Baryshnikov Arts Center Announces Spring 2022 BAC Open Artist Residencies

Baryshnikov Arts Center has announced the launch of BAC Open, an artist residency program providing critical support to six artists and their collaborators developing projects of dance, theater, music, and multimedia. The program offers a pressure-free environment, encouraging artists to focus on their current priorities without the expectation of delivering a finished work. The BAC Open format hosts multiple residencies concurrently in BAC's studio spaces, providing opportunities for artists to meet and exchange ideas. BAC Open concludes in a day of public studio showings.

The Spring 2022 season marks 17 years of BAC Residencies, the core artistic program of Baryshnikov Arts Center, and the launch of BAC Open marks the first season of artist residencies selected via an open application process welcoming submissions from artists across disciplines and career stages. From 206 applicants, the six BAC Open artists were selected by BAC Programming staff in collaboration with an outside panel of artists and arts administrators: Jon Nakagawa, Charmaine Warren, and Shelley Washington. BAC Founder and Artistic Director Mikhail Baryshnikov shares: "This open application process was a unique opportunity to get to know the work of the most diverse group of creative minds, some of whom we knew and many of whom we did not. There is no doubt that we will continue to follow their work and find new ways to encourage their creativity to thrive."

The BAC Open Spring 2022 Resident Artists are: Musician Ian Askew, developing John Henry and High John, a collaborative performance project inspired by the 1940 musical John Henry, which closed only five days after its Broadway premiere and starred Paul Robeson in the title role; dance company Baye & Asa, developing HotHouse, a dance work exploring the impact of social isolation and the systemic criminal confinement of American people and communities; theater artist Aaron Landsman, developing Night Keeper, a multimedia performance exploring our changeable capacity for shared experiences and negotiating the spatial hierarchies that separate performer from audience; dance artist Gaspard Louis, developing Sodo, a work inspired by the photography of Phillis Galembo, whose portraits taken during the annual pilgrimage of thousands of Haitians to the Mirebalais waterfalls reveal the complexities of representation and the power inherent in being seen; writer, director, choreographer and performing artist Amanda Szeglowski, developing a work channeling Armenian psychic medium Roxy Mirajanian and examining our cultural obsession with the unknown; and dance artist Nami Yamamoto, developing Trooper Brother, inspired by her physical and mental experience of undergoing multiple surgeries and the ways our minds dissect our changing bodies even as we continue to survive and celebrate our lives.

Audiences are invited to observe these artists' works-in-progress during a series of public BAC Open Studio Showings at BAC (450 West 37th Street) on June 29. The schedule will be announced by May 18 at bacnyc.org.

For information about BAC Open, and the Spring 2022 Resident Artists, their collaborators, and their projects, please visit http://bacnyc.org/residencies/current.

ABOUT THE SPRING 2022 BAC OPEN RESIDENT ARTISTS

Ian Andrew Askew is an artist working in music and performance. Their research is concerned with historical absurdities, manufactured scarcities, and contrary negritudes. Their project SLAMDANCE began in residency at Arts @ 29 Garden in 2019 and continued at The Performing Garage in 2021. SLAMDANCE TV, a video component, was commissioned and premiered by The Kitchen online in 2021. Other performances include love conjure/blues at American Repertory Theater and : A Story Project at Farkas Hall. As a sound artist collaborating with Camila Ortiz, they have created scores for film, performance, public sculpture, gallery installation, and AR for artists including Christopher Myers, Kaneza Schaal, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Joie Lee, and Kamal Nassif. Their short essays and poetry have been published by Aperture and featured in To Make Their Own Way in the World, published by Aperture and the Peabody Museum Press. As an assistant director alongside Zack Winokur and AMOC, Ian has shown work at Lincoln Center, American Repertory Theater, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. As an associate director and sound designer with Kaneza Schaal, they have presented work with Michigan Opera Theater and Performance Space New York.