s when I joined a group. They made me feel like I had family. They made me feel like I had brothers, I had people I could talk to, rely on and whatnot. I was never a bad kid. I never did any crimes. Never got arrested. Never been in a gang. None of that. My stepfather used to make 14

Right now she does housekeeping, but she works for herself. She used to work for a company. Now she does so well that her clients, they don’t want anybody else. They just want my mom. Now they have my mom’s personal number, so my mom consistently has clients. She’s doing good for herself. That’s why I want to work hard to get myself to a point where I can take my mom out of that situation and not let her worry too much. She loves cooking, and her cooking is the best in the universe. She cooks Caribbean food, straight Jamaican food: stew chicken, curry chicken, grilled chicken, fried fish, curry shrimp. She works around different people of different cultures, she would look at what they cook, and if it tastes good, she tries it. She would come home, fire up a piece of chicken, then try to season it differently — it always comes out great. I love that. When I’m about to perform, my hands get a little shaky, my body gets a little weak. I just say fuck it. You know what? You’ve danced before, Dre. You don’t have to get nervous again. Then once I go on and the music starts playing, I’m good. My first public battle, I was a nervous wreck. I was the first one in front of the event. The security guard wasn’t even there. The place wasn’t even open. I’m walking back and forth. My palms were sweaty. I couldn’t even talk. I was so scared. Then once the event started, once I did a little wave, I wasn’t nervous anymore. I just killed. It’s fun to be a connector, because you can express anything you want to — if it’s small, big, shaped weird, anything. Connecting is the best style in flexn but I like to have other styles of flexn revolve around my style. I like to add ticking and pauzin. Ticking is just little micro pauses — small pauses to make your waves look more detailed. I’m now learning gliding. I also have hat tricks. I picked up hat tricks the same time I picked up connecting. I saw it in a video, and learned how to spin on my own. What’s funny is that the person that taught me how to dance, Squid, when he saw that I started doing hat tricks, he was like, “Yo, how you learn how to pick that up?” I was like, “I don’t know. It just came to me.” Once you learn how to connect, you can make anything connect. In FLEXN, I’m in a trio with Pumpkin and Droid. Pumpkin is with me, but she’s in love with someone else and I just can’t leave her. It hurts all the time when we’re together. After a while I get sick and tired of it and try to fight for her. I end up killing the side-guy, then I just leave her alone. I could relate to that. The previous relationships

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I’ve been in haven’t gone so well. There’s a girl — you end up finding out the girl is talking to somebody else or something. That’s enough for me. That’s just life, period, people go through situations like that. My Walgreens piece is expressing my experience working at Walgreens for about two years. My boss always gave me so much work to do and so many tasks. It was so much to deal with, but I still managed to take care of it. I was one of the few guys working there, I had to do the majority of the work, I was also the main cashier. Being the main cashier you have to clean up the front, put items back, try to fix up two aisles, then when the store closes you’ve got to sweep the store, mop, take out the garbage, mop the back, clean the bathrooms, and the break room. It was so much to deal with. I felt like she didn’t notice all the work that I was doing. I was trying to balance working at Walgreens with my love for dancing. It was hard because I wanted to just say ‘F-- it’ and just go live off dancing, but I couldn’t because I needed money in my pocket. I needed to stay at Walgreens. So is, the life of a dancer. At Walgreens, you always see people getting arrested. There were numerous times where crack-heads would come in the store. They’d go in the aisles and try to steal all the detergent or lotion, painkillers, shaving products, facial products, feminine products — all just to get drugs. We had a lazy security guard. He was scared to do his job. I was working in Canarsie, the last stop on the L train, in Rockaway Park. Yeah, that Walgreens…something always going down, fights, shootings. In Sam’s piece, I’m trying to persuade him to get into a dance career instead of violence. I’ve been dealing with that since I can remember. In elementary school I started to see gangs. I was 10 year old. You see them more in junior high. You see other kids from other junior high schools come with their gangs and it’s all some nonsense. Everybody’s fighting everybody. Somebody tries to rob somebody. Somebody gets shot. Somebody gets stabbed. It’s just chaos, total chaos. I’ve never been locked up or anything, but I watched a couple videos and I’ve been around people that have been locked up for years. Seeing how the system treats people in solitary confinement and what it does to you, how it makes you different after you get out — I hate it. I think that no person should be tortured. I don’t think anybody should be locked up in a box for six years. In my solitary dance I’m expressing that, because it makes me feel angry. The best way for me to react in a positive way is to let people see that I don’t like it, is through dance.

He let me lean back, turn my head, and drop, and bring my head down and hit it down, bring it out, take out a gun, connect thegun, throw it, catch it, wave it down or something — but all make it look like it’s still connecting. He had me training. Without him, I just wouldn’t know how to really dance like that. His training, phenomenal! I dedicate my dance to my family. It’s just my mom and my little sister, she’s 14. For some reason, I don’t know, she looks at me like I’m her hero. It’s like she’s a fan. I’ve seen other people’s brother and sister relationships, you see them argue with each other or something negative’s going on. With me and my sister, it’s the total opposite. She is hilarious. She always has me laughing. She’s so annoying that you just have to laugh at it. Fo’ real. That’s how it is. She’s like, “Hi, Dre. How’s your day? Da-da-da-da-da.” Then she just tells me about her day. She just talks to me as if I’m her best friend. That’s what I like about our bond: We can just talk like that, and she feels comfortable telling me things. I always tell her, “Don’t be scared of anything. If you feel like somebody’s threatening you at school or whatever, you can tell me. If you can’t get to anybody in time, if you have to fight, just fight. Just take care of yourself. Make sure you’re safe at all times that you’re not with the wrong crowd. Make sure you’re always on your schoolwork. Make sure your grades are always good.” She said she was three points away from the honor roll. She’s getting on it, though. She’s in her first year of high school. I want to shout-out always my mom, my sister, my cousin Stephen, my cousin JD, my sister Tracy — because if it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be dancing — my teachers, and my brothers, MainEventt, and the Armory staff. And of course you guys or I would not be here today. I want to shout-out to Squid and Dollaz (they were always teachers for me), Bree, and Chris. Terry Terrance, Darius, grandma, grandpa and Tom rest in peace. I love flexing. Flexn is the way. It has to be dedicated. It’s a dope style. Flexn is the way to life. Flexn will change your mind on everything. Regg is the key to flexn. Once you’re serious around Regg, it’s over. He’s going to help you all the way. As long as you want it, he’s going to help you. I love flexn.

I’ve been with Regg 24/7 since 2009. I met him when I was going to City Tech for mechanical engineering. It wasn’t something I really wanted to do. Everybody was fixing cars racing cars. I felt like I had to be a part of it just to be with my friends. Then Regg says, “If you really love dancing, you can make it a living. You can really make this your career, but you’ve got to put in 100%. You have to really show that you really want it, if you want to make it with dancing.” Ever since then, I always took my dancing career seriously. I dance everyday; I’m putting my all into it. I want to be recognized as one of the pioneers of flexing, the way Regg is now. I want to be that for our generation. Regg is like a flex god. He knows the foundations. He teaches it. He created a style that’s ridiculous. I feel like we’re all so different, and it’s all because of him. Without him, a lot of us wouldn’t be dancing the way we dance today. He had me training every day. I was dying! My body was feeling crazy. He had me do so much stuff with connecting. armoryonpark.org

going through. It can be anger. It can be happiness. It can be anything. It’s like putting a mask on. As soon as you put that mask on, it’s a performance for the people. They understand, and they feel empathy.

I’m Droid.

Street dancing is whatever you want. I was born in the hood. I usually put my two cents in things. I’m going to be political no matter what. Real is real. You can portray where you come from, because that’s you, that’s who you are. I’m funny. My personality is funny. Anytime, I say something, somebody laughs. I don’t understand why, but they do. I feel at even a greater level. I want to shout-out to the good people.

My government name is Rafael Burgos. I’m from Brooklyn. I’m 20. I started dancing when I was very young, probably like 10 years old. I started flexing in 2010. I’ve been doing it about four years. I was on YouTube one day looking up stuff, and I found a battle. It was Wayne versus Quiet Storm. I didn’t have anybody close to talk about dancing. My friend Malo was the first flexer I got close with. He’s also a dancer, a flexer. After I went to a few of the events, we started mingling. That was how I got into flexing.

HELLO. MY NAME IS JERROD ULYSSES AKA DROOPZ.

I was always an artist. I would draw, that’s another one of my gifts. That’s what I was doing at school before dancing, then dancing kind of took over. I don’t know how; it just did. It just took up most of my time, rather than art. But I still do it. I wanted to be a cartoonist. When I was younger, I drew a lot of anime and animated stuff. My dance style is very animated — making things that aren’t there come to life. It’s easy for me to learn things. I do connecting. I glide. I do a little bit of get low and sometimes pauzin. I’m teaching myself how to bone-break. I know how to hat trick but just don’t normally do it. I want to be a really versatile flexer. I do punchlines. A punchline is a big move, an exclamation point, a big stamp on the end of a move. There are certain people that have great style but they’re not punchline dancers. I have one piece with two other dancers whose styles connect with mine. It’s called connecting. It’s a trio with Dre and Pumpkin. Usually connectors are known for punchlines and powerful moves. We shifted it and made it a point where we’re telling a story too. In the piece Pumpkin, is back and forth between guys. One of them is her actual boyfriend that she’s being unfaithful to. The song we dance to is called, “Unfaithful” by Rihanna. She’s being unfaithful to him with me. I’m a flex dancer. I grew up in East Flatbush. I’m 23. I was doing Mime Ministry prior to this. I had a teacher who usually told stories through song. I was going to church a lot. The Mime Ministries helped me with this project, so I had to thank my teacher Juanita Perez when I found out I was doing this. I met her at Sheep’s Head Bay Community Center. We were doing mimes and portraying different stories. I kind of dip myself in both sides. At first I was just on the one side, the perfect moves. Then I realized that you can take it to another level. So as soon as I found out I could do that, I took the teachings from my old teacher and put it together with flexn and made it so that I could tell a story. You can portray what people are 16

As far as flexn goes, my category would fall under grooving — body grooving or movement. It is a style that was built from the root of reggae dance-hall steps. That’s what we call the foundation of flexn. I started seeing flexn on YouTube and watching battles from dance events like Flex N Brooklyn and BattleFest. The first battle I first saw Quiet Storm versus Wayne. I was like, “Yo, what is this?” The way these guys moved, was mind-blowing. I’d never seen any dance style like this before. This style took my mind to a whole different place.

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As a flexer, I try to mix different components and add other styles to what I do. I connect. I do a few bone breaks. I can also glide a little bit and pauz.

MY NAME IS EPIC “ZUES” B.

In high school, I was failing gym. I didn’t want to participate in anything, I just wanted to dance. I didn’t want to play basketball or work out, so my teacher came up with a solution for how I could pass. She was like, “Okay, so you want to dance so much?” She suggested I do a talent show and if I did a good show, she’d pass us. So that’s when I met up with Ayinde and Glendon. We start a dance group called RTO (Royal Take Over). We’re a brotherhood. We’re always together. After that talent show, I decided, “I’m a flexer.” That’s all I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I put everything in my life on hold to dance. In FLEXN, my solitary piece allows people to feel what goes on in my head, or better yet, what goes on in someone’s mind when they’re in solitary confinement. Humans need social interaction to stay sane, if you’re alone too long you lose yourself and become something you never thought you’d become. Doing this project has been a growing experience, it has taken me to a whole other place I never thought I could go with dancing. I found myself and it helped me realize there’s still more room for me to grow.. That’s what makes me love this dance style, there’s always something new. This show is something new, something innovative and creative. I enjoy every last bit of it, from Peter’s talks to Regg being hard on me to all of us working together it’s just guiding us the right way and molding us to becoming perfect flexers. Just because we come from somewhere “bad” doesn’t mean we’re bad. I’m tired of everybody thinking it’s a street dance style and that’s all it’s going to be good for. We can do everything that any other dance style can do. I’m tapping into anger and depression. Because I’ve been through a lot, and instead of me just breaking down and going crazy, I use my dancing to handle all that. Growing up wasn’t easy. Money was always an issue. You have some families that you think everything is good until you realize what’s going on. At one point there was a fire that happened, instead of going to a homeless shelter, we lived in the part of the apartment that survived the fire. But we had no heat for three years. No hot water. No nothing. There were 15 of us in one apartment. It was crammed together. Instead of me keeping my hatred and anger within me, I used my dancing to help me with that.

I’m a producer/artist/videographer, but I mainly produce. I’m an artist. I started producing when I was 13. When I was 12, I wanted to rap. I didn’t want to rap on other people’s music, so I started making my own music. It became second nature to me, so I kept doing it and doing it. Now I’m 23, so pretty much a decade ago I started making music. I’ve always been interested in the sounds that dancers dance to, it’s just so amazing to see dancers turn something basic as sounds into something that draws you in. At the time, I was learning how to make flex music, I was trying to find a new sound to put my hands on, because I’ve dipped and dabbled into a bunch of different genres like EDM, hip-hop, R&B, and pop.

Dance helps me release and relive my anger and frustrations. I’m fun and I’m energetic. I love to get work done. I feel my dance style grows every day. Sometimes it’s growing so much I don’t have control over it. That’s why I need Regg and everybody else on my team to keep me grounded. I love having them around me. I just love positive energy. That’s it. I try to give out the best energy I can. I want to give a shout-out to my friends Henry, Malich, Justin, Hakeem. These guys pushed me from the jump. Going down the line I want to thank Ayinde and Glendon. Because of them, I’m still flexn. And I’d like to thank my group, MainEventt, my mother for always supporting me, and Regg for always giving me that push I need.

Once flex was presented to me, I didn’t like the fact that I didn’t know it, so I just tried my hardest. There was definitely a lot of trials and errors, but eventually I made a track that everybody liked. My girlfriend Shellz presented it at BattleFest and the crowd went crazy for it. I’m like, oh, I can really do this, so I just continued to make flex music. I got people like Regg in my corner who helped push me. I got into the show FLEXN, because Regg was like, “Hey Epic, I believe in you, and I know that if I need somebody that’s going to work hard and work fast, I know you’ll be the best person for it.” I was honored that he would look at me and think that. I’m here today trying to make my mark.

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Music is definitely the number one thing for me — it keeps me sane. If I didn’t have music, I probably would be on a rampage. I love music. Music can help you with any emotion. You can feel upset, and you can hear a song that matches that feeling, and that will make you calm. Or even when you’re sad, there’s a song for that. When you’re happy, there’s a song for that. There’s so many songs in the world. I could listen to music every second of the day and not get bored or not get tired of it. It’s a language that I feel like I’m learning to understand more and more each day. It never bores me. My family is 100% supportive. At first they weren’t supportive; they just wanted me to know it’s what I wanted to do. When I was in elementary school, I never really liked to do homework. I’m the type of person that picks one thing that they like and goes full force with it. My main subjects I love are math, science and art. But there are other subjects that are mandatory and when I was young, I wanted to do what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to learn that kind of stuff. I just wanted to do math, science, and art. They actually wanted to put me in special ed, but my mother was not having it. She took me out of public school and put me in private school. I went there with Nyte, we’ve been hanging out with each other for a long time, since elementary school. After being in a private school environment, I wanted to rebel. In middle school, I was kind of on the edge, there were a lot of things that were frustrating. That was around the time I started actually picking up music and learning music. By the time I was in eighth grade, high school, music just completely took over my life. It just mellowed me out. Everything was just, okay, now I know what I want to do in life. I actually didn’t finish high school due to the fact that I just wanted to do music. At first my parents were disappointed in me. Even to this day I’m disappointed in myself. But they still believed in me, and I haven’t let them down yet. I work hard. I make sure I don’t regret anything. I learn from my mistakes. Everything happens for a reason. That’s what I say to myself. I went to a school out in Bensonhurst. There weren’t that many African-American kids there. It was hard because whenever we would make mistakes, they would react as if “I know you’re going to do it because you’re African-American.” At that time, I didn’t know how to control my frustration. In my mind, there was nothing I could do, so I’m going to do what I want to do. I’m going to rebel.

sure math and science have a lot to do with it. A lot of the songs that I have in FLEXN are a mixture of reggae and dance hall, and some dramatic cinematic feeling, like music scores that you would hear in a movie. I have three major pieces in the show. One is in the courtroom scene. They were just given the assignment, and as they were doing the assignment, I was making the song. I mixed the dance hall with a dramatic cinematic feel and mixed it with The People’s Court theme song. Once it was played out loud, everybody started going crazy. We had a few trial and errors with that piece, but once we put the song to the piece, things were perfect. It just flowed. It just connected. Other than that, I have another piece I’m actually singing on, the duet with Shellz and Sam. It’s called Best Friend and Boyfriend. Everything that’s in that song are my emotions. I had to record it. The dancers say they love that song. I never put my emotions in a song that much. I never really had a song where I just emptied out how I feel. It’s crazy to know that people know exactly how I felt at that moment. I do music because I love to do music. I’m not one to just want fame. I just really want to set my mark. I just want people to understand me through my music. I’m not really looking to be the next Jay Z or whatever. I just want my music to be timeless. I want people to be able to hear my music 1,000 years from now and still say, “Oh, that was amazing.” Go with your feeling. My feeling has never steered me wrong. You can fail at doing what society tells you to do, so why do what you want to do in life? I want to shout-out, my mother and father. They pushed me harder than anybody would. Actually the biggest shout-out to give is to my older sister, Marvina Foye. She has pushed me beyond my limits. Even though we fight every time we see each other — it’s always for the better. She’s been my biggest supporter since day one. I love her for it. I can’t wait until I have enough money to just have my parents in the front row of my own concert. I don’t know my birth father, but I live with my mother and my stepfather. He’s pretty much my father. He’s been there since day one. He supports me, lets me know he believes in me. He lets me know I need to come home to see him and show my face every now and then.

I see the problems that I caused for others, not only myself — but my mother having to come to school every other day to bail me out of whatever situation I was in. She would cry every time. I know the reasons why I was doing things, but that didn’t give me the right to put my mother in a situation where she may lose her job or feels like she has an uncontrollable son. I know I’m not the worst kid out there, but I didn’t want my mother thinking that one of her children were just one of those crazy kids. So I was like, you know what? I need to find an outlet and relax. That was at the time where our art teacher had quit at our school. We didn’t have any art classes. I really needed to find something because that was the only thing that really mellowed me out. That’s when music came. I use a program to make beats, it’s got many numbers. I try to explain it to people, that art can be about math, but they get confused. When I start saying you have to put this amount and that amount and subtract this amount, it just becomes confusing for people, but for me, it’s like home. It’s fun. I’m pretty 18

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of a friend. I got to an emotional place. It made me wonder how would a mother or father feel, a brother or sister, a cousin, uncles, grandmothers, grandfather — how would they feel? How would I feel if I’m about to get shot or killed by a cop — or anybody for that matter. How would I be able to say how I felt if I was a spirit? I can’t raise my body. How would I feel? Would I feel lost? Confused? Hurt? Sad? Happy that I’m gone? Relieved? I just had to express that. What would they feel? What would they say?

HELLO. MY NAME IS QUAMAINE AKA KARNAGE.

My dad wasn’t really there that much. He tried to be, but he wasn’t there. I battle with that. My son’s mother, I battle with her a lot. I’m actually battling her in court right now so I can have custody of him. I’m just like, “Should I give up?” I want to give up. But then I can’t. It’s a spiritual, internal and physical battle.

I am 26 years old. I’m a dancer from Brooklyn, a flex dancer. My style is gliding, pauzin, bone-breaking and get low. I was dancing since I was young, since MC Hammer’s song came out. MC Hammer pants was popping. I’d play it all day, from what I was told from my parents. In my teen years I started to learn how to flex. I saw it on TV. I started doing it because it was cool — and plus I’d seen that there were a lot of girls that liked it, so I started doing it. They were just hypnotized. Every time I danced at a party, a girl would tell me, “Oh my god, you’re so amazing. I love the way you dance.” Sometimes I got followed in parties just for dancing. But on a more serious note, I started dancing because it allowed me to be free. Regg helped me a lot. I also learned from watching. I get inspired by other dancers. A lot of the dancers that are in Flexn inspire me. We all learn from each other. Whether it’s a little bit or a lot, we learn. We all make each other. We have a connection. When I dance, I think, “How can I make somebody feel what I feel? How can I bring them to my world?” I usually just think about things that are going on, my life — whether good or bad — and I try to express it. For example, when I was younger, my mom used to cry to me because she felt like she wasn’t a good mom to us and she could’ve done better in raising us. I felt like we were perfect; we were who we are. We weren’t bad kids, but we weren’t angels. She would cry to me. A certain song could bring me to that place, I think about her crying. I would dance it and feel it. That’s how I would express myself. It was a huge release of energy for me. All I see when I’m dancing is just like I’m in a room by myself — a black room, but a white light on me. My “Fuck the World” piece is about what’s going on in the world, the violence, the killings. That’s like, fuck that shit. We don’t have to go through this. It’s just a constant battle with the world. I battle with the world a lot. Police harassment, I get stopped by the police a lot. Relationships. A lot of my friends got killed, got shot. How can you handle things like that? How can you just live life with people that you’re so used to being around. It comes to that point where it’s hard.

There was a time in my life where I strade away from dancing because of my sons mother. She made me so unhappy that I was roaming the streets. I joined a gang and did many wrong things. After awhile I began to reflect on myself. I realized I shouldn’t allow anyone make me that unhappy, to keep me from doing what I loved to do. I wasn’t in my place. When I finally figured out where I was supposed to be, I switched from battling rival gang members to rival dance teams. I’m Superman. It takes a lot of strength and a lot of faith. I have a beautiful wife who helps me and supports what I do. She watches the kids. She’ll hold them, she’ll take care of them. Sometimes it’s hard, being that I have to juggle between things. I used to being told I’m not a good father because if I have a dance event, I’ll bring my kid. But there’ll be times I won’t, and I’ll come home late from the events. You’ve got to pray for strength. That’s what really keeps you in. Pray for strength and patience, a whole lot of patience. At times I’ll get overwhelmed. Dance reaches those aggravations or stresses in life where I feel like I can’t handle things. If it wasn’t for dance, I think I would probably not be here. I think I would’ve given up on my kids, or family, or even on myself. I’d probably be a bum somewhere. Do what makes you happy. Don’t let no bangers tell you what you can or cannot do, whether it’s family, girlfriend, kids, friends, whoever, the devil that’s inside of you. Don’t let nothing decided what you can and cannot do. If you want to be the world’s best diver, then do it. If that’s what makes you happy, do it. If you want to be the best dancer, go ahead. Do it. It’s always about what makes you happy, because in the end, you’re the only one that can make you happy. Nobody can do that. I want to shout-out to Regg and Peter Sellars for doing the FLEXN workshops with us. That really showed me who I am as a dancer. It helped me grow as a better dancer. It certainly helped me express what I feel at even a greater level. I want to shout-out to the good people in my life, the bad people in my life, the ones that value me, that ones that had faith in me, God, my kids, and anybody that’s a part of the event — and the ones that will be there to watch us. A shout-out to y’all, the audience. I love dance. Dance is life.

I did the march, the protest for Eric Garner, for every injustice that ever happened to our fellow brothers and sisters. It really hit hard. It really hit home in my heart. I think of it like this: I had one person that was shot by a cop. He wasn’t that close to me. He was a friend armoryonpark.org

from and in return they shared their culture with me. There are so many different stories, so many different paths and feelings.

HELLO. MY NAME IS JOSEPH CARELLA AKA KLASSIC.

I want to give a shout out to Linda Cuo. She’s the CEO of National Dance Week, Hawaii, Dancers Unlimited, it was a group I was a part of. They taught me a lot about house dancing, about different lifts, and contemporary. They broadened my horizons, as well. Shout-out to Margery Smarth, who’s a beautiful individual. She taught me that there’s more than one way to do any step.

I’m from Brooklyn, New York. I am 23 years old, or 23 years young. I actually started flexing about three years ago. It all started when I went to college. There was this team called the Imani Dancers. It was pretty much community-based, they’d send out fliers to audition to join the team. I didn’t really know how to dance. I knew how to do a few step-up moves. So I went to the tryout, and I guess that they saw potential and put me on their squad. I met a few dancers who happened to be flexers — Element, Havoc, and Fritz. I noticed that they had this unique quality about their style, the way they moved. I was like, “Wow, I’m very intrigued. Teach me more about this”. They were able to bring me into the community. The first place I went was the Flex House, I saw MainEventt, Regg, everybody. I was just blown away by what I was seeing. Being one of the young people to come up in this flex generation, I would say it’s been really hard because there are people who are more advanced; but it’s toughened me up. I drive in my own lane in flexn. I do a little gliding, pauzin, and the base of all of those is movements. That’s what I like to do the most. I give a shout-out to all the pioneers, because they paved the way for the style to be made. All I want to do is venture out and stretch it as far as I can — not just by doing flexn, but also by doing ballet, contemporary, hip-hop, jazz, and adding my own sauce to what flexn already is. I want to have variety in my dance. I’m a chill, laid-back type of person. I love paintings. I love to dress up casual. I just want to create a success point in business for the community with dancing. I just want to be sharp and definite - knowing how I want to hit the music, how sharp my mind snaps into it, the focus point. If you have the imagination, can do anything you want because the body is able to do it. I don’t want to have any limitations mentally or physically. I want to transcend to another level, travel and share flexn with people in other places.

At first it was really tough. It was really tough, because my grandparents were not really accepting of it. They didn’t really like what I was doing. My grandparents are from the south, Virginia. My grandmother, she’s like the old-school ladies, but she’s seen a lot. She’s a very wise woman. When I was in college, she saw that I was getting into dance. I was just like, “Yo, I love it. I don’t know what’s going on, but I just know that it’s something that I want to do.” For a long time she didn’t believe me until she saw me dance for the first time. It changed her whole perspective on what I was doing. I did a flex praise dance in the church for her, it switched everything that she was thinking about dance. She stood up and clapped. That was better than any money or gold I could possibly get. Just to see her accept it and be happy about it made me feel like, okay, I’m on the right path. She then became more accepting of it. Now she’s seeing the steps I’ve made and the moves I’ve made, and she’s like, “Wow, you’re actually doing something. You’re doing it. You’re making a career out of it.” I just tell her, “I’m going to do it. Whatever it takes.” In Sam’s piece, Peter gave me the opportunity to be the demon (or the devil) — he’s very tempting. He wants you to do bad things. A lot of people take the easy way out and once they see temptation, they gravitate to it. I’m in Maine’s piece too. I’m the witness. I basically tell his family that I saw their son get murdered. It’s a horrible thing. The people that I think about in my solitary dance are my parents, they passed away when I was young. My mom passed away when I was seven, and my dad passed away when I was 13. I hear stories about them, they always wanted the best for me, and they always wanted me to achieve what I wanted to achieve. My dad gave me certain advice that still sticks to me to this day. My father always wanted me to be a man and treat a woman just as he treated my mom. He always wanted me to become the best I could be. My father was musically inclined, too. He played the guitar and he sung. I don’t know how I started dancing or how I started playing music like the piano and drums, but it’s something that just came naturally. I always gravitated to entertainment and music. I think I got it from him. My brother’s an artist, too. He does Christian rap. Dance your dance. Whatever you’re in, you do you. This Armory thing taught me valuable lessons — mentally and physically.

I was blessed to go to Hawaii for National Dance Week. I was flown out there to teach and also to perform. Seeing that culture and the way they accepted the flex that I do, teaching them where it originated 20

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MY NAME IS NICHOLAS BARBOT. THEY CALL ME NICC the problem.

MY NAME IS NYTE, SHORT FOR NYTEMARE.

I’m 19. I’m from Brooklyn, East New York. I got into dancing in the seventh grade. One of my friends was doing it and since then I just kept dancing. I didn’t know any better. I lived right across the street from Reggie. I started looking flexing up on YouTube and going to The Bench. First, I started connecting and doing hand tricks. I met Tony Maze, he taught me the elements of flex. He’s one of the OGs with Regg. He taught me the foundation of flexing. He taught me the basic steps to the bruk-up and I felt like it helped me more in my style. Then Regg and me started to get more cool and he taught me other steps. They both taught me the foundation and I put it together myself. I’m known for doing hand tricks and pauzin. I’m on on a team with Ace and Droid, Funeral Squad In 2013, I performed on 42nd Street on the big screen in front of all the people that were waiting for the ball to drop. I feel like a lot of people don’t know about it but when people see it they get excited, they want to look into it more. I feel like we are going to show what flexing is. The song for my solitary piece is based on somebody acting up in jail. There’s always a person that acts up in jail and has all the other inmates going crazy. Dancing to me means life. When I’m dancing I stay out of the streets. It saved my life. It got me a lot of places. I went to California to dance. I went to Sydney. Staying in the streets, I would have never been nowhere. I’d like to shout out Regg, and my mother. My mother always come to all my shows.

I’m 22 years old. I started flexn when we were in high school doing a talent show. There were three of us: me, Tyme and Droopz. We all used to do different styles of dancing. So for us, in order to do the show, we said we were going to pick up a style of dancing that we didn’t know. That was flexn. I got with this group of people through Tyme and Droopz. They met with Regg and everybody else. They brought me along, and from there — MainEventt. I’m like third generation MainEventt. I was doing dance hall. My sister used to make fun of me. So I tried my hardest to get the nicest moves. I practiced hard at home. From there I fell in love with it, got nice at it. Then it just took off from there. Flexn has a real deep history behind it. It’s so exciting to be a part of something so major. The roots run deep, it can get traced all the way back to Jamaica. Being part of that culture itself is just so enlightening, and being one of the few that know how to do it properly — amongst me and the team, and a couple other outside people — it just really helps to bring something that’s not really known forward and watch it bloom into something that’s going to blow so big. It means a lot to get flexn out there and to see how far it goes, to see how it impacts people around the world. Flexn is freedom. You can do whatever you want. You can bring your imagination to life. Anything you want to do, you can flex that.

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Flexn, along the years, has been watered down so much to the point where it’s just a bunch of moves, no feeling. There are people out there that think they can throw their arms up in the air and they’re bone breakers — and they think that’s flexn. That’s not all it is. You have to have a certain rhythm. It has a feel. You have to bring that character to life. You have to be who you are in order to bring flexn to life. You can’t just be a robot doing certain moves and think it’s flexn. My style is gliding. Gliding is the illusion of my feet moving from point A to point B. It’s a lot of footwork, it takes a lot of practice. I look like I’m walking on air. I can get from one side of the room to the next side of the room and you wouldn’t even know how I got there. I’m in a couple pieces as a gangster because being where I’m from, Brooklyn, I have had a crazy past. It’s kind of easy for me to tap into being angry, being a gangster, being all this extra stuff. They really zoned in on the character I can play the best. In Slicc’s piece, I’m the bad guy, a jealous character. Slicc was my partner throughout the piece. As it goes along, he brings in his brother. His brother tries to take him out of the life, and I don’t want him out of the life. Being who I am and being what we do, I need somebody to be there with me. As I get lonely and as they take my only partner away, I get jealous. I make the mistake of killing his brother. Slicc goes into a fury, then kills me. The piece shows the mistakes youth make these days. It’s really a lot like how Brooklyn is today. Every time you try to get out the negative, somebody tries to drag you back into the negative. Then when you try to get out of it even more, they bring you something to bring you back into that negative. We’re just really showing off the real life, exactly how real Brooklyn gets — how real New York City gets. I’ve never been in solitary, but I’ve heard, when you hear them in the hallways in jail, you hear screaming. It’s gut-wrenching. It leaves bad memories on you. You fall asleep sometimes, you have dreams and hear them screaming. In my piece, I’m walking back and forth in my cell. I’m losing my mind. You’re by yourself and you’re just walking back and forth. You have nothing to do but talk to yourself. You have nothing to do but see things. You see things that aren’t there. You recall certain things from your past and you start making up stories. You laugh to yourself. You literally start going insane. When I was growing up it wasn’t cool to show feeling, to have emotions and stuff like that. So we learn to un-tap our emotions. Getting locked up is cool. Getting arrested is cool. We pride ourselves on this bravado to the point where it’s like, I’m a gangsta. Can’t nobody tell me nothing. I don’t feel anything. I don’t cry. That’s how we’re raised. I noticed that because, when I met other people from out of town, they were so emotional, and I’m to the point where I’m like, I can’t. I don’t feel what you feel because I wasn’t raised like that. I was raised to the point where you don’t show any feeling. If you get arrested, you’re arrested. Okay, cool. Just get it over with. That’s it. Flexn saved my life. I was so used to bottling up emotions — nobody knows how backed up you get. I didn’t even noticed how backed up I was with my emotions — to the point where you could shake a champagne bottle, and it’s ready to explode. When I started flexn, I saw that you could show you’re anger while dancing and also release it through dance. Dance gave me an outlet. It made me able to expunge all that negative energy besides some wicked way in the streets, like fighting or anything else. I was a part of that [the streets], but that’s over. 22

Let’s say for two weeks I don’t dance and I bottle up all my emotions. When I’m finally dancing, you’ll see my real anger, then after I dance I get really happy. It releases everything. I would like to thank my friend Jerrod aka Droopz, my friend Tyme, and Regg. I wouldn’t be here at all if it wasn’t for those three people. And if it wasn’t for Regg, I don’t know where I would be. I would probably be some “next person”. He helped me grow as a man. He mentored me. He showed me, like, “Yo, this is not the right way to do things. You handle it this way.” He’s taught me so much from 2010 until now. It’s unbelievable. I can’t even express with words how much he’s taught me. Then Droopz and Tyme, they’re my closest friends ever. They help me with a lot. If it wasn’t for them two, I would have never met Regg, I wouldn’t have been MainEventt.

MY NAME IS SABRINA RIVERA. I GO BY THE NICKNAME PUMPKIN.

I actually got that from my mom when I was younger. I used to eat a lot of pumpkin seeds. I’m 20 years old. I live in New York. Bushwick. I’ve lived in the same spot ever since I was four. I started dancing because my sisters forced me to when I was four years old. She’s five years older than me. I wanted to be an artist. I guess after my sister forced me to dance all the time, I realized that was like my calling. You know how they say there’s always something you want to do and then there’s something you’re born to do. I was born to dance. I started off with hip-hop. Then her teacher was teaching me ballet, tap, jazz. I started flexn was when I was 12. Jamal was one of my camp counselors. He was like, “Come, we’ll teach you something.” He put on a song and started connecting. He was like, “All right, just follow me.” So I was following him. He was like, “Wow, you’re really good.” He was trying to make me move my feet and glide. Then I branched off when my brother Rinaldo (Ray) started teaching me the basics. He taught me how to move my hands in different shapes, pressing my palms against a wall, using all parts of my body to make different moves. Now I do connecting and pauzin. Regg used to throw sessions at his house when we were younger. When I first met Regg, the first thing I said to him was “You were scary.” We became good friends after that.

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BattleFest is a one-on-one hosted by Reem, who’s a close friend of mine. I got into BattleFest when I was 13. I auditioned and was the only girl, so I stood out the most. It was pretty cool. It was hard to get respect as a female though. As a young woman flexn in a maledominated world, we don’t get a lot of respect a lot. They say us, “Oh, y’all just girls. Y’all do little cute shit. Y’all not nice.” To this day, I still get it. Like, I’m not nice. It’s really hard. It’s basically like you have to prove something to society every time you dance.

It’s your boy, Reggie. They call me, Regg, Regg Roc, Reggie Gray, OG Pauz, Big Body.

Working with Dre and Droid, is actually pretty cool. Our piece is about a girl who is cheating and going around her boyfriend’s back to be with another guy. Then in the midst of that, her boyfriend is mistreating her back. I wouldn’t do that to my boyfriend. I’m actually very shy. I have family who went to jail and have heard them saying it’s not a good place to be. You’re angry all the time. You’re moody. It’s just not right. Doing my solitary dance I was trying to express myself, but I couldn’t because I was held back. I live with my mom. But my mom, she’s my mom and my dad. My biological father comes around here and there. She’s always been supportive. She always comes to my shows. She has a bakery at home where she makes cakes and stuff. Her schedule is difficult now. She’s been working hourly jobs, like in an office too. She’s always making cakes. My mom’s really supportive. Sometimes when I’m dancing, she’ll come to the mirror next to me and start dancing, playing around. Then sometimes she’ll shock me and do something that’s actually good! I think my mom is my hardest critic and my sister (my sister used to dance). I’m always trying to impress my sister, she was the reason why I’m a dancer. In the beginning I did not want to dance, I was crying. Now dancing for me is an important part of my life. If you’re a girl and you like the dance style, you should learn it. More females! We’ve got to change the game.

Flexn wasn’t really flexn in the beginning. The foundation of what we are is dancehall music and Jamaican culture. Flexn came about and got its name around 2005. Myself and some of the other OGs that were dancing, the pioneers, we were doing underground styles like bruck up and dancehall. From 8th grade, probably around ’98, ’97, we were really just trying to be creative in our own way. And when we got to Flex N Brooklyn, the public access channel that everyone in Brooklyn was pretty much trying to be on, we developed our own style — flexn. From there three styles pretty much started, pauzin, gliding and snapping. I was born in Brooklyn, East New York. I went to Germany for two or three years. My stepfather was in the military; he took us out there, me and my mother. My brother was conceived there then we came back to the States. I was in Alabama from the age of six. I was dancing from young, Michael Jackson, “Thriller,” “Smooth Criminal,” all those different things. But I wasn’t really a dancer. I was just doing what I liked to do in that moment. Growing up in Alabama, I definitely wasn’t dancing. I probably didn’t know how to do a two-step. I was really into my books, sports, basketball, baseball, soccer but mainly football that was my sport. I just did a lot of studying and research. That was my safe zone. That was me, the nerdy guy that plays sports. I was really into computers. I really wanted to know how a computer worked inside and out. Taking them apart, putting them together, that was my big thing. I’m really a big science geek. First science, then biology, astrology, computer science, those are the things that really had my interest at the time.

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We moved to New York because my moms was going through some things back in Alabama, financial problems. Me as a kid was just like, you know, “Hey, Mom, let’s get it right. Get a job, you do this, you do that. Go to school. You can come do this, do that.” Maybe I was talking out my ass, really. Because, you know, she didn’t have the qualifications that she needed to actually be what she wanted to be, I believe. Those are things I just didn’t know about because I was a kid — now I understand that’s just not the reality of things. When you’re younger, you look at your mother, your father, or whoever else, even a father figure, like they have everything, they can do it all just because they’re grown up and that’s what they do. She pretty much made me make a decision at the end of one of my school semesters, in the 7th grade. She was like, “Hey, what do you want to do? Do you want to stay in Alabama, or do you want to go live with Grandma?” I made a decision, “I want to go live with Grandma. Let’s go. I’m not going to stay in Alabama. Let’s go.” Grandma was in East New York. And she said “Come on home boobie!” I was in my 7th grade year going into 8th grade in East New York. My first school, IS 218 was actually right across the street from me. So, I didn’t have to walk too far to school. Got there, chilled out, loved it. I had a crazy accent. Kids were like, “Where are you from?” I had that Alabama accent, country. When I came up here to school, I was hearing cursing and blah, blah, this and that and I’m thinking they’re going to get in trouble. But nobody ever got in trouble. I was wondering, “What kind of school is this?” Everything was different. The people, what we were studying and how we were studying. I was so not used to it. I was so far ahead. I was like breezing through school. It was extremely easy until I got to high school 12th grade. That’s when it kind of really starting getting different for me. One day, my cousin Steve says, “We’re going to the block party.” I went to the block party and I saw these two dancers I came to know now as Penny and Al. They were dancehall dancers. They were doing their thing, feeling the beat. I’m like, “Yo, this shit is crazy. What is this?” I was just sitting there looking observing. I had a little bit of a swagger, already, so I could just feel it, the motion and everything in the music. So I’m watching these dancers do their thing. All the girls are loving it and I’m like, “Yo, I’m going to dance. This is crazy.” Girls are digging it. I’m digging it. It was dope. I met Nugget, one of my dance partners in the hood. Then I started meeting the core team I would role with later. We were friends. We’d just dance and have a good time. We didn’t know what we were doing. Eventually we formed a group called HyperActive. We got a little fame because we did a high school talent show. Our English teacher Mr. Jones gave us the first push to say, “You guys are going to be stars one day. I see it. There’s nothing that can stop you if you keep going.” When he gave us those words it was like, “What are we going to really be?” It is amazing that we’re all still together. Those words are what started it. We got that whole situation going on with that talent show. Then I went into a battle situation where I battled this guy, Icky. He beat me really bad. I felt bad. I didn’t want to dance anymore. I wanted to quit. I got home and I decided I wanted to improve and get to a better place. I was really kind of sad. I went upstairs, put on the VCR and I started watching myself dance.

We used to watch ourselves on tape. Press rewind, then press play, rewind it back real slow see if we could steal dance moves from ourselves. We’d look at that and go, “That move was dope. I can do that and make something bigger out of it.” Then I decided to just press play and pause on my VCR, and I started seeing it just glitch and move and stop and move and stop and move, and I said, “Yo, I want to dance like that. How can I do it?” I put on a beat and move. I’d stop, move, stop, move. I’m not really doing pauzin yet, I’m doing it with bruck up, poppin the shoulder. One shoulder, one shoulder, one shoulder, and I started doing it really hard. The more you keep doing things, the better you get at it. That was the beginning of me pioneering what has become pauzin. The development from HyperActive to MainEventt pretty much came at Flex house. We were all just sitting around inside the Flex house, just chillin’ out. A lot of the groups in Flex in Brooklyn started to deplete, some of them didn’t want to dance anymore, some of them had kids and other priorities. The main dancers in those groups really wanted to keep dancing — we were the ones that started MainEventt. We all sat down and said, “Hey, we need to make up a name for our group. Then my friends Kareem said, “Hey, you know what? The name must be MainEventt.” That was dope, we were all the main events of our groups so why not? We stuck with it. We dominated the flex game again under the name MainEventt. From there we came with the Ringmasters that happened with the TV show America’s Best Dance Crew. Some guys weren’t as dedicated to MainEventt as others, but the people that were, stayed to form Ringmasters at America’s Best Dance Crew. Me and six other dancers all went on America’s Best Dance Crew. The name Ringmasters came from MTV. They wouldn’t let us go on as MainEventt because of “marketing” reasons. They said it symbolized something of being the ‘main event’ of the whole show. I guess they didn’t want people to see it like that. So, they said, “Let’s get you guys a new name.” They started throwing out weird names like the Bone Breakers, or the Flexers. Somebody was like, “Yeah, let’s do Bone Breakers,” and I’m like, “Hell, no.” We were thrown into a situation where they suggested something like the Ringmasters. At first I said no — it sounded like a bunch of clowns, stupid. But then my friend, Nugget, he’s an optimistic person with a good vision. He makes the best of things. He says, “If we’re going to be the Ringmasters, we’re going to own it.” We were going to switch the name up and make it what it is, what we are today. We are the masters of our ring. This is what we do. We’re going to hold it down like that. We all decided to call ourselves the Ringmasters and that started a new journey. I was working at The Gap to get by. I quit working there for America’s Best Dance Crew. I’d wanted to quit for years. I was working there doing the same thing over and over again and wasn’t happy, it was annoying. I was like, “You know what? It’s over for that.” I just dumped that whole thing. I made the decision to make it — make this dance thing happen with my team. A friend of mine Leon, had his own business. He got me wanting to own my own business and be my own boss. I started doing video work. Shooting dances and videos for rappers around Brooklyn. That fed me for a long time. I didn’t care what no one said. “I’m going to do what I want to do. Y’all can’t tell me nothing”. I’m a person with a lot of morals, I know when things are wrong. A lot of people in my family thought I was out smoking and drinking, but I

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never was. That was never me. I felt that I was doing what I needed to do to make it. We all have doubts, but a dream I had always kept me on the path. In this dream I’m running through a graveyard. It’s really cloudy. I start hearing thunder. I’m just running aimlessly. Then I realize I’m running down this one path and I see my grandfather (who I never met in real life) and he tells me to keep going. Then I meet my father (who passed a way when I was very young and didn’t know). He tells me to keep going down this path and don’t let nobody stop me. Then further along I see my uncle and he tells me to keep going and that if I get off this path I’m not going to be happy. So every time I think about doing something different (off my path) I just think of that dream.

MY NAME IS SAM I AM “MOVIEMAN SAM.”

I’m just walking by faith and God. One of my friends told me, “Stilled water is dirty water.” Meaning, running water keeps fresh. As long as you keep going, as long as you keep moving, you’ll always stay fresh. The moment you settle everything’s just going to blah…be dirty. As a team we go through so much. We share so much of our personal life and our dance life. In fact, its all one thing nothing is ever separate — it all starts to mesh. I actually care if the dancers don’t eat right or if they go do this or that. I feel myself getting depressed or angry when they do things they’re not supposed to do. They sense that and must wonder, why does he care so much? I can’t help myself. It’s just the reality of the real ness that I feel. It’s a family. We have a quote from the bible. Any kingdom that divides itself is brought to desolation. Once you start putting up all walls and secrets you start to bring everything down. We really live by that we say, “I am him and you are me.” Every time I see that person I just know that you reflect me, and I feel like I’m apart of them in everyway. That’s a big part of keep us together. I read the bible, not literally, but you take what you need. My dream is to have flexn shows in every part of the world Las Vegas, Paris, Manchester, Japan...in each area of the world to showcase what we do and how we do it, our way to express the art in the language that we speak. I want to work with other collaborations with other styles too once we define who we are first. That would be my footprint in this world. I believe that flexn is immortal. I don’t have a specific vision for it because it has too many shapes. It’s going to be in the history books of dance. The beginning of flexn was about storytelling. It was about giving the ultimate stories with our bodies that people understood. What we did was go back to that. Moves and tricks isn’t really what we’re about. It’s good for battles but for this level it’s deeper. Peter and I connect on a great level. We both have a great deal of respect for each other’s work, that’s what keeps everything stable. He’s been a great mentor through out this process. Shout out all the dancers, Ozzy Oz, Rocky, Sandra, my group the Ringmasters, MainEventt, Jason Akira Somma, Peter, Alex the whole Armory staff and Charlotte. My aunt Winzeree, she was someone in my family that always let me be me. Of course my mom, because she raised a real good son, my uncle Tyrone, the Gray family and the Gilmore family.

I’m from Brooklyn. My parents are Haitian. I’m Haitian-American. I’m 23 years old. I was born December 30th, 1990. My parents are Jehovah’s Witnesses. I don’t celebrate birthdays or holidays. I study, the Bible. I want to read the Koran, Torah, I’m interested in stuff like that — history. I want to read all of them to find my own truth. I feel like dance is my connection to the divine. When I was younger, I was experimenting with dancing and rapping. In Brooklyn, there’s a huge Caribbean community, I grew up on reggae and hip-hop and all that. I used to DJ on my computer. When I got to high school, I was doing a style called shotta dancing. It was popular in Brooklyn. It’s still happening now, but it’s not as popular. I started that seriously when I was 13 or 14. I loved dancing at the time, but it got my friends and me into bad (and good) situations. That’s just Brooklyn. As I started to get more serious about dancing, I realized the people I was with, they were more focused on street activities. I’m not judging their lifestyle, but I wanted to dance. They would smoke weed all day, play video games, so I stepped away. I met Professor, known now as Storyboard. He saw a video I had online. He reached out to me. He had a group called the Mutants. He saw potential in me. Shellz was in the group, too. He asked me to join. From there, I started taking dance seriously, because he was, and still is, one of the greats in the game. He mentored me for probably two or three years. I learned a lot from being around him. We would dance at my house all night. I learned street rules, how to move, how to battle people — how naïve I was. Say you’re walking, and you’re about to cross the street. If a car is coming and you stop, that shows fear in a street mentality — you just need to cross the street. Basic street etiquette, how to deal with people, I learned the authentic foundation. Dancing is ritualistic in a way. You’re dancing for yourself, but you’re also dancing with ancestors behind you, dancing with you. It’s a spiritual thing at the same time. There’s so many layers. People who aren’t aware of themselves will perceive it the wrong way. When I see people who try to compartmentalize dance into something that’s just fun and jiggy it hurts in a way, because it’s more serious than that. Actions speak louder than words. I can tell you how I feel. I feel depressed. But when I move, you feel it. It could bring you to

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tears. It could make you feel tense. One of my goals is to raise the status quo of how dancers are respected.

I’M DWIGHT ‘SCORP’ WAUGH.

Hip-hop, the way it was before, was uncensored free, social, political. But over time it got commercialized and censored, the motivation went from expression to dollars. They play it safe today. There used to be more of a balance. You had people who were extremely streetlife, then you had people who were more enlightened. Then you had street life, but there was conscience street-life. There were levels and layers. Now it’s been censored where the focus is on making money. Every artist should be paid for what they do. But through dance, we can speak in a code that can’t be censored. It’s a way to communicate. Actions speak louder than words, if I’m dancing and I’m touching my heart, and you know that’s heart — or if I’m going like this, it’s an out-of-body experience. It’s a way to communicate, language in a way, body language. Our generation just danced for fun and as a way of expressing ourselves, with hopes of getting paid; I fear that the next generation will see our success and will be motivated by dollar signs instead of expression. I hope that there will be a balance between culture and business. BattleFest 2012, I did a king of the streets competition. I worked really hard to try to win, but I lost. I lost because of politics. It hurt. People today still talk about how I was the best, but it showed me my position in Brooklyn. I represent multiple cultures within Brooklyn dance and it gives me power, but with power comes great responsibility. I have a responsibility to carry the torch of Brooklyn street dance. People have high expectations of me. If what I do isn’t groundbreaking, doors will get closed in my face. Flexn. We’re like an open source. We have principles. It’s not something you have to do. I feel some styles are too rigid. We’re blessed to be in a time when the style is still happening. We’re still in the street. We’re still in touch with the people who created it. It’s a great time. This is African dance. This is something that comes from before our time. There are versatile emotions in flexn, but we keep it street at the same time. When you think of certain styles you might have distinct perceptions of them in your mind. When you think krump, you think it’s going to be aggressive and assertive. When you think ballet it’s going to be graceful. With us, it can be anything. It can be graceful, it can be aggressive, it can be anything. That’s what I mean when I say it’s an open-source style. We can take it anywhere. I don’t feel there’s a style that can match up to it. I was different. I was considered a weirdo. But then I finally made it work, and it became a niche style that’s just different. I always wanted to look like certain dancers who were more accepted at the time. But once you get more experience, you don’t really chase anyone anymore. “You just be like, okay, I’m good at what I do”. I’m still considered a weirdo, but I have respect now. My way of dancing is inspired by flex, bruck up, mutation and my imagination. I put it all together. It’s a new technique — a new way of expression that I know is going to go beyond dance. It’s going to go beyond entertainment. I’m basically crafting the soul and designing the body, upgrading human technology.

I’m Dwight ‘Scorp’ Waugh. I’m from Brooklyn, Flatbush, East New York. I dance with the team MainEventt. I’m 25. I have a daughter that’s three years old her named is Charlene Steward. …Watching YouTube, I saw an old school dancer named Surf and another dancer, X — watching them made me get into flexin. I watched them every day. The way they danced really caught my eye. I tried to learn their steps. I added my own custom steps. I followed my own path. I started dancing bruck up and dancehall. Now my style is mainly bonebreaking and get low, but I do everything, I mix things up. A friend of mine named Twitch came to my house to lab and brought a guy named Aaron. Aaron and I battled and from that day we became the best of friends. He brought Regg to my house and Regg said my house was too hot and he had to leave. At the time my name was Lucifer and he joked that he couldn’t stay. Eventually, I went back to his house and met all the pioneers of flexn. I asked them what I should do to better my style and be apart of the family. I was more into street life before I started dancing. When I was 15 or 16 I got into a lot of different situations. I was doing stuff I wasn’t supposed to do. Doing drugs. I was always outside, always getting into trouble. When I moved to East New York, it changed me. I’d hang at Regg or Aaron’s house or at home. I was dancing all the time and working on my craft. I stopped being apart of street life. I even had to go to court to fight to keep custody of my daughter Charlene after I got arrested for getting into an altercation with her mother. But we’re working it out now for the sake of Charlene. In Flexn, I dance a piece for my daughter. It’s about how much she means to me. How much I love her. It’s about what I’d do if she was gone, what would happen if I lost her and how that would make me feel. I also do a piece about working at FedEx. About how I didn’t want to work there anymore, how I wanted to keep dancing, how tough it was to work to live and dance at the same time. Quamaine and I dance a solitary confinement piece to Lil’ Wayne’s “Mirrors.” It’s about us going through the same problems, but in different ways. We’re talking to the negative energy within us in the mirror. I talk to my negative energy. I tell my negative energy to leave me alone and let me go on with my life. Some people in my family support my dancing, but others don’t, they think it’s dumb and a waste of time. They feel I should get a ‘real’ job

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or career and go to school, be normal. I feel, if you don’t live your own dream you’re a slave. Dancing is my way of being free. It’s how I make my own destiny, my own goals. I don’t have to follow what anybody says. I feel free when I dance. The bad energy I had is gone. Once I’m around my team, my daughter, my best friend Chastidy, my mom, my popz, Naomi, Shiek, Chyna, my uncle Joe, my aunt Sherry, Charlene’s godmother Andrea, Charlene’s mother Brittany and Shane all my negative energy gets left in the past. It’s hard being a dad. I’m an entertainer. I bounce it out. She’s a good kid. Even if she’s not around me, I’ll still see her and what she’s doing all the time. She’s not a bad kid at all. Only when she gets bored. She’s quiet. She’s chill. Street life is a waste of life. If you have a passion that you love, pursue it as much as you can. Don’t ever give up. They might tell you, “Give up on your dream. You’re not going nowhere.” Just keep going. Keep on. My daughter keeps me going. Without her, I’d probably give up. But I don’t want her to grow up being a slave. I want her mind to be on a different level. I want her to live her dreams and be free. I thank my brother Aaron, Doc Frazier for bringing me into MainEventt. I thank Regg, too, for helping me become a better dancer and a better man. He told me, “You’ve got to start caring more. You’ve got to care about your life.” I thank my OGs Nugget, Corey and my good friend Jason Cust for helping me understand the style of flexin and helping me grow as a dancer. Don’t ever give up on what you love or what you’re here for. Just keep fighting for it. They always told me to keep going. I respect my OGs from Ringmasters for that.

I met Storyboard in junior high school. He was on the show. I was like, “Oh my god, you have to teach me.” He was like, “You have to be serious, because if you’re not serious I’m not going to waste me time.” He takes a lot of pride in his craft. In high school, I was just battling whoever I could just to prove my worth. I was serious. It didn’t matter whether I lost or won; I just had to show how serious I was. I accepted any challenged. People saw me, and they started talking, “Who’s this girl? She looks like Storyboard P”. Storyboard was a mentor to me. It’s hard being a female in the flex community. Even from the start, they just don’t respect you. They think that you’re weak, that you can’t hang. It’s hard and it’s intimidating, but I’m determined. This is really important to me. I need to show I’m not going to fail like other females. I’m not going to be like that. I don’t take no crap. I sit and observe, but I plan strategically. Whenever I’m at a session or an event, I plan ahead. I don’t want any slip-ups — one slip-up could cost you your reputation. That’s how the game goes. Everyone’s watching you, waiting for you to fail. So I try my best not to give them that opportunity. Especially being a female, you have to fight for that spotlight, because all the guys want it. Dance is very important to me. Since I was young I loved music. I loved reggae music and hip hop. I’m pretty much self-taught. Dance consumes my life — the way I look, the way I talk, what I eat. At first, my family, didn’t take it seriously. They thought it was a hobby. I had to just keep going hard for them to know this isn’t a joke. This is my life.

MY NAME IS SHELBY SHELLZ SUSIE FELTON.

My mom, tried to shelter me from almost everything. I was really into books. I didn’t have the opportunity to hang out as late as everyone else did. In my neighborhood, you’d see your friends hanging out in front of your building, and you’d be like, “oh, I wish I could do that, but I can’t”. If I wasn’t dancing I would be in the scientific field. I’d be studying meteorology or climatology. I am a big science head. I love earth science and meteorology. I am self-taught in that, too. I still do research on the weather. When I’m watching the news and see something weird, I’ll go research it and keep a mental note. In FLEXN, I have one piece that I’m doing a duet with Sam. It’s pretty much a story of two people who realize they want to be with each other but won’t — it can’t make it work. They both know they love each other. In my solitary dance, I’m frustrated. I’m beating myself it.

I’m 24 years old. I’m from Brooklyn, New York. …Shelby, the really quiet one, the emotional one, the keep-to-herself. … Shellz, the cracks jokes kind of person, the silly one. …Susie is just rude and in your face. She doesn’t care. I go to that place when I’m battling… When I was younger, around maybe 11 or 12, I wasn’t allowed to hang out late. I used to watch Flex N Brooklyn on BCAT. I was intrigued watching the bone-breaking, the animation, the stop-motion, the gliding…I watched it faithfully. I tried to mimic what they did. In the beginning I completely failed! Now I have a lot of flexibility. I’m capable of doing a couple of manythings…get low, waving.

I would love to shout-out Storyboard P. He is always… will be my first mentor. He helped me, guided me, and I love him for that. That’s my longtime friend. I would love to shout-out my mom, because although she may not understand what I do or how I dance, she still finds a way to support me. She recently got a tattoo of my name on her arm. It’s not Shelby; she tattooed ‘Shellz.’ I don’t think she understands the importance of tattooing that name instead of my birth name on her. I remember countless times we argued. I, trying to explain to her how serious this was to me, that this was my life. I didn’t want her to think that I was wasting my time, and by her doing that, I know now that she understands this is my life. Shelby cried.

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MY NAME IS DERICK DASHAWN UNIQUE MURRELD AKA SLICC.

Some people may look at flexn like it’s just bone-breaking and hyper things of twisting your arms. Nobody really understands the passion we have for it. That’s what we really get into in this show. I’m happy though. I’m really happy. It’s like a dream come true with this show. That’s why I go so hard, put so much energy into it, so much aggression, so much anger at the same time, it’s just upholding all of that with dance. That’s the best feeling. I had to just find myself. Now, it’s just like, I do what I do. It’s called get low. Then I mix it with bone-breaking — sometimes I interact between the two. Everything is just based around me being low, being able to come up real fast. Once you first start dancing, you have to find yourself. There’s going to be a time and place where you lose a battle, you’re going to run out of ideas of what to do with that same concept over and over. You’re going to have to either try something new or just give up. When I think about giving up flexn, it’s like I’m giving up my whole life. My solitary piece is the actual experience I had of being locked up. I was like 16 when I first got locked up. It was hell. I spent two weeks in there. I was like, “Okay, all right, whatever, two weeks, I’m back on the block or back on the streets, back doing something dumb, and then I’ll get locked up again.” I already knew the process, “Go to court? Whatever. Are they going to send me up, or are they going to let me go home?”, but then it got boring. It got real boring. So now when I do the solitary dance, it’s like I get to escape it. Some people don’t even know when their family members get locked up. Some people get lied to. Like when I got locked up when I was 17, they lied to my momma. I was still being questioned, and they lied to her. She had food for me because she already knew that they were going to send me away because of my record. I was going to go straight to the island. They lied to her.

People always told me, “You think you’re slick. Nah, he just have a smart mouth. Nah, he just mad slick with it.” They’re like, da-da-dada-da. I always heard that, that term, so it stuck with me. That’s just my personality: I’m Slicc, there’s nothing that you can tell me. I’m Slicc until the end of the world all when we take off to go to Mars. I’m here. That’s where I want to go. I want to go to Mars. A lot of people talk about countries and stuff. I want to go see if there’s really a Mars. I believe in it. If there’s a Mars, I want to be the first person to see it, like Christopher Columbus, when he supposedly discovered America. Just like that. Yeah, I discovered Mars. Me. I’m from Brooklyn, New York. I was raised in Red Hook projects. Then I moved back to East New York in Florentino, Brooklyn, New York. I’m 21. My piece in FLEXN is based on a true story. I used to be a so-called thug or gangster, in a sense. I used to be in the streets. I had a street mentality. A close family member got killed and I couldn’t do nothing about it but seek revenge, but revenge didn’t solve anything. That’s basically how the piece goes in the show. I just breakdown everything that happened. It was so difficult. It wasn’t difficult. It was just emotional. Being from the streets, then your family getting killed, then you have to change your life around, become a full-time dancer to make sure you don’t go down the path. I just want people to understand my story and get touched. 28

I just get to show that. Like boom, it’s free. You can’t stop me. I don’t care. You’re going to try to grab me? I’m over here. I get to just show that side that I didn’t get to show when I really got locked up. I’m free. I have a bad record with law enforcement, but if you see me now, I’m a dancer. I don’t even get into none of that no more. I know what my past is like, but I never let it stop me. Before this show, I ran into a few old friends. It was back to back I kept running into them. They was like, “Yo, son. You dance now? You take it serious? Yo, I remember you was ready to fight everybody. You had an anger problem.” When people tell me that, I smile. I didn’t forget about it. I just try not to get angry anymore. I try not to let things really bother me. If I’m fucking up a routine and Regg yells at me, I’ll get angry, but I don’t get angry like how I used to. Now I’m just like, “What?” “No, no. All right, cool.” I take dancing seriously, I’m down with MainEventt and put everything into flexn — everything, literally. My whole life is flexn. I was mainly into a lot of shit that had to do with violence. That’s just what I was into. Then once I took my focus from that — it was just straight dance — all of that was just left alone. So when people I run into and are like, “Yo, you used to be crazy. You used to be wild, son. Now you just mad calm. You dance, son. I would’ve never thought you would be a dancer.” It’s just crazy how my life just made a 180. And I always tell Regg it’s because of him. If I didn’t meet MainEventt, I would probably be locked up, because I would’ve never left the streets. I would’ve just been in the streets. That’s all I

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knew. “What? Dancing? Man, get that shit out of here.” I used to see other dancers, when I used to go uptown, somewhere in Red Hook too. It was just like, “Hm, I can dance better than them, but I’d rather just stand here and post up.” I’d just watch everybody and wait for some action — or wait for somebody who didn’t belonging in our hood. That used to be fun to me. Then all that changed. Now it’s just dancing to me. It’s just dancing now. That’s my lifestyle. I can’t go a day without dancing. I can’t go a minute without dancing. Everything’s just dancing, and I’m glad it’s like that now. In the courtroom scene, I know when I got locked up, and you stand in front of that judge, you don’t get to speak. Your public ‘pretender’ — that’s what I call them… I don’t call them... They get to talk for you. That’s it. The judge don’t hear you, unless you take it to grand jury — and who wants to go through all that. Nobody wants to take nothing to grand jury. That’s the worst thing you want to do with the system. Take it to grand jury, it’s more or less a process now. Now you’ve got to build evidence. We’re going to let him sit up here for God knows — six, five, seven months, until it’s court. Then you get court, you get sentenced, now you just gave the system six, seven months without nothing, without knowing anything, no charges, no nothing. You’re just in there until your court date. That’s all you know. But the way I act when I’m doing the court scene in the show, it’s like “You sentenced me to what? Hm, I’ll take those numbers. Give me a jersey number.” That’s all I used to hear when I was young, I always used to think I was going to get jersey numbers. ‘Jersey numbers,’ means he got a double-digit sentence. When I was going through the whole five — because out here you’ve got to go to the first cell, second cell, the third cell, the fourth cell. Then it’s probably night, so now movement stops. Now you’ve got to wait until the morning — 9:00, 10:00, or whenever they want to start to keep moving people. Then they move you. Then you go to the last cell, sitting there for like an hour. Go see a lawyer, then see the judge. Throughout that whole process, I was thinking that I was already going to Rikers Island. It was crazy. My mother, I knew she wasn’t coming, because she said if I get locked up again she’s not going to be there, I needed to learn my lesson. So I knew she wasn’t coming. I knew it. It wasn’t like a bad mother choice; it was just more like, “You’ve got to learn now. You’re not a baby. It’s not time for none of that.” In a way, that’s how I looked at it. I never looked at it like she abandoned me, no. I just knew she was trying to show me a lesson as a mother. Not saying she couldn’t control me, but I was just in my own head. Like, nobody could tell me nothing. I’m not listening to nobody. I listen to my grandmother, but then at certain times I was like, I’m not listening to nobody. Even when I listen to mother, sometimes I get like that. Like, I don’t listen to nobody. I don’t hear nobody, because I may be in my own head. I used to like being alone, until I met MainEventt. It was so crazy. I just wanted to be alone. I used to have tension. I wanted to be around Regg because I look at him as a father figure, or somebody I know who isn’t going to guide me down a dark alley. He’s somebody I could come to with my problems. Then it just changed, everything just connected, it really changed my life. The show gave me the chance to put it all on the table, things that people don’t know, things that people may think they know. I used to be outside until four in the morning, just chilling. That was our pattern. Then I’d sneak back in the house, go to sleep, wake up,

I’m back outside. There were times when things really got hard, but I still came to practice and rehearsed. Still came and just laughed and played with everybody like nothing’s going wrong at the household. You know what I mean? It’s just the grind of it, and that’s just how I look at it now: I’ve just got to keep grinding. That’s why I’m glad I get to do this with this show. In Red Hook we’re all bros. All of us. We probably fight each other and come to each other the next day. But anybody from outside the hood? Never. If somebody gives off a different vibe we’d give them a warning that they weren’t where they should be. That’s how it was. It’s funny, that was our lives. I used to live like that until I started flexn. I’m amazed sometimes. Like, yo, my life changed. When I see a criminal on the news, I already know what was in his head. He wasn’t thinking. Now he got caught because he didn’t see them niggas right there on the corner. He didn’t see the Ds in the spot — didn’t know they were undercover. I got to really escape that life. It was hype. It just turned stupid to me quick. Everything started to be so dumb. Like, what? Bro, I’m not going to keep beef with these niggas for no reason. We’re not getting no money. I’ve got to get bread. I’ve got to do something. That’s how it usually happens. You become street wise, then from the streets you fight, then from fighting you start shooting. Dancing just interrupted everything before I went deeper into the game. Dancing just came out of nowhere. It was like a new drug. Like, yo, I’m about to sell this dancing. Yeah, I’m about to go on the block and sell flexn. Loyalty is a word that’s carved in my heart since I turned MainEventt. I’m really excited for the show. Like, really excited. It’s been my dream to just to see flexn platformed. I know most people are going to say: “What is this? Where was it hiding?” How did y’all not find this decades ago? A lot of people know about ballet, voguing, this and this, people still don’t even know what flexn is across the world. We went to Manchester; it was like a whole other thing to them. It’s crazy. We get to do it with Regg. It’s an all-time dream. I want flexn to be talked about the way hip-hop, choreo and modern are. I really want flexn to be at the top of every list. I want to give thanks to Regg for taking me in as a young kid and taking a chance with somebody who didn’t have nothing. He gave me something. Everything is an image, especially with flexn. You can’t be on the block, drinking beer and try to flex. Appearances is everything. You make the style and whatever you give off is what they see. Flexn is being yourself. You can only be yourself when you flex. There’s no rules, but be yourself. Or, sometimes you’ve got to become yourself. You’ve got to find yourself. I was trying to balance streets and still trying to dance. I just had to dance. But don’t play and think dancing makes you soft, I’ll still knock somebody out right now. But now I’m quiet and humble. “That’s that dancing boy, right?” That’s what I get. I still be showing — but I give a different impression to people now. People still remember the stuff I did, but I’m pretty sure now they know he’s never going back to the streets. He dances. My guys in the hood, they know now. I saw what happened to one of my bros and my family, I don’t play with none of that. Now I’m a dancer. I don’t think about none of that any more. It’s been hard. There was this incident in my area. Some guys from another projects came, jumped my friend. We went back over there. I had a quick thought about the things that were already on my record. I had a lot

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of counts, some of them robbery or possession of a weapon. I knew if I got anymore, I knew I wasn’t going to see light until I turned 27 — I was probably 17 then. I almost got caught. I was the only one who made it out of that situation. Right after that, MainEventt tried out for America’s Best Dance Crew and I believed that we could get it. From there it was like, yeah, I’m not going back to the streets. I could do this dancing thing.

eventhough when we’d get into arguments it’d come up again. “All you do is dance!” You know when people are angry, they just say stuff. But when I have a battle coming up she always says “good luck”. Yes, she is coming to the show.

Then it started bringing girls. Then it was over for that. Because the streets, you know, girls like bad boys. I always had girls on my fists. “Oh, what’s your name? Oh, I heard about you.” Damn it, now I dance and I’m quiet, and everybody’s like, “Who him?” When people were pressing on me, it’s too funny, because that’s the first thing they do. I be like, “I dance.” “Oh, let me see something.” “Oh, when the music plays.” I love that, now. Now it brings girls. I don’t even got to be in the streets. I don’t got to sell those drugs. I’m not flashing anything. I am a dancer. I’m the tea of dancing. Skinny Jesus. Especially when it comes to the ladies.

MY NAME IS TYME. MY FULL NAME IS GLENDON CHARLES, AKA TYME.

That’s basically it. I am Slicc. That’s it.

I know flexn is going to take off. It’s that time now. There’s no secondguessing it. I’m going to be known as a flexer. People are going to say whatever they’re going to say. They hated on Jesus, so I know they’re going to say a lot of bad things about me. I don’t care. I’m dying as a flexer. That’s what’s in my heart, I don’t care what nobody else says. This show is going to be big. I just can’t wait. We’re going to rock that stage so crazy that the earth is going to move. Success for me is just people knowing my story and really knowing me, and knowing why I love to dance. Dancing is in my blood, but flexn is my veins. Everything is just all contaminated. I just want people to know: That boy, he really loves to dance. It’s not really about the money. Yes, that helps. You can get whatever you want because you dance so hard. That’s cool. I’m dancing all damn day. Doesn’t matter what I’m doing. I’m dancing, playing around. I’m still being me the whole damn day and I’m getting paid for that. That’s amazing. That’s an amazing job. I don’t see how anybody could ever argue that. It just feels amazing. Now I get to go home, get on the train, I do not dance for your money. It’s over for dancing for money. Even if the cops stop us, “Yeah, we wasn’t dancing for money, officer. We wasn’t. We really was just dancing. We announced that we don’t want no money. We ask that they take out their phones and press record.” I’d rather be in your phone, because I know you’re going to show somebody, then that person’s going to show somebody, then that person’s going to mention that you showed them. Word of mouth: That’s how good things travel. In the beginning, my family was like, “You need a job.” When I danced in her living room, my grandmother she’d just looked at me like, what are you doing? Why are you dancing like that? Then it was, “You don’t have a job yet? What are you doing?” I was like, “I’ll dance.” I had general labor types of jobs before I started dancing, they were giving payment that I didn’t like. I used to work at the FedEx store, at Applebee’s, working for some pizza company, a moving company. I didn’t really want to work for someone else. My family wasn’t supportive until I started putting videos on YouTube and getting into battles, then they had proof. I’m really doing something. I’m really trying to progress. Now they say, “Yo, when’s the next show.” My mom, she supported my dancing 30

I’m 22. I actually started dancing because I was failing gym class. I had two friends — Ayinde aka Nyte and Jerrod aka Droopz, they’re both in MainEventt. I needed the credits. I heard about a talent show. I started off at a talent show. Nyte and Droopz, they told me about it. I wasn’t really interested. They knew me from around school. We were friends, but they knew me for being flexible. Like in gym class, I would throw back my arms and a lot of people would be disgusted. I made an arrangement with my phys ed teacher to do the talent show so she’d pass me. After the talent show, I realized I had a feel for the style of dance we were doing, flexn. Before that I had watched Flex N Brooklyn and other dance videos on YouTube. After the talent show, I met Brixx. Together we formed a team called Royal Takeover. We were going around for a while. This was when we really started getting into the flex community. We went to sessions. It was like the BSV and the DFS sessions.

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After that, people saw us around, and they got to know us. We got to know the style better. From going to the sessions, we all started changing in our own ways. Ayinde, he picked up gliding, Jerrod picked up body-grooving and I picked up bone-breaking. We started getting into battles, dancing publicly on 14th Street Union Square. Our main thing was making videos. We made a lot of them. We were a young team trying to push our name and get out there. I was about 16 or 17 then.

I’m a bone breaker with a concept. As a bone breaker I feel different. I feel like I’m not even human because of the things I do. When I bone break, I feel like I’m taking everyone out of their comfort zone in a good way. For somebody my size, it doesn’t look like I’m supposed to move like that. I’ve gotten so many reactions from people. Bonebreaking is an event style. It depends on how you use it. It can be godly. It can be deadly. I create illusions and I use my flexibility to my advantage. I’m a bone-breaking illusionist.

When you look at Flex N Brooklyn, it’s like a place that’s out of reach, yet it’s in Brooklyn. I’d see people do things that are like, wow, real arty. Things that caught my eye. I got to meet people. I saw Regg on Flex N Brooklyn.

Master your craft and make sure you’re good at what you do, and try to be innovative. Try to teach people. Flexn for me, how I look at it, it saved a lot of people. In our flexn community, in our culture, we have a lot of people that are ex-gangbangers. They’ve been to jail and all of that. But to me, flexn strayed them away from that whole life.

Meeting Regg is when everything changed for me, personally. I went to Regg’s house through a flexer named Elijah aka Jigs. We went to the session. Regg, saw me dance. I don’t know if I went once or twice, but I know that one time I went, I battled somebody and they really liked me. It’s the real deal right here [at Regg’s house]. This is where all the magic happens. This is the house where we came up with everything. For most of our shows, this is where we rehearsed. We dance for shows like York College, BMCC, Francis Louis, City Tech. We did a lot of shows. The new generation of MainEventt, this is where we became a family. This is where we grew together as a team. My solitary piece is me getting sucked into my madness. I’ve had it, and this is the breaking point. It’s overshadowed me, I can’t control it. One piece is a reenactment of a bunch of situations with the cops. We have Eric Garner, Mike Brown, Trayvon Martin — cases like those. It’s not just one story, it symbolizes what they go through, what they went through. Especially being a young black man the justice system, just looks at you like you’re a piece of meat. It’s crazy how the situation happened with the two police officers getting killed. They had families, too. But it just shocked the world when this happened to these two police officers. We have young black men like myself getting murdered all the time by these police officers, and the higherups don’t see what’s going on. They don’t want to bring it to everyone’s attention, take it more seriously.

If you’re really going to learn how to flex, try to get to the point where you can teach somebody and pass it on — help them get away from whatever trouble they’re in. Flexn is very powerful and very inspiring. I can tell you that firsthand. As a flexer, I wish that I could go back in time and meet Reggie. Growing up I lived across the street from Regg, not even knowing I’m living on the same block with him. In East New York, when going to my grandmother’s house — they would come to my block parties. It’s crazy how our destinies are intertwined. I’m glad I’m in the team now. Without Regg, I wouldn’t be here today, a lot of people don’t understand that. When I first came around, I didn’t come to MainEventt. I didn’t say I wanted to be MainEventt. Regg saw me dance and he saw something in me. He came and he asked me, “Do you want to be MainEventt?” I said yes right away, no questions asked. It was my dream to be MainEventt. Regg showed me a lot of stuff as a human being. I want to give a shout-out to Jerrod aka Droops. That’s my brother, man, from high school all the way to now. That’s my bro. I want to give a shout-out to Ayinde aka Nyte. That’s my bro. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be in the show, either.

We build up so much energy, we stomp, we release that energy, and everybody’s energy is just flowing into each other. It flows through me. When we come together — I come to the front. We put our hands up, symbolizing everything that’s going on with the Eric Garner story and Trayvon Martin. That right there is powerful to me, it means a lot. Those pieces put me in a good position. I’m comfortable with where I’m at. Learn the background history of flexn, where it came from. Moves can get you but so far, but a style is something that everyone can feel. You can come at me with a thousand moves, but if I have style and I have mastered an art and I’m powerful with it, you’re not beating me. Being a flexer, we do a lot, but it’s not easy. It’s really not easy. Whichever style you pick, you have to go hard with it. You have to really practice it. There are some styles that are harder than others, like pauzin for instance. There’s a whole art to it. There’s certain gestures and movements that you have to know. Bone-breaking, of course, is really not easy to do. Then there’s gliding. You really have to master each style order to really have it. armoryonpark.org

opening the door, or you can see me killing somebody. You can see all that in my dance.

MY NAME IS VYPA. MY REAL NAME IS KHIO DUNCAN.

My solitary dance is me feeling like I did everything wrong. I feel like shit. I think my parents want to abort me because I did everything wrong. I’m just killing myself, and now I’m in jail. Now I don’t know what to do. I’m trying to figure out how to better myself — and to better myself through dance. I know in the future I’m going to get better, I don’t want to live that life. I don’t want to go to jail. I don’t want to be confined. I want to be out, living my life. I want to better myself. I’m in Slicc’s piece and in Sam’s piece. I’m a gangster in both. In Slicc’s, we’re in a gang, and he’s trying to say that he’s moving away from his gang life to be with his dance life. In the court room scene I’m caught with marijuana. They bring me and I’m angry about it, so I dance that to Rich who plays the judge.

I’m 23. I’ve been raised in Brooklyn my whole life. My parents are Jamaican. I was young when I went to Jamaica. I was probably three or four years old. I remember the scenery. I remember we were in the hillside going up, and you could see down over everything. Growing up, in the first grade I had my first dance competition, all I knew was the heel toe and bruck up. I danced on stage and the crowd response I got, I felt like this is me. I could do this. So I went on a route. I was doing dance hall and shatta dances from first grade all the way to the end of high school. After a while I went to City Tech and I met Dre and a guy named Hamlet. They were doing flexn. One day I was stretching, and I could bone-break since I was young. Dre sees me bone-breaking, and he was like, “Hey, do that again.” He put my arms in a motion. From then I started flexing because I could bone break. Now I’m doing reggae steps from old-school, connecting and trying gliding. I’m just trying all the elements right now so I can be more of an overall dancer than just a bone breaker.

One of the biggest questions for me right now is, am I dancing for the long run? I love dancing. I want to dance as long as my legs keep going. This is what I want to do. This is what I feel. This is what makes me feel great inside, getting out all my anger, my frustration on the dance floor — throw it out there and show you how I feel. I’m not really a street person. Everybody knows I’m a nice guy. I want to shout out MainEventt, because without MainEventt I probably wouldn’t be dancing as I am right now; my friends that come to my events to support me. My family look at my battles and critique me, see what else I need, see what’s missing. My family are working people. They just love working, because you’ve got to pay bills and all that. They didn’t really support me with dance at first, they didn’t see why I liked it. I decided to do what I want to do, and that’s dance. Now they’re accepting it because they see this is what I want to do — it’s what I am doing. Do what you love. Don’t regret doing something that you love. You only live once.

Dre got me into flex, he brought me around to the team MainEventt. I’ve been flexn ever since. I studied accounting in school, then I went to marketing and management. Right now, I’m in the process of going back to school. I’m just getting my money situated before I go to college. I might try doing accounting again because I’m really good with numbers. I recently came off a nine-month tour with Afrika-Afrika. We were in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The Armory show is interesting because it’s not really just a performance. It’s about how you portray your moves, how everything comes out in your style so everybody can see what art is in your craft. When I was performing in AfrikaAfrika, I was making faces that portrayed emotions with my bone breaks. That caught people’s attention. Now at the Armory, I don’t want to do that. I want to make myself a picture, not just a person that has crazy arms. That’s the biggest thing for me. I’m trying to work within my style, making it look like art. I’m trying to work on animation so it makes a picture that you can see. You can see me 32

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If it wasn’t for Regg coming to my job at the YMCA to get a gym membership, I probably wouldn’t be here now on this stage. He approached me because he thought I was acting like I was ‘nice’ lol (which I wasn’t). I actually thought I was gonna get beat up by him and the other members of MainEventt at that time. But he turned out to be a cool dude and we have been brothers from another mother ever since.

MY NAME IS RICHARD Y.G. HUDSON.

No sheeney, but I want to be just as powerful as Regg. He’s a big guy but he’s versatile. That’s kind of how I am. Being that he can do all of that, that’s what I’m aiming for. Who knows maybe be it will be clash of the titans one day! If I can be better than him, hey, I’m better. But I want to be just as good. In FLEXN, I’m featured in a piece with Cal, I play the judge in the courtroom and I have a solitary dance. I want to thank Jehovah for blessing me to live all these years and blessing me with the talents that he’s given me. Without him, nothing would be possible. I’d love to shout-out Regg for giving our brotherhood a chance and letting me learn from him. I give him a big shout-out for that. My brothers and team MainEventt, I am you and you are me. I also want to thank everybody in the dance world, that gave me some kind of input as far as me and my style. I would also like to shout out my other brother O, he’s a reason why I’m flexn today. I’d like to dedicate this whole show to my cousin Jpop and grandma Lucy that passed away. I wish they was here to see a lot of stuff and give me the advice that I needed at times. I wish they were here to see a lot of stuff that I’ve worked through, what I’ve become now. I’d also like to shout-out to the love of my life, Krystal, my little mama, Zahara, my two dogs Layla and Marley. My biggest shout out goes to my Mom Dukes and my second mom aunt Daphne, I love you guys forever and a day! Thank you!

I’m a Brooklyn flex dancer from Bed-Stuy. My style of flexn is pauzin, a very aggressive and precise style . The style came from my OG Regg Roc. Pauzin started from him pressing play and pause on the VCR and saying I should make my body do that. Besides my style, my favorite style is gliding. I like to see gliders. That’s something with every pauzer. Every pauser loves to see gliders, and every glider loves to see pauzers. They’re so smooth, and they’ve got to slide everywhere. Pauzers are more aggressive and rough. We are so aggressive, we want to be that smooth at least that’s my opinion. Almost every pauzer loves a glider, and almost every glider loves a pauzer. In the beginning, I was a hip-hop dancer learning choreo and trying to glide. I knew Banks before everything. Banks and myself used to dance together in a group called FatalTouch a few years before I started flexn. I had another homeboy named Derrick aka Vocalz that used to dance in a group called fully loaded. He sparked my flexn flame. Then I used to watch Flex N Brooklyn and I always saw Regg and X, to me they were the modd. It made me a curious. Later when YouTube first started to come up, I used to see people flexn and battling. Certain battles like Geo and Professor brought me over the edge to the flex world. I ended up meeting Professor right after I saw that video, and he chewed me (destroyed me) in a battle. But Geo, that was one of the people I wanted to chew, as we would say in the flex world. The day I got ‘nice’ that was the first person I was going for. armoryonpark.org

MEET THE PANELISTS Charles M. Blow

Mary E. Buser

Blow has been a New York Times Op-Ed columnist since 2008. His column appears on Monday and Thursday. Blow joined The New York Times in 1994 as a graphics editor and quickly became the paper’s graphics director, a position he held for nine years. In that role, he led The Times to a best of show award from the Society for News Design for The Times’s information graphics coverage of 9/11, the first time the award had been given for graphics coverage. He also led the paper to its first two best of show awards from the Malofiej Infographics World Summit for work that included coverage of the Iraq war. Blow became the paper’s design director for news before leaving in 2006 to become the art director of National Geographic magazine. Before joining The Times, Blow had been a graphic artist at The Detroit News. Blow is the author of Fire Shut Up in My Bones, released in September 2014. He graduated magna cum laude from Grambling State University in Louisiana, where he received a B.A. in mass communications. He lives in Brooklyn and has three children.

Buser worked in the mental health field on Rikers Island from 1995 to 2000, including as Assistant Chief of Mental Health in the punitive segregation unit, “The Bing.” She co-founded the Samaritans of New York suicide prevention hotline, which she directed from 1984 to 1990. Her upcoming book, Lockdown on Rikers, chronicles her Rikers experience and is due out in September, 2015.

Jeannette Bocanegra Bocanegra is the Family and Community Organizer for Community Connections for Youth. She is a dedicated mother of six and a longtime resident of the South Bronx. Bocanegra is an active educational activist and organizer who has worked to mobilize parents for more than ten years. She noticed early on the deterioration of schools in the community as well as the lack of parental involvement in shaping policy and practice. She has been involved in parent advocacy and educational reform through her roles as a public school volunteer, PTA President, and Vice President and Secretary to Community School District 10 Presidents Council. Prior to joining CCFY, she worked as a full-time Parent Involvement Coordinator, providing professional development for parents across the city. Recently, Bocanegra has taken an active role in advocating for families with youth in the juvenile justice system, based on her own difficult experiences as the parent of an incarcerated youth. She strives to ensure that young people who have come into contact with the juvenile justice system are given a second chance to become productive members of their communities, and to provide families with the tools and resources to help their children succeed.

Majora Carter Carter is an urban revitalization strategy consultant, real estate developer, and Peabody Award winning broadcaster. She is responsible for the creation & successful implementation of numerous greeninfrastructure projects, policies, and job training and placement systems. After establishing Sustainable South Bronx and Green For All (among other organizations) to carry on that work, she built on this foundation with innovative ventures and insights into urban economic developments designed to help move Americans out of poverty. Her long list of awards and honorary degrees include accolades from groups as diverse as Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, John Podesta’s Center for American Progress, Goldman Sachs, as well as a MacArthur “genius” Fellowship. Her 2006 TEDtalk was one of the first 6 videos to launch their groundbreaking website. Carter is a Board Member of the US Green Building Council, and the Andrew Goodman Foundation. Carter has continually set new standards of excellence with projects in her South Bronx community, while expanding her reach through philanthropic pursuits and business interests that have all pointed toward greater self-esteem and economic potential for low-income people everywhere.

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Hernan Carvente

Sister Marion Defeis

Carvente joined the Vera Institute of Justice in 2013 and currently works as a research assistant on conditions of confinement, including youth voice in facility-based and statewide juvenile justice policy reform. Carvente is a senior at the CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice where he is pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree in criminal justice. Outside of Vera and John Jay, Hernan is a member of the New York State Juvenile Justice Advisory Group (NYS JJAG) and the Citizens Policy and Complaint Review Council (CPCRC). He also is the Northeast Regional Representative for the Coalition for Juvenile Justice’s (CJJ) National Youth Committee. His goals to reform the structure of the U.S. Criminal Justice system stem from his own experiences in the juvenile justice system. In May 2013, Carvente was awarded the Spirit of Youth Award by CJJ and, in December 2014, was awarded the Next Generation Champion for Change Award by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Defeis served as a chaplain for 23 years at Rikers Island Correctional Facility in New York before retiring in 2007. Since retiring, she has dedicated herself to opposing the use of solitary confinement.

Michael A. Corriero Corriero is the Executive Director of the New York Center for Juvenile Justice. He was a judge for twenty-eight years in the Criminal Courts of New York State, and is the author of Judging Children as Children: A proposal for a Juvenile Justice System. In the last sixteen years of his tenure as a judge, he presided over the Youth Part, a special court established in Manhattan’s Adult Supreme Court, where he had the responsibility of resolving the cases of thousands of adolescents as young as thirteen, prosecuted as adults pursuant to New York’s Juvenile Offender Law.

Shawn Dove Dove serves as the CEO of the Campaign for Black Male Achievement (CBMA), a national membership organization designed to ensure the growth, sustainability and impact of leaders and organizations committed to improving the life outcomes of black men and boys in America. In 2015, Dove spun-off CBMA into an independent entity from the Open Society Foundations, where he launched CBMA in 2008 and played a catalytic role in building the nascent field of black male achievement. He has over two decades of leadership experience as a youth development professional, community-builder and advocate for children and families, designing and leading initiatives locally and nationally. Previously, Dove served as Director of Youth Ministries for First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Somerset, NJ and was a pioneering leader of the nation’s Beacon School movement while working for the Harlem Children’s Zone. During his career Dove has often used his passion for writing and publishing to create a platform for voices otherwise not heard. He was the founding editor-in-chief of Harlem Overheard, a youth-produced newspaper, and Proud Poppa, a quarterly newsmagazine created to celebrate, elevate and replicate fatherhood success principles in the Black community. A graduate of Wesleyan University and Columbia University Business School’s Institute for Not-for-Profit Management, Dove was a recipient of the Charles H. Revson Fellowship at Columbia University and was awarded a 2014 Prime Movers Fellowship for social movement leaders.

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Soffiyah Elijah

Jennifer Gonnerman

Elijah is an accomplished advocate, attorney, scholar and educator, and the first woman and first person of color to lead the nearly 170year old Correctional Association in its mission to create a fairer, more effective and humane criminal justice system. Prior to joining the staff of the Correctional Association in March 2011, Elijah served as Deputy Director and a clinical instructor at the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard Law School. At the Institute, she trained hundreds of law students to become effective and ethical lawyers and to engage in local and national reform of criminal and juvenile justice policies. A native New Yorker, Elijah practiced criminal and family law in New York City for more than 30 years. Before moving to Harvard, she was a member of the faculty and Director and supervising attorney of the Defender Clinic at the City University of New York School of Law. She was a supervising attorney at the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, where she defended indigent members of the Harlem community, and has also worked as a staff attorney for the Juvenile Rights Division of the Legal Aid Society. Elijah earned her Bachelor of Arts from Cornell University and Juris Doctorate from Wayne State University Law School.

Gonnerman joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2015. She came to the magazine from New York Magazine, where she was a contributing editor for seven years. Previously, she was a staff writer at the Village Voice. Her journalism has received numerous prizes, including a Livingston Award for Young Journalists. Her first piece for The New Yorker, “Before the Law,” about a teen-ager who spent three years in jail without a trial, was published in 2014, and won the John Jay College/Harry F. Guggenheim Award for Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting. Her first book, Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett, was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Rachel Gilmer Gilmer is the Associate Director of the African American Policy Forum (AAPF) at Columbia University, helping to develop and execute the organization’s strategic agenda for advancing racial and gender justice. Gilmer has held a variety of positions in government and non-profits, doing policy development, youth organizing, advocacy and social service delivery. Prior to joining AAPF, Gilmer served as the Leadership Academy Director for the Portland African American Leadership Forum, a local organization connected to a network of organizations nationally, focused on bringing together leaders from across the community to develop and advance a common advocacy strategy. In this role, she oversaw the organization’s policy and research agenda, including leading a community-driven campaign focused on re-addressing the systemic displacement of Portland’s historic Black neighborhoods. The campaign received national press attention and research partnerships and resulted in the allotment of 20 million additional dollars towards affordable housing in one of Portland’s most rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods. While in this role, Gilmer also founded a year-long leadership development program focused on creating a generative leadership pipeline and supporting young Black people in becoming transformative leaders who hold a lifelong commitment to fighting for racial justice and creating lasting change in their community.

Susan Herman Herman, the New York Police Department Deputy Commissioner for Collaborative Policing, leads Police Commissioner Bratton’s efforts to further reduce crime through the development of partnerships between the police and communities. Collaborative policing has been a cornerstone of the police commissioner’s strategy and it is based upon a shared responsibility between the police and the community to work together to reduce, eliminate and prevent the incidence of crime and to improve the quality of life in neighborhoods. Community policing is another cornerstone of Commissioner Bratton’s policing strategy. Herman is on leave from her post as Pace University, Dyson College, associate professor of Criminal Justice and Security.

Rukia Lumumba Lumumba is the Director of Youth Programs at CASES, with more than 12 years of experience in youth development and criminal justice. Prior to joining CASES, she was the Director of Youth Services at the Center for Community Alternatives where she oversaw development and management of the Youth Program Unit. She also previously clerked for the Juvenile Service Program of the Washington, D.C., Public Defender Service, where she represented youth detained in juvenile facilities on claims against staff abuse and inhumane living conditions. Lumumba currently serves on the board of directors of Voices Unbroken, a nonprofit agency providing creative writing workshops to youth in prisons and foster care youth residing in group homes.

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Ismael Nazario

Marlon Peterson

Nazario is a 25-year-old caseworker at the non-profit organization, The Fortune Society, in New York City. From 2005 to 2008 (aged 16-19), he spent time as a prisoner on Rikers Island, including 300 days in solitary confinement.

Peterson is the founder and chief re-imaginator of The Precedential Group, a social justice consulting firm. He has previously served as the Director of Community Relations at The Fortune Society, Associate Director of the Crown Heights Community Mediation Center, founding coordinator of Youth Organizing to Save Our Streets, and Co-Founder of How Our Lives Link Altogether (H.O.L.L.A!). Peterson now serves as board chair of Families For Freedom and board member of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence. Peterson is also a member of the New York City Task Force to Combat Gun Violence. As a writer he is a member of the writing collective Brothers Writing to Live and uses his writing to advocate beyond his 9-to-5. His writings have appeared in Ebony, Gawker, The Crime Report, Black Press USA, The Brooklyn Reader, and was featured in the internationally acclaimed blog, Humans of New York. His essays also appear in the books, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others, by Kiese Laymon, and Love Lives Here, Too, by Sheila Rule. He holds an A.A.S in Criminal Justice from Ashworth University and a BS in Organizational Behavior from New York University.

James P. O’Neill O’Neill is the 38th individual to hold the post of Chief of Department for the New York Police Department. He was appointed to the New York City Transit Police Department in January 1983, and began his career on patrol in Transit District 1. He was promoted to Sergeant in September 1987, Sergeant Special Assignment in April 1991, Lieutenant in August 1992, Lieutenant Special Assignment in August 1995, Captain in November 1997, Deputy Inspector in December 2001, Inspector in August 2003, Deputy Chief in October 2005 and to Chief of Patrol on June 2, 2014. He has served in Transit Districts 1, 3 and 11, the 25, 44, 52 and Central Park Precincts, the Firearms Training Section, the Police Academy, Warrant Section, SATCOM Detective-Narcotics Operations, the Vice Enforcement Division, the Narcotics Division, the Fugitive Enforcement Division, and the Office of the Police Commissioner. O’Neill most recently served as Chief of Patrol. He also served as Commanding Officer of the Office of the Police Commissioner, the 25, 44 and Central Park Precincts, the Vice Enforcement Division, the Narcotics Division, as well as the Fugitive Enforcement Division. He has also served as Executive Officer of the 52 Precinct and SATCOM Detective Narcotic Operations. O’Neill holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Government and a Master of Public Administration degree from John Jay College.

Jennifer J. Parish Parish is the director of criminal justice advocacy at the Urban Justice Center’s Mental Health Project. In this capacity, she advocates for discharge planning for people with psychiatric disabilities released from jails and prisons, elimination of the practice of placing people with mental illness in solitary confinement in correctional facilities, and the expansion of alternatives to incarceration for people with psychiatric disabilities involved in the criminal justice system. Parish’s work includes systemic litigation, legislative advocacy, and community education. She also organizes Mental Health Alternatives to Solitary Confinement, a coalition fighting to end the placement of people with mental illness in solitary confinement in state prisons. She is a founding member of the New York City Jails Action Coalition. Prior to joining the Urban Justice Center in 2004, Parish worked as a public defender with The Legal Aid Society of New York and as a visiting associate clinical professor at the Criminal Law Clinic at Cardozo Law School. Parish received her B.A. from Austin College with a degree in Communication Arts and her J.D. from New York University School of Law.

Victoria Sammartino Sammartino is the Founder of Voices UnBroken, a Bronx-based nonprofit organization that makes high-quality creative writing workshops accessible to vulnerable youth, with a focus on working with girls and young women (ages 12-24) in the juvenile/adult justice system and in the foster care system. Sammartino is a Bronx native who participated in a number of youth programs as a teenager, including CityKids and The Ella Baker/Cleveland Robinson Academy (run by the NYS Martin Luther King, Jr. Commission and Institute for Nonviolence). She began keeping a journal as a child and has traveled around the country facilitating writing workshops and performing her own poetry. Sammartino started her career as an educator at the high school for adolescent girls on Rikers Island. After resigning her teaching position, she went on to facilitate a 10-year poetry workshop for adolescent girls on Rikers Island, and to found Voices UnBroken. Voices UnBroken now serves over 600 young people in restrictive residential settings each year.

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Michael Schwirtz

Ronald Tabano

Schwirtz is a reporter for The New York Times. He joined the Moscow bureau of The Times in 2006, where he worked as a reporter and researcher until May 2012. After studying Russian at the University of Central Florida, he spent a year in St. Petersburg and Kiev, where he had an internship with the United States Embassy. He returned two years later to earn a master’s degree at the European University at St. Petersburg. Back in the United States, he researched political movements in the former Soviet Union for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, while studying for a master’s degree in international relations at George Washington University.

Tabano is Principal of the Wildcat Academy, with over 40 years of experience in education. He began his work as a 6th grade teacher, moved to teaching social studies and ELA at the middle and high school levels, and eventually became an Assistant Principal. Following this, he worked in the community creating job opportunities for struggling adolescents and was a founding member of both Wildcat Academy, which opened in 1992 under the NYC DOE and the first Second Opportunity School (SOS) in the Bronx which opened in 1997. Tabano also started the first New Beginnings School in 1999 in Queens. He marshaled Wildcat Academy through the charter conversion process in 2000. Today as CEO/Principal of Wildcat, Tabano is responsible for a budget of $9.5 million and a staff of 54.

Danielle Sered Sered founded and directs Common Justice, an innovative alternative to incarceration and victim service program for serious and violent felonies, and a demonstration project of the Vera Institute of Justice. She has served as deputy director of Vera’s Adolescent Reentry Initiative and led the youth programs at the Harlem Community Justice Center. She sits on the Advisory Council to the New York State Office of Victims Services, Diversity Advisory Committee to the federal Office for Victims of Crime, New York State Governor’s Council on Reentry and Community Reintegration, and Advisory Board to the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice. Common Justice received the Award for Innovation in Victim Services from Attorney General Holder and the federal Office for Victims of Crime. Sered received her BA from Emory University and her master’s degrees from New York University and Oxford University, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar.

Ritchie Torres Torres was elected to New York City Council in November 2013 to represent the communities of the Central Bronx. Torres is the first openly gay candidate to be elected to legislative office in the Bronx and the youngest member of the City Council. A lifelong son of the Bronx, Torres was raised in a single-parent household, growing up and living most of his life in a NYCHA public housing development. His family’s hardship instilled in him a deep-seated commitment to serve New York’s low-income and working class communities. Torres is a product of Bronx public schools, and got an early start in public service at the age of 16. As Housing Director, Torres organized tenant associations in dilapidated buildings throughout the district, and rallied residents to fight for building improvements and rent reductions. Torres pressured landlords to fix boilers so tenants could have heat on cold nights, and to seal leaky roofs to prevent water damage and mold. Torres knocked on thousands of doors in both private and NYCHA developments to personally conduct site inspections and document conditions, ensuring critical housing issues were promptly and adequately addressed.

Eli B. Silverman, PhD Silverman is Professor Emeritus at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center of City University of New York. He previously served with the U.S. Department of Justice and the National Academy of Public Administration in Washington, DC and was a Visiting Exchange Professor at the Police Staff College in Bramshill, England. He has served as an expert witness, consultant to and trainer with numerous criminal justice agencies throughout the world. His recent publications include: “Police Manipulation of Crime Reporting: Insider Revelations”(Justice Quarterly, 2014); “The Crime Numbers Game: Management by Manipulation” (CRC Press, 2012); “NYPD Battles Crime: Innovative Strategies in Policing” (Boston: Northeastern University Press); “The New York City Police Department’s Compstat: Dream or Nightmare?” with John Eterno; International Journal of Police Science and Management, Vol. 8, No. 3; “Police Practice in Hong Kong and New York: A Comparative Analysis” with Allan Y. Jiao; International Journal of Police Science and Management, Vol. 8, No. 2. 38

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Benjamin B. Tucker First Deputy Commissioner Tucker has been the NYPD Deputy Commissioner of training since 2014. Tucker began his law enforcement career with the NYPD in 1969 as a police trainee and was sworn in as a police officer in 1972. During his policing career, he served as School Task Force Officer and Gang Intervention Officer, instructor in the Police Academy and legal advisor under the Deputy Commissioner of Legal Matters. He also served as Assistant Director of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, Deputy Assistant Director for Law Enforcement Services in the New York City Mayor’s Office of Operations, Deputy Director for Operations in the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) within the U.S. Department of Justice, and Chief Executive for School Safety and Planning in the New York City Department of Education. Under President Clinton’s administration, he served as the Deputy Director of the COPS Office, which was created to implement the President’s commitment to hire 100,000 police officers. He also oversaw the creation of the network of Regional Community Policing Institutes, which provided training across the country on community policing strategies. In 2009, President Obama nominated him as Deputy Director for State, Local, and Tribal Affairs; he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate. He rejoined the NYPD in February 2014.

Reverend Dr. Alfonso Wyatt Rev. Dr. Wyatt has provided vital leadership to youth, young adults and professionals in both the sacred and secular communities in New York and around the country. He recently retired as vice president of The Fund for the City of New York after serving for two decades. He is currently on the staff of The Greater Allen Cathedral of New York. Wyatt has mentored thousands ranging from young people in foster care and juvenile detention facilities as well as adults in prison or receiving their PhD. He serves as an advisor and consultant to government, colleges, community based organizations education intermediaries, foundations and the faith community. Wyatt is a published author and sought after keynote speaker in his role as public theologian. Wyatt recently joined the Board of Trustees of New York Theological Seminary.

Jumaane D. Williams Williams is a New York City Council Member (D-Brooklyn) representing the people of the 45th Council District in Brooklyn, having originally been elected in 2009, and re-elected in 2013. Williams serves as Deputy Leader of the New York City Council, and chair of the council’s Committee on Housing and Buildings. Williams is co-chair of the council’s Task Force to Combat Gun Violence, a co-founding member of the Progressive Caucus, and a member of the Black, Latino & Asian Caucus. Williams is a firstgeneration Brooklynite of West Indian parentage and a proud product of our city’s public school system, including the Philippa Schuyler Middle School for the Gifted and Talented and Brooklyn Technical High School. It was while earning his Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science at Brooklyn College that Williams realized civic engagement and community empowerment would be his professional focus. He received a Master’s Degree, also from Brooklyn College, in Urban Policy and Administration. As a community organizer, Williams worked in the buildings of Vanderveer Estates, now known as Flatbush Gardens, and successfully secured city funding for a new youth program. He continued fighting for affordable housing as the Housing Director for the Flatbush Development Corporation, where he reconstituted a defunct housing program. Williams then became the Executive Director of the New York State Tenants & Neighbors, a statewide organization that stands for tenants’ rights and affordable housing through organizing and advocacy.

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FLEXN Visual Art Two bodies of visual art are in dialogue with and extend the FLEXN experience. Photographer Richard Ross has created the single largest documentation of young people held in solitary confinement in the United States. His work represents eight years, over 300 sites in 34 states, and interviews with over 1,000 kids. Artist Jason Akira Somma has documented and collaborated with flex dancers over a six year period. Ross’s photographs — shot for his “In Justice” series — will be displayed in the South Hall and Akira Somma’s videos, photographs, and artwork documenting flex and its different styles will be displayed in the Mary Divver Room.

Richard Ross Ross is a photographer, researcher and professor of art based in Santa Barbara, California. Ross has been the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, MacArthur and the Center for Cultural Innovation. Ross was awarded both Fulbright and Guggenheim Fellowships. His most recent work, the—In Justice series, turns a lens on the placement and treatment of American juveniles housed by law in facilities that treat, confine, punish, assist and, occasionally, harm them. Two books and traveling exhibitions of the work continue to see great success while Ross collaborates with juvenile justice stakeholders, using the images as a catalyst for change. Ross’s work has been exhibited at the Tate Modern, London; National Building Museum, Washington, D.C; Santa Monica Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Aperture Gallery, New York; ACME. Gallery, Los Angeles; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco. He was the principal photographer for the Getty Conservation Institute and the Getty Museum on many of their architectural projects. He has photographed extensively for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, SF Examiner, Vogue, COLORS, Time, Newsweek, Le Monde and many more. A dozen books of his work have been published including Girls in Justice 2015, Juvenile in Justice 2012, Architecture of Authority (Aperture 2007), Waiting for the End of the World (Princeton Architectural Press 2005), Gathering Light (University of New Mexico 2001) and Museology (Aperture 1988). Ross is a Distinguished Professor of Art at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he has taught since 1977. Represented by Ronald Feldman Fine Arts in New York.

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Jason Akira Somma Somma is a New York City-based multimedia/interdisciplinary artist who employs an unorthodox and novel practice that is situated between the exacting precision of classical renaissance painters, modern technological engineers, and the aleatoric and improvisational methods of today’s most radical avant-garde innovators. Experimental, kinesthetic, and deliberate, his work walks a delicate balance between engineering, technology, medical science, choreography, and the visual arts to fluidly and playfully merge these disciplines into a new and autonomous medium.

As the first American to receive the Rolex Arts Initiative for Dance in 2008, he has worked under the mentorship of renowned Czech choreographer Jiří Kylián with whom he continues to collaborate on several projects. His solo show Phosphene Variations debuted in New York at Location 1 Gallery in Soho and featured the first free-floating interactive-holograph-film installation, which allowed spectators to manipulate images of infamous dance andart legends such as Mikhail Baryshnikov, Robert Wilson, and Carmen DeLavallade, among others.

Somma’s collaboration with the FLEX dance community of East New York has been the artist’s catalyst for upending preconceived notions of “urban” dance aesthetics. With a shared vision revolving around a new understanding of how technological and digital mediums influence our experiences and surroundings, Somma utilizes idiosyncratic hacking and glitch techniques symbiotically with FLEX in a search for authentic expression and poetic aesthetickinetic experimentation through an embracing of both the possibilities and limitations inherent in technology.

Somma has been commissioned by the Lyon Opera Ballet as well as the BBC Bigscreens Moves Festival. He was a guest artist at the Center of Contemporary Art (CCA) in Glasgow and was a featured artist at the Robert Wilson Watermill Foundation. Somma collaborated with Robert Wilson, choreographing and directing five short films shown at the Guggenheim Museum. His live dance performance Frances Wessells, a Portrait of 91 Years premiered at the Saddler Wells Theatre in London and the National Chaillot Theater of Paris. Somma has been a technological consultant for a breadth of esteemed artists and institutions ranging from Marina Abramović, Walt Disney’s Imagineers, and the University of Glasgow’s Neuroscience Department, among others.

Through beating the algorithms inherent across disparate technological and performative mediums to produce an organic network of controlled hacks, Somma enacts a methodical performance of trial and error that runs throughout his imagery, video installations, and choreography. It is in this newly productive space where the audience is invited to observe and participate in the process of artistic creation through a series of studies that dissolve the boundaries between the static and the dynamic, production and presentation.

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ABOUT THE CREATIVE TEAM REGGIE (REGG ROC) GRAY director

Gray is a choreographer and dancer that has been a pioneer of flex dance for more than a decade, performing around the globe with his award-winning crew HyperActive. Born in East New York, Brooklyn, Gray began his journey in dance at the age of three, inspired by the legendary Michael Jackson. First introduced to the bruk-up style of dance, flex’s precursor, at a block party as a teenager, Gray later formed elite dance teams which competed on the television series Flex N Brooklyn and elsewhere in the borough. Gray and his teams would go on to evolve the flex form, win numerous competitions, and

help spread the style’s popularity throughout New York and beyond. In 2011, Gray founded the dance competition D.R.E.A.M. (Dance Rules Everything Around Me), which has become an important launching pad for young flex dancers, or “flexors.” D.R.E.A.M. has broadened the genre while protecting the essence of flex culture, focusing on collaborative teamwork to build community amongst the dancers. Gray has made several appearances on American television and in commercials, and has been featured in music videos with Wayne Wonder, Sean Paul, Nicki Minaj, and others.

Peter Sellars director

Sellars is an opera, theater, and festival director who has gained international renown for his groundbreaking and transformative interpretations of artistic masterpieces and collaborative projects with an extraordinary range of creative artists. Sellars has staged operas at the Glyndebourne Festival, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Netherlands Opera, Opéra National de Paris, Salzburg Festival, and San Francisco Opera, among others, and has established a reputation for bringing 20th-century and contemporary operas to the stage. Sellars has been a driving force in the creation of many new works with longtime collaborator composer John Adams, including Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, El Niño, and Doctor Atomic. Sellars staged Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. Matthew Passion with the Berlin Philharmonic at Park Avenue Armory in October 2014. Other recent projects have included a double bill of Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta and Stravinsky’s Persephone for Teatro Real in Madrid and critically acclaimed concert stagings of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and St. John Passion with the Berlin Philharmonic. The Indian Queen, combining Purcell music, text, and dance, had its premiere at the Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre in 2013 and will be seen in London early in 2015. Theater projects have included a production of Euripides’ The Children of Herakles, focusing on contemporary immigration and refugee issues

and experience; Desdemona, a collaboration with the Nobel Prizewinning novelist Toni Morrison and Malian composer and singer Rokia Traore, which was performed in major cities in Europe and the U.S. and presented in London as part of the Cultural Olympiad; and, most recently, a radical four person distillation and exploration of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Canada’s Stratford Festival. Sellars has led several major arts festivals, including the 1990 and 1993 Los Angeles Festivals and the 2002 Adelaide Arts Festival in Australia. In 2006 he was Artistic Director of New Crowned Hope, a month-long festival in Vienna for which he invited international artists from diverse cultural backgrounds to create new work in the fields of music, theater, dance, film, the visual arts, and architecture for the city’s celebration of Mozart’s 250th birth anniversary. Sellars is a professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures at UCLA and Resident Curator of the Telluride Film Festival. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, the Erasmus Prize, and the Gish Prize, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. This year he was awarded the prestigious Polar Music Prize.

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Gabriel Berry costume design

Berry designs costumes for theater, dance, and opera. Specializing in collaboration on new work, her dance premieres include works by Donald Byrd, the Urban Bushwomen, Lucinda Childs, Yves Musard, Molissa Fenley, Meredith Monk, and Yoshiko Chuma. Her opera premieres include works by John Adams, Philip Glass, Antony Davis, Douglas Cuomo, and Osvaldo Golliov. Notable theater premieres include works by Maria Irene Fornes, Charles Ludlam, Mabou Mines, Christopher Durang, and Brandon Jacobs Jenkins. Recent productions include John Adams’s The Gospel According to

the Other Mary directed by Peter Sellars for the English National Opera, Lembit Beecher’s I Have No Stories to Tell You produced by the Gotham Chamber Opera at the Metropolitan Museum, and Marcus Gardley’s The Box produced by The Foundry Theater. Upcoming projects include a workshop of Genet’s The Screens adapted by Caryl Churchill and directed by Mark Wing Davey and the world premiere of Stew and Heidi Rodewald’s The Total Bent for the Public Theater.

Garth MacAleaVEy sound design

Garth is a senior audio engineer at New York City’s le Poisson Rouge, and specializes in classical/opera/theater amplification, concert venue sound design, and production management for a variety of traditional and experimental musical performances. He is the current Technical Director of the MATA Festival as well as head audio engineer and sound designer for Beth Morrison Projects and Vision into Art. MacAleaby holds a BA in Classical Music with an emphasis in Jazz

and New Music Percussion from UC Santa Cruz. His credits include Kronos Quartet, Alarm Will Sound, Philip Glass Ensemble, Terry Riley, Jeff Zeigler, Erykah Badu, Steve Reich, Paul Simon, The Brooklyn Philharmonic and many more. Upcoming projects include Alarm Will Sound in Seoul, South Korea; David T. Little’s Dog Days in Fort Worth, Texas and at LA Opera; and performances of Sam Green’s live documentary The Measure of All Things.

Ben Zamora

light scuplture & lighting design Zamora is continuously creating immersive installations and sculptures that challenge the relationship of the viewer to their environment. Primarily light-based, his work moves seamlessly between performance and installation art. Zamora has recently created large-scale light installations for the Frye Art Museum, Design Miami/Art Basel, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, and the Suyama Space, among others. Zamora has collaborated on various projects with other artists including Etta Lilienthal, Kronos Quartet with Degenerate Art Ensemble, video artist Bill Viola, Gronk, Eleanor Antin, Jacques Heim with Diavolo Architecture in Motion, and the architecture firm

Olson Kundig Architects. Zamora’s projects have been seen at venues around the world, including Royal Festival Hall and The Barbican Center in London, the Mariinsky Theatre in Russia, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Stockholm’s Baltic Sea Festival, the Helsinki Festival, the Berliner Festspiele, the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland, Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, DeDoelen in the Netherlands, and Salle Pleyel in Paris, among others. Previously with director Peter Sellars, Zamora has implemented designs for projects including The Tristan Project, The Desdemona Project, Orango with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and a European tour of John Adams’s opera The Gospel According to the Other Mary.

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ABOUT THE ARMORY Part American palace, part industrial shed, Park Avenue Armory is dedicated to supporting unconventional works in the visual and performing arts that need non-traditional spaces for their full realization, enabling artists to create and audiences to consume epic and adventurous presentations that can not be mounted elsewhere in New York City. In its first eight years, the Armory opened its doors to visionary artists, directors, and impresarios who provided extraordinary experiences in a range of art forms. Such was its impact that in December 2011, The New York Times noted, “Park Avenue Armory…has arrived as the most important new cultural institution in New York City.” Built between 1877 and 1881, Park Avenue Armory has been hailed as containing “the single most important collection of nineteenth century interiors to survive intact in one building” by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. The 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall, with an 80-foot-high barrel vaulted roof, is one of the largest unobstructed spaces in New York City. The Armory’s magnificent reception rooms were designed by leaders of the American Aesthetic Movement, among them Louis Comfort Tiffany, Stanford White, Candace Wheeler, and Herter Brothers. The building is currently undergoing a $200-million renovation designed by Herzog & de Meuron.

PARK AVENUE ARMORY STAFF Rebecca Robertson, President and Executive Producer Alex Poots, Artistic Director Katrina Berselius, Executive Assistant to the President Liz Bickley, Director of Special Events David Burnhauser, Collection Manager David Crouse, Associate Technical Director Olga Cruz, Porter Leandro Dasso, Porter Khemraj Dat, Accountant Mayra DeLeon, Porter Jay T. Dority, Director of Facilities Melanie Forman, Chief Development Officer Lissa Frenkel, Managing Director Peter Gee, Chief Financial and Administrative Officer Pip Gengenbach, Education Coordinator Mary Greene, Development Events Coordinator Antonella Inserra, Office Manager Cassidy Jones, Education Director Benjamin Kimitch, Production Coordinator Allison Kline, Project Coordinator Michael Lonergan, Producing Director Wayne Lowery, Security Director Jason Lujan, Operations Manager Abel Martinez, Porter Ryan Hugh McWilliams, Digital Marketing Manager Rebecca Mosena, Development Assistant

Walter Nin, Security Manager Maxine Petry, Development Coordinator Charmaine Portis, Executive Assistant to the Chief Development Officer Christian Ramirez, Porter Kirsten Reoch, Director of Design and Construction Candice Rushin, Porter Matthew Rymkiewicz, Tessitura Database Manager Antonio Sanders, Porter William Say, Superintendent Jennifer Smith, Manager of Corporate Relations Heather Thompson, Deputy Director of Development David Toledo, Technical Director Tom Trayer, Director of Marketing Ted Vasquez, Finance Director Libby Vieira da Cunha, Youth Corps Coordinator Jessica Wasilewski, Producer Monica Weigel, Education Manager

flexn staff

Diane Malecki, Associate Producer Betsy Ayer, Production Stage Manager Charlotte Brathwaite, Associate Director and Performer Bios Meghan Rose Murphy, Assistant Stage Manager Erik Holden, Light Sculpture Technical Director Bridget Chervenka, Light Board Operator Matt Fable, Sound Board Operator Angela Wendt, Assistant Costume Designer Matsy Stinson, Wardrobe Mistress Elyssa Cotto, Aicha Diakite, Tanai Estwick, Stephanie Mesquita, Oscar Montenegro, Production Assistants Courtney Caldwell, House Manager Steven Gaultney, Assistant House Manager Kara Kaufman, Box Office Manager Erik Olsen, Assistant Box Office Manager

youth corps

Darius Barnett, Donavon Bembridge, Shannon Darty, Jessica de la Perriere Joseph, Brian Espinal, Kyla Gardner, Nancy Gomez, Cristina Hernandez, Terrelle Jones, Destiny Lora, Aaron Marmolejos, Alexandra Ortiz, Alestair Shu, Guycardine St. Victor, Nassim White

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production acknowledgements

Akustiks, LLC — Paul Scarbrough, Acoustical Consultant Avery Willis Hoffman, Conversation Curator

NEXT AT THE ARMORY h {n)y p n(y} os is

LANGUAGE OF THE FUTURE: THE LINE

June 11 — August 2

October 2 — 4

philippe parreno, mikhail rudy

laurie anderson

“From spectacle to bafflement, moments of melancholy to visceral excitement…it is not so much an immersive exhibition as one that engulfs you.” —The Guardian (UK) In his largest installation in the U.S. to date, Philippe Parreno reshapes the very notion of what it mean s to experience art by exploring an exhibition as a singular, coherent object rather than as a collection of individual works. This dramatic composition combines remastered existing works and new projects to guide and manipulate the viewer’s experience and perception by utilizing sound, film, light, and memory.

TREE OF CODES

wayne mcgregor, olafur eliasson, jamie xx

“Anderson continues to imbue her work with a singular perspective that is both haunting and timeless.” —The New Yorker Iconic storyteller Laurie Anderson examines the contrast between an event and the memory of that moment in her latest multimedia artwork, harnessing events from anthropology and history to form a series of songs in visual form. Featuring a series of actors, musicians, and even miniature horses, Anderson creates a sitespecific environment in which audiences confront their perceptions of these opposing ideas, situations, and images in a processional of consciousness.

GOLDBERG

igor levit, marina abramović

September 14 — 21

December 7 — 19

“[Wayne McGregor is] doing some of the most exciting work on the planet.” —The New York Times Award-winning choreographer Wayne McGregor, artist Olafur Eliasson, and Mercury Prize-winning producer / composer Jamie xx create a new ballet triggered by the book Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer, an artwork in the form of a book which was in turn inspired by Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz. This new, eveninglength work features a company of soloists and dancers from the Paris Opera Ballet alongside Wayne McGregor | Random Dance.

“We always project into the future or reflect in the past, but we are so little in the present.” — Marina Abramović Igor Levit, who made his impressive North American recital debut at the Armory in 2014, interprets Bach’s towering keyboard masterpiece Goldberg Variations in an installation created by seminal artist Marina Abramović. Having redefined what performance art is for nearly 40 years, she now reimagines the concert-going experience by creating a concentrated durational work that reflects upon music, time, space, emptiness, and luminosity, with the audience becoming a part of the work to connect with themselves and with the present—the elusive moment of the here and now.

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NEXT AT THE ARMORY RECITAL SERIES Ian Bostridge, Tenor Wenwen Du, Piano

Rushes Ensemble October 23

April 17

“Bostridge sings as if from inside the music, as if he has found a way to produce pure, disembodied emotion.” — Los Angeles Times Celebrated for the remarkable passion, drama, and directness of his elegant performances, British tenor Ian Bostridge is widely admired as one of the world’s most perceptive and accomplished musicians. A supremely expressive storyteller of song, Bostridge is joined by the eminent pianist Wenwen Du to present an artfully curated program of songs exploring the music and poetry of the Great War. The program ranges from songs by soldier composer George Butterworth to Britten’s setting of poems about children in wartime.

“Even within the classical-music world… an ensemble of seven bassoons is a conspicuous novelty. [Rushes] makes one wonder what took so long.” —The Boston Globe With one of the most unorthodox ensembles imaginable, New York City-based Michael Gordon, composer and founder of the iconic Bang on a Can collective, offers Rushes, a sonic meditation for seven bassoons in its New York City premiere. Best known for music driven by rhythmic intensity and power, Gordon explores interweaving textures and the timbre of a surplus of double reeds to form a steadily pulsating, unbroken wall of woodwind sound.

Christian Gerhaher, baritone Gerold Huber, piano

Charlotte Rampling, Voice Sonia Wieder-Atherton, Cello

November 10

April 22–26

Explore the subtleties of Benjamin Britten’s suites for solo cello through the lens of the American poet Sylvia Plath, considered one of the leading cultivators of confessional poetry. Acclaimed actor Charlotte Rampling and renowned cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton bring together Plath’s haunting poetry and Britten’s powerful music for the U.S. premiere of The Night Dances, an intimate melding of these celebrated artistic voices.

David Fray, Piano

“[Gerhaher’s recent recitals] have been nothing short of sublime… prov[ing] once again that he ranks as today’s peerless singer of lieder.” —The Telegraph (UK) While he has triumphed in international opera and oratorio appearances, Christian Gerhaher is also today’s foremost interpreter of lieder, with his vocal artistry profoundly conveying the poetry and emotional seed of each song. After inaugurating the reopening of the Board of Officers Room in 2013, the burnished baritone returns with his longstanding recital partner Gerold Huber for a program that highlights the Viennese peak of the art song tradition.

October 6–9

“Fray has a brilliant technique and a serious and thoughtful regard for the music.” —The Chicago Tribune Franz Schubert had a tragically short but extremely productive life. While known for composing over 600 songs and song cycles, his works for piano are perhaps some of the most beautiful pieces of chamber music ever composed. French pianist David Fray harnesses the delicacy and richness of color in his playing to interpret three of these expressive works in the Board of Officers Room.

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OTHER HAPPENINGS AT THE ARMORY UNDER CONSTRUCTION SERIES

ARTIST TALKS

“A residency like the Armory’s can be life changing for an artist. With unlimited access to studio space and total creative freedom, even the wildest idea can be attempted.” — The Wall Street Journal

Held in our historic period rooms, these insightful dialogues give audiences the opportunity to hear directly from the artists, and explore the inspirations, ideas, and themes behind their work

Get an inside look into the creative process of the Armory’s artistsin-residence, who set up studios and offer intimate public previews of works-in-progress, including dance, theater, music, and visual art. The Armory’s period rooms provide a unique backdrop for their workshops, serving as both inspiration and as a collaborator in the development of their work.

MALKIN LECTURE SERIES

Previous artists-in-residence have included director and designer Julian Crouch, choreographers Faye Driscoll and Wally Cardona, soprano Lauren Flanigan, artist Ralph Lemon, maverick musician and composer Meredith Monk, post-classical string quartet ETHEL, playwright and director Young Jean Lee, performance artist Okwui Okpokwasili, Shen Wei Dance Arts, and singer/songwriter Somi.

ARMORY AFTER HOURS Salon culture has enlivened art since the 19th century, when friends gathered in elegant chambers to hear intimate performances and share artistic insights. Join us following select performances for libations with fellow attendees as we revive this tradition in our historic period rooms. You may also get to talk with the evening’s artists, who often greet friends and audience members following their performances.

Each fall, the popular Malkin Lecture Series presents scholars and experts on topics relating to the Armory and the civic, cultural, and aesthetic life of New York City in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Lecture topics have ranged from history makers like Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt to Gilded Age society’s favorite restaurants and the Hudson River painters.

HISTORIC INTERIORS TOURS “[The Armory contains] the single most important collection of nineteenth century interiors to survive intact in one building.” — New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission Get an insider’s look at the Armory with a guided walking tour of the building with our staff historian. From the soaring 55,000-square-foot Drill Hall to the extraordinary interiors designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany, Stanford White, Herter Brothers, and others, see rooms not regularly open to the public and learn about the design plans by acclaimed architects Herzog & de Meuron.

FAMILY PROGRAMS Park Avenue Armory invites parents and children to participate in interactive art-making workshops in our historic period rooms. Drawing upon the Armory’s castle-like setting and unique artistic offerings, these programs are offered monthly during the school year and designed to spark the imagination of children of all ages.

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JOIN THE ARMORY MEMBERSHIP

benefactor $1,000

Become a member of Park Avenue Armory and support the presentation of epic, unconventional arts and educational programming in the Armory’s landmarked building. Members have access to the best seats for Armory productions during exclusive presales, and are invited to experience the Armory and its artists through preview parties, open rehearsals, members-only viewing hours, building tours, and other special events.

All benefits of the Associate membership plus: » Members concierge ticket service » Two complimentary tickets to the Under Construction Series

friend $100 » Exclusive access to the best seats for Armory performances through members-only presale » Invitations to opening night previews for Armory visual art installations » Free admission to Armory visual art installations » Discounts on Artist Talks » Invitations to select open rehearsals » Special members-only viewing hours for select exhibitions » Invitation to the annual Members event » 10% discount on merchandise sold during Armory productions » Discount on tickets to the Malkin Lecture Series » Free admission for guided tours of the Armory

family circle $225 All benefits of the Friend membership plus: » Pre-registration for educational workshops » Special access to talks, programs, and tours Benefits extend to children in household under 18 years of age.

armory avant-garde $350 or $600 This exciting group invites forward-thinking individuals in their 20s through early 40s to experience new, surprising, and innovative ideas in art, and provides access to the Armory and its artists through exclusive events designed for younger supporters.

chairman’s circle starting at $2,500 Members of this exclusive group are provided unique and intimate opportunities to experience the Armory, including invitations to private tours and VIP receptions with worldclass artists; priority seating and concierge ticket service; and an invitation for two to the annual Chairman’s Circle Reception.

education committee starting at $5,000 The Armory’s arts education program reaches thousands of public school students each year, immersing them in the creative process of exceptional visual and performing artists and teaching them to explore their own creative instincts. Education Committee members are invited to special events, meetings, and workshops that allow them to witness the students’ progress and contribute to the growth of the program.

supporter $250

For more information on membership, go to armoryonpark.org/join, email members@armoryonpark.org, or call (212) 616-3958.

All benefits of the Family Circle membership plus: » Up to two ticket exchanges per season* » One complimentary pass to an art fair**

*For same production; subject to availability. **Certain restrictions apply. All memberships are subject to various levels of tax deductibility.

associate $500 All benefits of the Supporter membership plus: » Free admission for two additional guests to Armory visual art installations » Access to VIP lounge in one of the Armory’s historic rooms during performance intermissions » Recognition in Armory printed programs » One additional complimentary pass to an art fair**

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BOARD OF DIRECTORS Co-Chairman

Marina Abramović

Michael Field

Joel I. Picket

Elihu Rose, PhD.

Harrison M. Bains

David Fox

Joel Press

Kent L. Barwick

Marjorie L. Hart

Genie H. Rice

Wendy Belzberg

Karl Katz

Janet C. Ross

Emma Bloomberg

Edward G. Klein Major General NYNG (Ret.)

Jeffrey Silverman

Carolyn Brody

Ken Kuchin

Joan Steinberg

Cora Cahan

Pablo Legorreta

Emanuel Stern

Peter Clive Charrington

Ralph Lemon

Angela E. Thompson

Hélène Comfort

Heidi McWilliams

Deborah C. van Eck

Paul Cronson

David S. Moross

Sanford B. Ehrenkranz

Gwendolyn Adams Norton

Co-Chairman Adam R. Flatto President and Executive Producer Rebecca Robertson

Founding Chairman, 2000 — 2009 Wade F.B. Thompson

SUPPORTERS Park Avenue Armory expresses its deep appreciation to the individuals and organizations listed here for their generous support for its annual and capital campaigns. $1,000,000 +

$25,000 — $99,999

$10,000 — $24,999

Betsy and Rob Pitts Platt Byard Dovell White Architects LLP

Charina Endowment Fund, Inc.

The Avenue Association

Jody and John Arnhold

Diana and Charles Revson

Empire State Local Development Corporation

Harrison and Leslie Bains

Adrienne Arsht

Mary Jane Robertson and James A. Clark

New York City Council and Council Member

Emily and Len Blavatnik

Arup

Ida And William Rosenthal Foundation

Emma Bloomberg and Chris Frissora

Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Inc.

Mr. and Mrs. William Sandholm

New York City Department of Cultural Affairs

Carolyn S. Brody

Abigail Baratta

Carl Saphier

The Pershing Square Foundation

Burberry

Mr. and Mrs. Victor Barnett

Oscar S. Schafer

Susan and Elihu Rose

Paul Chan and Don Toumey

Nicholas Brawer

Stacy Schiff and Marc de la Bruyere

The Arthur Ross Foundation and J & AR

Chanel, Inc.

Catherine and Robert Brawer

Dr. and Mrs. Thomas P. Sculco

Hélène and Stuyvesant Comfort

British Council

Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation

Joan and Joel Smilow

The Cowles Charitable Trust

Janna Bullock

Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan Soros

The Thompson Family Foundation

Sandi and Andrew Farkas, Island Capital Group

Eileen Campbell and Struan Robertson

Jean and Eugene Stark

Pamela and J. Michael Cline

Mr. and Mrs. Josh Struzziery

Daniel R. Garodnick

Foundation

Wade F.B. Thompson*

& C III Capital Partners

The Zelnick / Belzberg CharitableTrust

Florence Fearrington

Mrs. Daniel Cowin

The Jay and Kelly Sugarman Foundation

Anonymous

Elizabeth Morse Genius Foundation

Paul and Caroline Cronson

Mr. and Mrs. A. Taubman

Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Gundlach

Crum & Forster

Tishman Speyer Properties, LP

Roger and Susan Hertog

Emme and Jonathan Deland

Barbara and Donald Tober

Anna Maria & Stephen Kellen Foundation, Inc.

Luis y Cora Delgado

David Wassong and Cynthia Clift

Dom Perignon

Isak and Rose Weinman Foundation, Inc.

Kirkland & Ellis LLP

William F. Draper

William Morris Endeavor

Mary Kush

Peggy and Millard Drexler

Aaron Lieber and Bruce Horten

Mary Ellen Dundon

Valda Witt and Jay Hatfield

Lynne and Burt Manning

David and Frances Eberhart Foundation

World of Deco

Marc Haas Foundation

Ella M. Foshay and Michael B. Rothfeld

Anonymous (3)

Cindy and David Moross

Joseph Frank

Liz and Frank Newman

Mr. and Mrs. Richard Fuld

$500,000 — $999,999

Citi Lisa and Sanford B. Ehrenkranz Almudena and Pablo Legorreta The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Adam R. Rose and Peter R. McQuillan Donna and Marvin Schwartz Liz and Emanuel Stern $250,000 — $499,999

and Marina Kellen French

Joan and Joel I. Picket

Lorraine Gallard and Richard H. Levy

American Express

The Pinkerton Foundation

Barbara and Peter Georgescu

Michael Field and Jeff Arnstein

Andrea Markezin and Joel Press

Kiendl and John Gordon

Olivia and Adam Flatto

Slobodan Randjelovic and Jon Stryker

The Grand Marnier Foundation

Ken Kuchin and Tyler Morgan

The Reed Foundation

Agnes Gund

Mr. and Mrs. Thomas McWilliams

Rhodebeck Charitable Trust

Molly Butler Hart and Michael D. Griffin

New York State Council on the Arts

Genie and Donald Rice

Josefin and Paul Hilal

The Rockefeller Foundation

Rebecca Robertson and Byron Knief

Daniel Clay Houghton

Marshall Rose Family Foundation

Charles and Deborah Royce

Mike and Rachel Jacobellis

May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, Inc.

Brenda King

Fiona and Eric Rudin

Suzie and Bruce Kovner

Lady Susie Sainsbury

The Lauder Foundation / Leonard and Evelyn

$100,000 — $249,999

The Achelis and Bodman Foundations Linda and Earle S. Altman Bloomberg Philanthropies Booth Ferris Foundation Marjorie and Gurnee Hart Mr. and Mrs. Peter L. Malkin and The Malkin Fund, Inc. David Monn Mr. and Mrs. Lester S. Morse, Jr. National Endowment for the Arts New York State Assembly Gwen and Peter Norton Daniel and Joanna S. Rose Janet C. Ross Amy and Jeffrey Silverman Stavros Niarchos Foundation Mr. and Mrs. William C. Tomson Deborah van Eck

The Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation

Lauder Fund

Caryn Schacht and David Fox

Thomas H. Lee and Ann Tenenbaum

The Shubert Foundation

Leon Levy Foundation

Sydney and Stanley S. Shuman

Kamie and Richard Lightburn

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP

Lili Lynton and Michael Ryan

Sanford Smith and Jill Bokor

Christina and Alan MacDonald

Mr. and Ms. Thomas Smith

Nancy A. Marks

Sarah Billinghurst Solomon and

Sylvia and Leonard Marx, Jr.

Howard Solomon

Larry and Mary McCaffrey

Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust

Sandy and Ed Meyer

Joan and Michael Steinberg

Cynthia Woods Mitchell Fund of the National

Nanna and Daniel Stern

Trust for Historic Preservation

Tishman Construction, an AECOM Company

Adriana and Robert Mnuchin

Michael Weil

National Philanthropic Trust

Anonymous (2)

Mary Kathryn Navab Northern Bay Contractors, Inc. Susan Patterson and Leigh Seippel

armoryonpark.org

Entertainment Foundation

$5,000 — $9,999

Melissa Arana Martin Atkin and Reid Balthaser Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation Hilary Ballon Diana Barrett and Robert Vila Ginette and Joshua A. Becker Sara and David Berman Daniel and Estrellita Brodsky Noreen and Kenneth Buckfire Veronica Bulgari and Stephan Haimo Lyor Cohen Mr. and Mrs. Chase Coleman Elizabeth Coleman Mr. and Mrs. Paul Collins Mr. and Mrs. Carl A. Contiguglia Marina Couloucoundis Carlos Couturier Mary Cronson / Evelyn Sharp Foundation Margaret Crotty and Rory Riggs Ellie and Edgar Cullman Annette de la Renta and Oscar de la Renta* Kathy Deane Jennie L. and Richard K. DeScherer Jacqueline Didier and Noah Schienfeld The Max and Victoria Dreyfus Foundation Cheryl Cohen Effron and Blair W. Effron Andra and John Ehrenkranz Alice and David Elgart

Inger McCabe Elliott

Patricia Brown Specter

Mike & Janet Halvorson

Rudin Management Co., Inc.

Anna May Feige

Gayfryd Steinberg

Barbara Hoffman

Jane Fearer Safer

The Felicia Fund

Mr. and Mrs. Michael Steinhardt

Nancy Hutson and Ian Williams

Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Saul

Edmee and Nicholas Firth

Steinway & Sons

Frederick Iseman

Caroline Schmidt-Barnett

Caitlin Fisher

Mr. and Mrs. Barry Sternlicht

Beth Jacobs

Roberta Schneiderman

Fisher Marantz Stone, Inc.

Diane and Sam Stewart

Mr. and Mrs. Robert Jeffe

Alan and Sandy Siegel

Foreground Conservation & Decorative Arts

Angeline Straka

Caron and Geoffrey Johnson

Donna Kohn Snow and Michael Rubinoff

Amandine and Stephen Freidheim

Elizabeth F. Stribling and Guy Robinson

Barbara and Donald Jonas

Carolyn Megan Sofka

Samantha and John Gellert

Michael and Veronica Stubbs

Nina and Bill Judson

Sara Solomon

Mr. and Mrs. George J. Gillespie, III

Laurie M. Tisch

Jerri Kallam

Sonnier & Castle Food

Andrea Gluck

Ambassador and Mrs. William J. Vanden Heuvel

Floy and Amos Kaminski

Melissa Schiff Soros and Robert Soros

Gail Golden and Carl Icahn

Myra and Frank Weiser, M.D.

Meredith J. Kane

Stanley Stairs

Valerie Gordon Johnson

Patricia Wexler

Hon. Bruce M. Kaplan and Janet Yaseen Kaplan

Leila Straus

John Gore

Beth Windsor

Karl and Elizabeth Katz

Mr. and Mrs. Paul Tanico

Susan and Peter Gottsegen

Amy Yenkin and Robert Usdan

Mr. and Mrs. Dan Keegan

Sharzad and Michael Targoff

Sarah Gould and David Steinhardt

Anonymous

Nancy Kestenbaum and David Klafter

Mr. and Mrs. William Taubman

Phyllis L. Kossoff

Rob Teeters and Bruce Sherman

Rok Kvaternik

Paul Travis and Mark Fichandler

Mr. and Mrs. Fernand Lamesch

Michael Tuch Foundation

Chad A. Leat

Universal Builders Supply, Inc. (UBS) / Kevin

Great Performances

$2,500 — $4,999

Jeff and Kim Greenberg Mr. and Mrs. Guenther Greiner Anne Grissinger Allen and Deborah Grubman Jessica Stedman Guff Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Heimbinder Elizabeth and Dale Hemmerdinger Sarah Humphreys and Ronald Collins Nadine Johnson Nancy Josephson Jennie Kassanoff and Dan Schulman Florence and Robert Kaufman Christian K. Keesee Wendy Keys and Donald Pels* Lola Kirke Justin Kush Stephen S. and Wendy Lehman Lash The Ronald and Jo Carole Lauder Foundation Robert Lehman Foundation Gail and Alan Levenstein Margaret and Daniel S. Loeb / Third Point Foundation Mr. and Mrs. Merrill Magowan Diane and Adam E. Max Rebekah McCabe Thomas McGrath Ms. and Mr. Anne McInerney Claire Milonas Whitney and Andrew Mogavero James C. Marlas and Marie Nugent-Head Marlas Nancy and Morris W. Offit Kathleen O’Grady Oxley Gin Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon B. Polsky Anne and Skip Pratt Preserve New York, a grant program of Preservation League of New York Katharine and William Rayner David J. Remnick and Esther B. Fein David C Rich Richenthal Foundation Ellen Robinson and Reuben Gutoff Jonathan F.P. and Diana Rose Susan and Jon Rotenstreich Bonnie J. Sacerdote Kathe A. Sackler Edmond Safra Nathan E. Saint-Amand Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Schorsch Sara Lee and Axel Schupf Mr. Barry Schwartz / M&F Worldwide Corp. Lise Scott and D. Ronald Daniel Stephanie and Fred Shuman JLH Simonds David S Smith Margaret Smith Ted Snowdon Jay T. Snyder Daisy M. Soros Sotheby’s

R. Mark Adams Ghiora Aharoni and Christopher Noey

Nina Lesevoy

Olga Aidinian Akustiks, LLC Helen and Robert Appel Ark Restaurants Corp. Mr. and Mrs. Timothy Barefield Frances Beatty Norton Belknap Debra and Leon Black Allison M. Blinken Torrence Boone and Ted Chapin

Lewis B. Cullman and Louise Kerz Hirschfeld Boykin Curry and Celerie Kemble Joshua Dachs / Fisher Dachs Associates Theatre Planning and Design

David P. Nolan Foundation

Hester Diamond

Georgiana and Eric Noll

Krys Doerfler

Francesca and Dick Nye

Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz

MC & Eric Roberts

Leland and Jane Englebardt Dr. Nancy Eppler-Wolff and Mr. John Wolff

The William and Mary Greve Foundation Robert S. Grimes Sarah and Geoffrey Gund Amy Guttman

John Hargraves

Peter and Susan Nitze

Beth Rudin DeWoody

Paula S. Greenman

Patty Newburger and Bradley Wechsler

Anne Niemeth and Chuck Niemeth

Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Davis

Jeff Greene

Mr. and Mrs. James Murdoch

Mr. and Mrs. Michael Newhouse

Joan K. Davidson (The J.M. Kaplan Fund)

Marjorie and Ellery Gordon

Saleem Muqaddam Ilona Nemeth and Alan Quasha

Sasha Cutter and Aaron Hsu

Mr. and Mrs. Peter Goettler

Zubatkin Owner Representation, LLC

Barbara and Howard Morse

Bernadette Cruz

Gary & Beth Glynn

Richard and Franny Heller Zorn

Juliana and Jon May

Sue and Alan Morris

Stewart F. Lane and Bonnie Comley

Kathleen and David Glaymon

Judith and Michael Margulies

Lauren and Don Morel

Betsy Cohn

Sallie Giordano

Judy Francis Zankel

Nina and Frank Moore

Mr. and Mrs. David Cohen

Teri Friedman and Babak Yaghmaie

Cynthia Young and George Eberstadt

Pat and Michael Magdol

Achim and Colette Moeller

Shirin and Kasper Christoffersen

Bart Friedman and Wendy A. Stein

Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm H. Wiener

Abby and Howard Milstein

Christian Dior

Megan Flanigan

Kate R. Whitney and Franklin A. Thomas

The Ludwig Family Foundation / The Honorable

Alexandra and Les Meyers

Fay Chang

Michael Finkelstein

Heather Lubov

Karon and Rick Meyer

Mr. and Mrs. Carlton Cabot

Susan Ferris

Karla Wheeler

Joyce F. Menschel

Mr. and Mrs. Jack Burnett

Victoria Ferenbach

Katherine Wenning and Michael Dennis

Shirley Lord Rosenthal

Melissa Meeschaert

Marian and Russell Burke

Emilia Fanjul

Susan and Kevin Walsh

Mr. and Mrs. Marcel Lindenbaum

$1,000 — $2,499

Constance and H. Roemer McPhee

Sandra Buergi and Carol Flaton

EverGreene

Anastasia Vournas and J. William Uhrig

The Liman Foundation

Mr. and Mrs. Richard E. Mayberry, Jr.

Cynthia and Steven Brill

Mr. & Mrs. Robin S. Esterson

Levien & Company, Inc.

Eugene A. Ludwig and Dr. Carol Ludwig

Stephanie Bernheim

O’Callaghan — President

Ellen Oelsner Mary Ellen and Richard Oldenburg Susan Ollila David Orentreich, MD / Orentreich Family Foundation Katharina Otto-Bernstein and Nathan Bernstein Mindy Papp Rebecca Pietri Marnie Pillsbury Jonelle Procope and Fred Terrell Eileen and Tom Pulling Mr. and Mrs. Robert Quinlan Red Bull North America, Inc. Heidi Rieger Hal and Linda Ritch Mrs. Frederick P. Rose Isabel Rose and Jeffrey Fagen Liz Rosen Ms. and Mr. Carmina Roth Terez Rowley Merle Rubine and Elliot M. Glass Valerie Rubsamen and Cedomir Crnkovic

armoryonpark.org

Carrie and Leigh Abramson Frank Ahimaz and Steven Barr Noreen and Ahmar Ahmad Eleanor M. Alger Amira Salaam Amro Louise L. Arias Mr. and Mrs. Steven Atkins Jill Baker and Jeffrey Bishop June and Kent Barwick Susan Wise Bauer & Peace Hill Press Candace and Rick Beinecke Mr. and Mrs. Joel Benenson Jayne Bentzen and Benedict Silverman Dale and Max Berger Deborah Berke and Peter McCann Tama and Brad Bernstein Elaine S. Bernstein Nymrata Advani Bickici Cathleen P. Black and Thomas E. Harvey Jody Black Bluestem Prairie Foundation Boehm Family Foundation Paige Boller Malik Oskar and Adrienne Brecher Dr. and Mrs. Stafford Broumand Mr. and Mrs. Alvin Brown George and Jane Bunn Amanda M. Burden Butterfield Market & Catering Judith Byrd The Carlyle, A Rosewood Hotel Jim Chervenak Sheri P. Chromow Joan Hardy Clark CleanTech Ranika Cohen Mr. and Mrs. Yoron Cohen Emy Cohenca Courtney Corleto Jennifer Coyne Douglas S. Cramer and Hugh Bush Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Crisses George Cumbler

Carol Lynne Cushman

Jane K. Lombard

Margot Takian

Oya Christopher

Virginia Davies and Willard Taylor

Donna and Wayne Lowery

Rabbi Malcolm Thomson

Mr. and Mrs. Robert Cochran

Suzanne Dawson

Elizabeth MacNeill

Ira Titunik

Jack Cooney

Elisabeth de Kergorlay

Arielle & Ian Madover

Mr. and Mrs. Remy Trafelet

Alexander Cooper

Marguerite De La Poer

Mr. and Mrs. Chris Mailman

Mr. and Mrs. John Troiano

Janis Conner

Sebastien de la Selle

Match 65 Brasserie

Ms. Patricia L. Truscelli and Mr. E.N. Ellis

Jessica and David Cosloy

Maria Teresa De Mata

Christine L. Mattsson and John F. McHale

Gil Turchin & Indigo

Danza Did It!

Richard and Barbara Debs

Polly McCaffrey

Amelia & Steven Usdan

Jon and Jenny Crumiller

Jane and Michael DeFlorio

Sarah McGee

R.T. Vanderbilt Trust / Mr. and Mrs. Hugh B.

Jaime M Cupertino

Scott M. Delman

Shawn McLaughlin

Anne Bevis Detwiler

Dede McMahon

Arline Vogel and Harry Precourt

Christina R. Davis

Diana Diamond and John Alschuler

Beatrix and Gregor Medinger

Mr. and Mrs. John Vogelstein

Mr. and Mrs. Maurice Deane

Jane Draizen

Sibel Mesta

Clemence and William Von Mueffling

John T. DeBell

Nancy J. Drosd and Charles Schwartz

Malu and Sergio Millerman

Monina von Opel

Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Dellosso

Gertrude and Philip Dub

Mr. and Mrs. Sylvester Miniter

Mr. and Mrs. Alexander von Perfall

Robert and Susan Doran

Lonti Ebers

Mr. and Ms. Nicolas Mirzayantz

Mr. and Mrs. Richard Wagman

Mr. and Mrs. Robert W. Downes

Frederick Eberstadt

Allen Model and Dr. Roberta Gausas

Kathryn F. Wagner

Christine and Renaud Dutreil

Jacqueline Elias

Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Moses

Amanda and John Waldron

Michael Ellis

Mr. and Mrs. Chris Errico

Mr. and Mrs. Marvin Numeroff

In Memory of Arthur Warner

Philipp Engelhorn & Cameron Yates

The Lehoczky Escobar Family

Addison O’Dea

Mr. and Mrs. Stanford Warshawsky

Heidrun Engler

Michael Fazio

John Orberg

Michaela Williams

Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Ercklentz

Mr. and Mrs. Marc Feigen

Catherine Alison Orentreich

Mr. and Mrs. David Wolf

Mrs. John W. Espy

Richard L. Feigen and

Victoria Orlin

Jody Wolfe

Claudia Fabrizio

Robert Ouimette

Eleanor Ylvisaker

Joan and William Felder

Fig & Olive Restaurant

Barrie and John Overend

Barbara and David Zalaznick

Laurel Fine

Heather Fullerton

Will Palley

Jason Zubatkin

Jodie and Andrew Fink

Mr. and Mrs. Scott Gerber

Madison J Papp

Anonymous (7)

Stacey & Eric Flatt

Rosalie Y Goldberg

Michele and Steve Pesner

Mr. and Mrs. Keith Gollust

Jordan Phillips

Margery Gottesman

Christopher J. Piccinich

Mr. and Ms. David Granville-Smith

Anthony Podesta

Jenny Slayton Green

Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Present

Jamee and Peter Gregory

Samuel F. Pryor, IV

Marie-Line Grinda and Ahmed Deek

Elissa Querze

Barbara Grodd and The Ostgrodd Foundation

Timothy and Coco Quinlan

Leonard Groopman

Mr. and Mrs. Jeffry Quinn

Claire and Christian Gudefin

Anna Rabinowitz

Harvey and Kathleen Guion

Alan Ravandi and Avisheh Avini

Addie J. Guttag

Thomas Remien

Elizabeth Harned

Rodgers & Hammerstein Foundation

Steven Harris and Lucien Rees Robertson

Mr. and Mrs. David Rogath

Stan Harrison

Mark Roppel and Nurelene Sahadat

Rolf Heitmeyer

Jim Rosenfield and Charlotte Rosenblatt

Stephanie Hessler

Joel Rosenkranz

Mr. and Mrs. Brian Higgins

Jane Royal

William T. Hillman

Katie Ryser

Susan Hirschhorn and Arthur Klebanoff

Mrs. Arthur M. Sackler

Mr. and Mrs. David Johnson

Mr. and Mrs. David Saltzman

Hilda Jones

Brenda Sanchez

Patricia S. Joseph

Elizabeth Sarnoff and Andrew S. Cohen

The Kandell Fund / Donald J. Gordon

David Schlapbach

Jeanne Kanders

Sabina and Wilfred Schlumberger

Daniel and Renee Kaplan

Mr. and Mrs. Bidyut Sen

Drs. Sylvia and Byram Karasu

Tatiana Serafin

Kate Karet

Virginia Wattiker Sheerin

Gene Kaufman

Gil Shiva

Frances Kazan

Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Shorin

Margot Kenly and Bill Cumming

Mr. and Mrs. Michael Shuman

Younghee Kim-Wait and Jarett Wait

Denise Simon and Paulo Vieiradacunha

Jana and Gerold Klauer

Mr. and Mrs. Vinayak Singh

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

Vinayak Singh

Kathleen and Reha Kocatas

Nancy Sipp

Kate Krauss

Laura Skoler

Kimberly Kravis Schulhof

Barbara Slifka

Leah Kremer

Mr. and Mrs. Howard Sloan

Mr. and Mrs. Ron Krolick

Nanette Sloan

Lagunitas Brewing Co.

Dawn and John Smith

Nanette L. Laitman

Stephanie and Dick Solar

Barbara Landau

Robert and Yohanna Sowler

Judith Langer and Arthur Applebee

Squadron A Foundation

Mr. and Mrs. John Lauto

Kathryn Steinberg

Sahra T. Lese

Mr. and Mrs. Alan Stillman

Brenda Levin

John Strasswimmer

Phyllis Levin

Bonnie and Tom Strauss

Mr. and Mrs. Harley Lippman

Mary Delle Stelzer and Karen Capanelli

Ambassador and Mrs. John L. Loeb Jr.

Allison & Stephen Sullens

Joseph Lomangino

Summit Security Services, Inc.

Isabelle Harnoncourt-Feigen

Vanderbilt, Jr.

James Danner

$500 — $999

Marina Abramović Mr. and Mrs. William Abrams Eric Altmann Mr. and Mrs. Charles Anderson Mr. and Mrs. Chris Apgar Natalie N. Appel Lisa Applebaum and George Haddad Jennifer Argenti Allison Aronne Michael Asby Deborah Aruta Mary Eliza Aston Josephine A Auerback Diana Balmori Mitchell Banchik Peter and Tina Barnet Raymond Baron Clay H. Barr Julia Bator and Charles Duggan Kristine Bell Janet Dewart Bell Molly Bell Lorraine Bell and M. Weisdorf David Benattar Dr. and Mrs. and Mrs. Ralph Bennett Veronica Ann and Bruce Campbell Bennett Liddy Berman Sue Birnbaum Hana Bitton Deborah Harper Bono Michele R. Bourgerie Arabella Bowen and Tyler Cole David P. Boynton Mr. and Mrs. Richard Braddock Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Brodsky Amy Brown Cora Cahan and Bernard Gersten Chris Cahill Cathy Caplan Lea Carpenter Thomas Carrier Pilar Castro Kiltz Ronni and Ronald Casty Sommer Chatwin Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Chelberg Meryl and Mel Cherney Daniel S Chess and Richard W. Lilly

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Mr. and Mrs. Sander A. Flaum Susan and Arthur Fleischer Barbara G. Fleischman Martha J. Fleischman Clare and John Fraser Stephanie French P. Gayle Fuguitt and Thomas Veitch Agata and Sumeer Sath Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Garbutt James W. Gerard Mr. and Mrs. Trevor Gibbons Nelsa L. Gidney and Jordan Ringel Mr. and Mrs. Gary Gmoser Lynn Goldberg and J Robert Moskin Alexander Goldberg Jane and Budd Goldman Mr. and Mrs. Pedro Gonzales de Cosio Parisa Golestaneh Susan Grant and Lawrence Marisel Gail Gregg Dr. and Mrs. Jeffrey Groeger Jan M. Guifarro Yen Ha and Richard Tesler Linda L Hackett and Russell W. Munson Jr. Robert H. Haines Lynn and Martin Halbfinger Mrs. and Mrs. Peter Halstead Karee Hanifan Cassandra Harris Kitty Hawks and Larry Lederman Marian S. Heiskell Anita K. Hersh Mr. and Mrs. Michael Ho Pamela Hoiles Jean Huber Fern Hurst and Peter Rubin Mr. and Mrs. Alan Ilberman Heatherlyn Ingenito James Iorio and Audrey Chen Elise Jaffe + Jeffrey Brown Joseph Johnson and Karen Diaz Dr. Hootan Khatami & Mr. Daryl Fox Richard Kidd Jennifer Kinderman Hadley C. King Gary Knisely Gloria and Richard Kobrin Geraldine Kunstadter Paul C. Lambert Xia and Richard Leder

H. Kate Lee

Sophie Nitkin

Zachary Schoenhut,

Ann Leibowitz

Robert S. Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Hara, Jr.

Ralph Lemon

Elizabeth Peyton

Joyce Pomeroy Schwartz

V. Vorres Fine Art Gallery, LLC

Catherine Lipkin and Danae Oratowski

Mr. and Mrs. Ciro Pellicano

Nadine Shaoul and Mark Schonberger

Karen Wagner

Angelina M-D. Lippert

Stefani Phipps

Daniel S. Shapiro

Ric Wanetik and David Hagans

Michael Lonergan and William Beauchamp

Anthony Piccillo

Kimberly Ayers Shariff

Mr. and Mrs. Saul Waring

Monique Lowitt

Max Pine

Georgia Shreve

Mr. and Mrs. William Warren

Joan L. Lynton

Mrs. Nancy Piraquive

Lindy Shuttleworth

Paula Weinstein

Susan Madden

Sheila M. and Nicholas Platt

Lisa Simonsen and Ian Phillips

Mr. and Mrs. Yakov Weinstein

Lara Marcon

Mr. and Mrs. Lyon Polk

Mr. and Mrs. Brett Singer

Lisa and Kayla Weisdorf

Ms. and Ms. Theresa Martinez

Mr. and Mrs. Bruno Quinson

Andrew Clifford Skewes

Mr. and Ms. Anthony Weldon

Richard J. Massey

Eden W Rafshoon

Salwa Smith

Gabriella Wiener

Erin Harkness McKinnon

Charles Read

Eileen Solomon

Vincent and Sally Wilt

Martha B. McLanahan

Tara K Reddi

Martha S. Sproule

Gisela Winkelhofer

Shawn McLaughlin and Kieran McMahon

Victoria Reese and Greg Kennedy

Lili L. Stawski

Kenneth J. Witty

Richard Meier

Marjorie P. Rosenthal

Christian Steiner and Frank Heller

Susan Yarnell

Mr. and Mrs. Brett Miller

Mr. and Mrs. Charles Rousell

Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Steiner

Michael Young and Debra Raskin

Diane Compagno Miller

Elizabeth Roxas-Dobrish

Shining Sung

Katharine Zarrella

Sally Minard and Norton Garfinkle

Marie Salerno and Sam Roberts

Robert Taff and J. Philip Moloney

Nina Zolt and Miles Gilburne

Ms. and Mr. Stacey Morse

Manuel de Santaren

Brian Keith Tanz DDS

Anonymous (7)

Claudia and Douglas Morse

Dr. Ulysses H. Scarpidis

Whitney Topping

Chantelle Mowbray

Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Schlechter

John R Torell IV

Mr. and Mrs. David Namerow

Morwin Schmookler

Lee Traub

Nicholson & Galloway, Inc.

Pat Schoenfeld

Mr. and Mrs. T.J. Turgeon

The Schoenhut Family Foundation

Meet The Dancers Photography: Stephanie Berger Cover Art and Design: DBOX

armoryonpark.org

Zachary Kress Turner Mr. and Mrs. Tony Ursano

List as of March 6, 2015 * Deceased