Center for Performance Research to Present Fall 2026 Season With Diovanna Obafunmilayo Residency

CPR – Center for Performance Research will present a season of public programs including performances, installations, and workshops, alongside a technical residency with artist Diovanna Obafunmilayo in Brooklyn.

OPEN LAB

Abstraction Building with Quaba Venza Ernest

Monday, September 14 from 7-8:30 P.M.

Tickets $0-$25, pay what you can:

More information: https://www.cprnyc.org/events/open-lab-with-quaba-venza-ernest

This movement workshop by 2026 AiR Quaba Venza Ernest explores improvised theatrical staging through scored improvisation, composition, and play. Beginning with somatic and proprioceptive practices, participants will cultivate awareness of their own bodies before collectively mapping the space and discovering relationships with one another. Together, we will create events by exploring symbolic weight, spatial relationships, dynamic tension, and the quiet beauty of natural occurrences.

Through simple compositional prompts and improvisational scores, we will investigate how stories emerge through presence rather than predetermined narrative, allowing meaning to arise from the relationships between bodies, objects, space, and time.

Open to movers of all backgrounds, this workshop invites participants to experiment, observe, and compose in real time, embracing curiosity and intuition as tools for theatrical world-building.

OPEN STUDIOS

Mizuho Kappa, JoyBoy, and Miguel Miranda, curated by Stefanie Batten Bland

Thursday, September 17 at 7:30 P.M.

Tickets $0-$25, pay what you can: OPENSTUDIOS-StefanieBattenBland.eventbrite.com

More information: https://www.cprnyc.org/events/open-studios-curated-by-stefanie-batten-bland

Stefanie Batten Bland brings together Mizuho Kappa, JoyBoy, and Miguel Miranda, three immersive artists exploring the audience/performer relationship within other spaces.

OPEN STUDIOS

'not even tomorrow can deliver you from today': Alex Patrick Dyck, Zora Jade Khiry, and Maxi Hawkeye Canion, curated by Keioui Keijaun Thomas

Thursday, September 24 at 7:30 P.M.

Tickets $0-$25, pay what you can: OPENSTUDIOS-KeiouiKeijaunThomas.eventbrite.com

More information: https://www.cprnyc.org/events/open-studios-curated-by-keioui-keijaun-thomas

Keioui Keijaun Thomas curates OPEN STUDIOS: 'not even tomorrow can deliver you from today', asking 'How can we come together to face this present moment?' Bringing together Alex Patrick Dyck, Zora Jade Khiry and Maxi Hawkeye Canion, three artist that are:

• Bad Bitches.
• Thinking about the body, ritual, communion, language, deliverance and perhaps, what healing can look like, taste like, sound like and feel like.
• Black and Brown femmes tearing and building up tomorrow, because we must make tomorrow a possibility for girls like us today––delving into grief, joyous rupture and an anointment by the universe saying 'bloom bloom bloom.'

OPEN STUDIOS

Nature my boo, Nature my muse: Andrea Soto, Matt Rossi, and Justin Wong, curated by Stephanie Acosta

Thursday, October 1 at 7:30 P.M.

Tickets $0-$25, pay what you can: OPENSTUDIOS-StephanieAcosta.eventbrite.com

More information: https://www.cprnyc.org/events/open-studios-curated-by-stephanie-acosta

Nature and the organic world inspires and instigates an evening of live works and conversation featuring Andrea Soto, Matt Rossi, and Justin Wong, curated by Stephanie Acosta for CPR's OPEN STUDIOS. Playing with scale, perspectives and approach, nature takes us into itself, embedded in and emboldened by the landscapes and layers that make up our world.

OPEN AiR

Erica Enriquez: MOVING COMPANY

Thursday, October 8 at 7 P.M.

Tickets $0-$25, pay what you can: OPENAiR-EricaEnriquez.eventbrite.com

More information: https://www.cprnyc.org/events/open-air-erica-enriquez

Using packing materials as modular set items, props, and characters unto themselves, MOVING COMPANY by 2026 AiR Erica Enriquez explores how bodies and memories are carried through movement. How does one become moved? Brought to tears, brought to laughter, and repositioned in feeling? How can migration, both voluntary and involuntary, in both togetherness and collective anonymity, be bound with joy and reclamation between seemingly tattered seams and distant edges? Where does the light leak through the seams?

OPEN AiR

Valentina Baché: RANCHO: El porvenir

Thursday, October 15 at 7 P.M.

Tickets $0-$25, pay what you can: OPENAiR-ValentinaBaché.eventbrite.com

More information: https://www.cprnyc.org/events/open-air-valentina-bache

In this live performance by 2026 AiR Valentina Baché, time is warped into surreal and sacrificial truths. Enter this gaping beastly mouth, this void where hunger and nostalgia changes you. Witness a world where memory, violence, and transformation collide, and where the line between observer and participant disappears.

OPEN STUDIOS

Sol Cabrini, Bao Nguyen, Karwaan Kotwal, curated by Anh Vo

Thursday, October 22 at 7:30 P.M.

Tickets $0-$25, pay what you can: OPENSTUDIOS-AnhVo.eventbrite.com

More information: https://www.cprnyc.org/events/open-studios-curated-by-anh-vo

Anh Vo invites Sol Cabrini, Bao Nguyen, and Karwaan Kotwal to CPR for an evening of performance exploring the desire for the incommensurable.

OPEN LAB

CARRYING DAT: thick circles & soft survival prep with Joy Norton

Monday, October 26 from 7-8:30 P.M.

Tickets $0-$25, pay what you can: OPENLAB-JoyNorton.eventbrite.com

More information: https://www.cprnyc.org/events/open-lab-with-joy-norton

2026 AiR Joy Norton presents a participatory OPEN LAB workshop developed in conjunction with her forthcoming work Reveries of the Sacred Floor: Plus One. Rooted in the belief that Black, queer, trans, and femme people must be the architects and protectors of their own futures, this lab draws from club culture, historic codes, Afrofuturism, and Afropessimism to gather around one question: if the world as we know it ends, who survives and how?

Together we will move through video, history, and past revolutions, excavating the tools our communities have always carried, the codes that have kept us alive, and the knowledge we pass through dance floors, back channels, and word of mouth. We will sit with the reality of collapse: what sustenance looks like, and what we can grow, gather, and protect. We will build emergency bags together, develop contingency plans with our people, and ask how our current sites of pleasure can become our most radical infrastructure.

Participants will leave with an understanding of emergency kits, tools for communal conflict resolution, and a seed for transforming their leisure and the club into something that pulls them closer to themselves, their community, and their survival.

OPEN LAB

GODBODY: Ritual Participation with Diovanna Obafunmilayo

Friday, November 6 from 7-8:30 P.M.

Tickets $0-$25, pay what you can: OPENLAB-DiovannaObafunmilayo.eventbrite.com

More information: https://www.cprnyc.org/events/open-lab-with-diovanna-obafunmilayo-2

Fall 2026 Randall Bourscheidt Technical Resident Diovanna Obafunmilayo presents participatory excerpts from her new work in development GODBODY, experimenting with how light and audience interaction can be further incorporated into the work. Fusing elements of Hip Hop culture, Afro-cuban and Yoruba religious ceremony, queer joy, live painting, comedy, and poetry, this interactive presentation will investigate questions such as:

• How is an authentically ritualistic environment fostered in a theatre setting?
• What does an audience need to be sufficiently educated on how to be in this ritual?
• How do rituals that are initiatory, and thus exclusionary to the general public, include a public audience, and what are the implications of this framework?

The full production of GODBODY will be staged in Boston at The Theater Offensive from November 12-14, 2026.

OPEN LAB

The Water Inside Our Bodies: Dancing Stillness and Silence with Yuki Kawahisa

Monday, November 9 from 7-8:30 P.M.

Tickets $0-$25, pay what you can: OPENLAB-YukiKawahisa.eventbrite.com

More information: https://www.cprnyc.org/events/open-lab-with-yuki-kawahisa-part-2

2026 AiR Yuki Kawahisa presents the second iteration of a participatory movement workshop that examines the beauty and narrative potential of stillness and silence. Incorporating elements of Noh Theater, Butoh, Noguchi Taiso, Tai Chi, movement improvisation and clowning, Kawahisa will engage participants in inclusive communication around movement and disability, challenging perceived limitations around 'normal' movement in performance.

Participants with disabilities, mobility-limitations, and no prior dance experience are encouraged to register. Both new and returning participants are welcome! CPR is a fully ADA-compliant and accessible venue with two single occupancy, all gender restrooms and one wheelchair-accessible restroom.

OPEN AiR

Joan Gutiérrez: Surrendering to the Flowers

Thursday, November 12 at 7 P.M.

Tickets $0-$25, pay what you can: OPENAiR-JoanGutiérrez.eventbrite.com

More information: https://www.cprnyc.org/events/open-air-joan-gutierrez

Surrendering to the Flowers by 2026 AiR Joan Gutiérrez conjures a cooking 'show' where the body is both kitchen and altar. Seven somatic practices are alchemized into recipes whose ingredients are desire, memory, and the erotic wisdom stored in flesh and scar. Footage of Woman shaping earth into bowls, of cactus cut open and onions peeled to their cleanest layers, moves like running water alongside a mythological creature lost in maguey and swamp, narrated by a voice layering breath with the collective intimacy of wanting.

This is an invitation to pause. To stand on a single spot on earth long enough to listen for what voices, ancestral or still in body, might find us here.

This work moves through an initiation of allowing the body to be re-membered. A slow peeling away of the layers of skin that reveal the feral, wide-open eyes of our center. A reckoning with innocence, power, and the places we rarely are permitted to touch.

OPEN STAGE

Fall Movement: Starla Edwards, Angel Glasby & Thalia Sablon, Sierra Hendrix, jolie PADILLA, and Lu Yim

Friday, December 4 and Saturday, December 5 at 7 P.M.

Tickets $0-$25, pay what you can: OPENSTAGE-FallMovement2026.eventbrite.com

More information: https://www.cprnyc.org/events/fallmovement-2026-dec-4

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