Immigrant Artists Tackle Pressing Environmental Issues and Uncertainty in CORRESPONDENCES

LEIMAY, continues its multi-borough project with the Staten Island premiere of Correspondences, a free, outdoor, performance-based, public-art installation at Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden as part of FIGMENT NYC 2022,

Correspondences is a sculptural installation-performance by multidisciplinary artist duo Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya offering multiple entry points to engage with questions of being, interdependence, and coexistence. In Correspondences, performer, observer, machines, natural elements, and the urban environment mingle in an entangled poetic microcosm while opening inquiries into animate life and environmental ethics. Audiences can engage with the installation at any time and also witness 35-minute activations performed by members of the LEIMAY Ensemble.

As part of Correspondences, single bodies are enclosed inside transparent chambers partially filled with sand. Bodies are donned with gas masks as they try, time and again, to rise to standing. At intervals, machines attached to the chambers trigger a blast of sand causing the performers to lose their footing, sinking them back down into the ground. This seemingly perpetual eruption repeats throughout daily performance activation periods of Correspondences, both with and without performers.

How do we cope with uncertainty? How can we reconcile existential tensions between the flow and currents of the animate life of environments in contrast to the individual-centered occupation of the world? What happens to our bodies when we encounter the unknown? How are we reshaping environmental ethics? Why are existential questions of being, interdependence, and coexistence, vital in these pandemic times and in these times of readjustment of powers and values? These are some of the questions Ximena and Shige are asking as New Yorkers, as immigrant people of color from eastern and western hemispheres, as a couple who share a life and artistic partnership, and through the poetic entangled microcosm of Correspondences.

Correspondences is performed by the LEIMAY Ensemble which includes core members Masanori Asahara, Krystel Copper, and Ximena Garnica

In addition to live outdoor performances, Correspondences at Snug Harbor includes:

Interstitial Family Workshops A mini LUDUS offering for all ages, utilizing gravity and other natural principles in correspondence with natural elements, to activate and discover interconnectivity through embodied movement. Family workshops will happen between Correspondences performance activations (see schedule below).

Correspondences Audience Files: A growing oral and written interactive archive for audiences to engage with over conversation by sharing their responses to questions of being, interdependence, connectivity, and environmental ethics. QR codes located on the grounds guide audiences to participate both on-site and on-line. Correspondences Audience Files will be open to the public to engage for 30 days starting a week prior to the installation launch. (May 27, 2021 | www.correspondencesfiles.leimay.org)

Correspondences On-Demand: For a limited period of time, two different art films capturing the meditative nature of Correspondences will be available for on-demand access during the month of June at www.ondemand.leimay.org)

Schedule:

Activation periods* with performers:

June 4, 2022, Saturday:

12 pm Activation 1
12:50-1:05 Mini-workshop 1 (Bilingual English/Spanish)

2 pm Activation 2
2:50-3:05 Mini-workshop 2 (Bilingual English/Spanish)

4pm Activation 3

4:50-5:05 Mini-workshop 3 (Bilingual English/Spanish)

8pm Activation 4

June 5, 2022, Sunday:

11am Activation 1

11:50-12:05 Mini-workshop 1 (Bilingual English/Spanish)

1pm Activation 2

1:50-2:05 Mini-workshop 2 (Bilingual English/Spanish)

3pm Activation 3

3:50-4:05 Mini-workshop 3 (Bilingual English/Spanish)

5pm Activation 3

*Activation periods with performers are 35 minutes long

RSVP and be entered in a raffle to receive a Postcard Collection Set: Selection of 3 images from Correspondences Series!

About Ximena & Shige

Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya are a Colombian and Japanese artist duo working in the visual and performing arts fields as multidisciplinary artists, directors, choreographers, curators, and teachers. Their collaborative works include performances, sculptural, video, mixed-media, and light installations as well as photography and film projects. Ximena and Shige also invest their energy in critical research, printed and digital publications, educational activities, and community projects.

Their work is rooted in questions of being, perception, interdependency, and coexistence. They look to expose the multiplicity of spatial and temporal intervals that exist within the body, between materials and environments. They are curious about what emerges when the stability of habits, affirmation of binaries, social norm expectations, and the crystallization of identity dissolve and expose the potentialities of being.

Ximena and Shige are the co-founders and co-artistic directors of the arts organization LEIMAY and the performance group the LEIMAY Ensemble. The word LEIMAY is a Japanese term symbolizing the moment of change as in the moment between darkness and the light of dawn, or the transition from one era to the other. Their work exists in different domains, from proscenium settings to museums, galleries and outdoors in public spaces such as plazas, gardens and parks. Their works have been presented at leading arts venues such as BAM, HERE, The Brooklyn Museum, Japan Society, The Czech Center New York, The New Museum, The Watermill Center, The Asian Museum of San Francisco, Carnegie Mellon University; and in large and small public spaces such as Times Square, NYRP Community Gardens, and NYC streets, among many other spaces in the US and abroad in Japan, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Mexico, and Colombia.

They have been nominated for the USA Artists Fellowship and the Herb Alpert Award. They have been part of the Bessie Schonberg Individual Choreographers Residency at the Yard, and the Watermill Center Residency Program. Currently they are part of the HERE Artist Residency Program. Ximena was a recipient of the Van Lier Fellowship for extraordinary stage directors, and she was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of California Riverside 2018-2019. Her article 'LEIMAY, CAVE, and the New York Butoh Festival' was recently published in The Routledge Companion to Butoh Performance. She has been a faculty member at MIT, Marymount Manhattan College, and Sarah Lawrence College.

Ximena and Shige are advocates of affordable live-work spaces and their work (2014-2019) was instrumental in effecting changes at the NY State level to protect live-work spaces in New York City.

About the LEIMAY Ensemble

The LEIMAY is a group of national and international dancers and performers who create body-centered works around the principle of LUDUS, a practice developed by Ximena, Shige and the group that explores physical methods to develop a sensitivity to the "in-between space.". The group holds a regular practice at their studio in Brooklyn where they engage in the creation of new work in addition to teaching, training, research, and distillation of years of direct transmission of embodied knowledge by Japanese Butoh pioneers, Noguchi Taiso practitioners, and Experimental Theater innovators.

LEIMAY Ensemble Members for Correspondences at Snug Harbor:

Masanori Asahara* is a Japanese born dancer, choreographer and improvisation artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Masanori has been a core member of the LEIMAY Ensemble since 2010. He has toured, taught, and performed with the ensemble for over a decade.

Krystel Copper* is a second-generation immigrant dance artist born to parents from Argentina and Portugal. She joined LEIMAY as a member of the performance and research ensemble in 2016 for the premiere of Frantic Beauty at BAM. Krystel holds a B.A. in Dance from the University of Maryland.

Irena Romendik is a Ukrainian visual artist based in Brooklyn for the past two decades. She has co-designed and fabricated costumes for LEIMAY's projects for the past nine years and performed in several LEIMAY projects. She has been a LEIMAY Fellow with her own work as a visual artist collaborating with movement-based performers. She holds degrees from Shevchenko Art School in Kiev, Pratt Institute, and Tisch School of the Arts, NYU.

Jeremy D. Slater has worked with LEIMAY in several projects since 2009, creating original soundscapes for performances and installation. He is an intermedia artist working in the areas of sound, video, computer art, performance, installation, and words. Born in Reading, England and a graduate of both SUNY College at Buffalo and School of Visual Arts with an MFA in Computer Art.

*Core LEIMAY Ensemble

LEIMAY Ensemble Members for Correspondences at Snug Harbor:

Masanori Asahara* is a Japanese born dancer, choreographer and improvisation artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Masanori has been a core member of the LEIMAY Ensemble since 2010. He has toured, taught, and performed with the ensemble for over a decade.

Krystel Copper* is a second-generation immigrant dance artist born to parents from Argentina and Portugal. She joined LEIMAY as a member of the performance and research ensemble in 2016 for the premiere of Frantic Beauty at BAM. Krystel holds a B.A. in Dance from the University of Maryland.

Irena Romendik is an Ukrainian visual artist based in Brooklyn for the past two decades. She has co-designed and fabricated costumes for LEIMAY's projects for the past nine years and performed in several LEIMAY projects. She has been a LEIMAY Fellow with her own work as a visual artist collaborating with movement-based performers. She holds degrees from Shevchenko Art School in Kiev, Pratt Institute, and Tisch School of the Arts, NYU.

Jeremy D. Slater has worked with LEIMAY in several projects since 2009, creating original soundscapes for performances and installation. He is an intermedia artist working in the areas of sound, video, computer art, performance, installation, and words. Born in Reading, England and a graduate of both SUNY College at Buffalo and School of Visual Arts with an MFA in Computer Art.

*Core LEIMAY Ensemble

LEIMAY Ensemble Members for Correspondences at Snug Harbor:

Masanori Asahara* is a Japanese born dancer, choreographer and improvisation artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Masanori has been a core member of the LEIMAY Ensemble since 2010. He has toured, taught, and performed with the ensemble for over a decade.

Krystel Copper* is a second-generation immigrant dance artist born to parents from Argentina and Portugal. She joined LEIMAY as a member of the performance and research ensemble in 2016 for the premiere of Frantic Beauty at BAM. Krystel holds a B.A. in Dance from the University of Maryland.

Irena Romendik is an Ukrainian visual artist based in Brooklyn for the past two decades. She has co-designed and fabricated costumes for LEIMAY's projects for the past nine years and performed in several LEIMAY projects. She has been a LEIMAY Fellow with her own work as a visual artist collaborating with movement-based performers. She holds degrees from Shevchenko Art School in Kiev, Pratt Institute, and Tisch School of the Arts, NYU.

Jeremy D. Slater has worked with LEIMAY in several projects since 2009, creating original soundscapes for performances and installation. He is an intermedia artist working in the areas of sound, video, computer art, performance, installation, and words. Born in Reading, England and a graduate of both SUNY College at Buffalo and School of Visual Arts with an MFA in Computer Art.

*Core LEIMAY Ensemble