Emily Johnson News

The Wandering Theatre Company (Natalie Villamonte Zito, Artistic Di- rector and Amber Wallace, Executive Director) announce their presentation of The Trial of Mrs. Surratt, a Limited Engagement Off-Off Broadway run for 15 performances ONLY May 4th- 19th at the Flamboyan Theater at The Clemente Arts Center (107 Suffolk St, New York, NY 10002).

Performance Space New York presents Gillian Walsh's Fame Notions, a meditation on the American dancer. As part of the No Series-comprised of works that locate power and creativity in refusal- Fame Notions refuses the externalized spectacle of dance; it hovers well beyond performative time, within dancers' interior experiences of alienation derived from a life circling the desires of the contemporary dance economy. Walsh-a Performance Space New York Associate Artist-has a love-hate relationship with the medium of dance that results, as she describes, in pieces that often work 'underneath expectations of theatrical affect, leaning into an infinite and dense emptiness'; they are 'abstract, anti-didactic, and anti-narrative.' Behind the seemingly hermetic surface of Walsh's repetitive dances, however, lies a sincere attempt to carve out a new role for dance as an artistic medium to experiment with non-capitalist temporalities and create new spaces for collective experiences. Fame Notions asks everyone in the room-including the audience-to slow down considerably.

Performance Space New York partners with East Village-based queer funk dance party WET NOISE for a celebratory 12-Hour DANCE-A-THON (May 5, 12pm-12am), a fundraising event that couldn't be further from expectations of what a "fundraising event" entails. The DANCE-A-THON revels in filthy funk music, endless dancing, community building, and inclusivity across age, race, gender, sexuality, and class. DJs tag team in sets as a dynamic give-and-take, throughout the night; they include founding DJ Amber Martin along with Patrick Johnson, Ana Matronic (Scissor Sisters), Seth Kirby (Joshua Light Show), Thomas Campbell, and DatKat (O.E.A.).

Performance Space New York concludes its No Series with two performances by Ligia Lewis: minor matter (May 21-22)and Water Will (in Melody) (May 28-29), the latter two installments in her BLUE RED WHITE trilogy interrogating and complicating certain types of embodiment in relationship to the frame of the theater-and particularly the black box-space. The trilogy began with Sorrow Swag in blue and continued with minor matter in red; its conclusion, the U.S. premiere performance Water Will (in Melody), is a melodrama in black and white. Through her use of color, embodiment, and dramaturgical unruliness, Lewis twists ingrained symbols of the body and the theater with playful abandon. Resisting the tyranny of transparency and representationalism, she hopes to carve out a space for opacity and the state of not knowing.

Award winning composer and pianist Dustin O'Halloran (Marie Antoinette, Lion, Transparent) whose “sublime” and “enveloping” (DIS) music creates “altered states” (Mojo) teams with choreographer and Company Wayne McGregor member Fukiko Takase to explore ideas of technology, humanity and mind-body dualism in a new electronics-forward existentialist performance 1 0 0 1. As we approach the age of AI, the collaborators ask: how will a new form of consciousness manifest inside a body? What will happen to our soul? 

The Onassis Foundation USA has appointed Vallejo Gantner as its new Artistic and Executive Director. Gantner led the internationally influential New York City cultural institution Performance Space 122 (now Performance Space New York) from 2005 to 2017 and was responsible for all programming and strategic direction, including the creation of the annual, interdisciplinary COIL Festival; the production of worldwide tours for multiple shows under the PS122 Global moniker; and the conception, fundraising, and management for the recent $35 million renovation of the organization's longtime East Village home.

The Onassis Foundation USA has appointed Vallejo Gantner as its new Artistic and Executive Director. Gantner led the internationally influential New York City cultural institution Performance Space 122 (now Performance Space New York) from 2005 to 2017 and was responsible for all programming and strategic direction.

Abrons Arts Center (AAC), the Lower East Side arts institution that has long been a nexus of creative communities and local cultures, is pleased to announce its 2019-2020 Jerome Foundation AIRspace Residents, a group of four interdisciplinary artists engaged in the fields of visual arts, performing arts, and social practices. In addition, Abrons is launching its first-ever Promoting the Arts Throughout Henry Street (PATHS) residency program, selecting four artists for the program's inaugural cohort. 

First Nations Dialogues Lenapehoking/New York is an initiative that provides unprecedented exposure and a focus on Indigenous performing arts and artists based in Canada, the U.S., and Australia in partnership with multiple contemporary live performance platforms across New York City, January 5–12, 2019. First Nations Dialogues also kick-starts the development of the groundbreaking Global First Nations Performance Network (GFNPN), a pilot initiative focused on cultural change through the commissiong, touring, and presenting of Indigenous performance and building demand and capacity for the same within the presenting sector.

On December 7 and 8 at 7:30 PM, the legendary Fresh Tracks Performance and Residency Program at New York Live Arts will showcase the work of their five selected emerging choreographers: Emma Rose Brown, J. Bouey, Liana Conyers, Collin Ranf, and Dolores (Lola) Sanchez. As part of its annual programming, Fresh Tracks has been a 54-year commitment to bringing new voices to the forefront. The program offers a unique vantage point for the artists who are provided an unparalleled opportunity for professional development, experience, and recognition. Fresh Tracks performances take place at New York Live Arts Theatre, located at 219 West 19th Street, NYC. Tickets start at $15 and may be purchased at 212 924 0077 or online at newyorklivearts.org

Writers in Performance is a 12-week writing and performance workshop hosted by BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, culminating in two public presentations.  Throughout the course of the workshop, talented actors, playwrights, poets and storytellers have explored writing exercises, theater games, improvisation, movement techniques, and ensemble work in a safe, creative environment.

Performance Space New York presents the No Series (January-May, 2019), unleashing the powerful artistic and political tool of refusal. The institution's third themed series under Executive Artistic Director Jenny Schlenzka (following the 2018's Posthuman and East Village Series) foregrounds projects that reflect on oppression and the task of building worlds from modes of survival outside the dominant culture, which seeks to dehumanize, destroy, erase, and exploit. Often reflecting the community and care fostered in the margins of colonial, ableist, hetero-patriarchal, and capitalist societies, the artists in the No Series engage modes of being beyond the individualism and alienation on which these structures thrive. Hopelessness and invisibility can provide the foundations for vibrant, self-determined worlds.

On December 7 and 8 at 7:30 PM, the legendary Fresh Tracks Performance and Residency Program at New York Live Arts will showcase the work of their five selected emerging choreographers: Emma Rose Brown, J. Bouey, Liana Conyers, Collin Ranf, and Dolores (Lola) Sanchez.

Playwrights Horizons (Artistic Director Tim Sanford, Managing Director Leslie Marcus) presents Indigenous Voices: A Reading Series, organized by 2018-2019 Guest Curator, artist and choreographer Emily Johnson (November 1 & 6). Each season, Playwrights Horizons brings on a member of the larger New York arts community as a Guest Curator to work with the Playwrights staff. In a program complementing the world premiere of Larissa FastHorse's side-splitting comedy The Thanksgiving Play (through November 25), Johnson, an Alaskan native of Yup'ik descent, brings together four works from Indigenous writers in two free, open to the public evenings of readings.

Performance Space New York continues its Posthuman Series with DEAD THOROUGHBRED, a collaboration that includes at least keyon gaskin and sidony o'neal, October 26-27. DEAD THOROUGHBRED feels ambivalent about the posthuman future. Rather than the post-human, DEAD THOROUGHBRED feels the ante-human (ante = before in Latin), i.e. the dead and other non-human living and non-living forms, in an effort to complicate the idea that living human consciousness is the central or sole indicator of subjective relation. DEAD THOROUGHBRED acknowledges the inherent exclusion and limitations of posthuman theory. DEAD THOROUGHBRED's presentation in the Posthuman Series f**ks with the generativity of death and hopelessness as a critical antithesis to DEAD THOROUGHBRED's interest in posthuman ideas of enhanced living, futurity, and occult possibility.

Performance Space New York kicks off its second themed season of performances and events-the Posthuman Series-with the world premiere of Annie Dorsen's The Slow Room (September 27-29). Dorsen has taken the idea of technological theater further than most artists.

Performance Space New York announces First Mondays: Readings of New Works in Progress, organized by author Sarah Schulman (Maggie Terry, 2018; Conflict is not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility and the Duty of Repair, 2016). On the first Monday of most months between October 2018 and May 2019, the series will present audiences with an opportunity to gather and hear in-progress works from writers leading the literary avant-garde. First Mondays exemplifies the artistic community-building power in Performance Space New York's appointment of five Associate Artists. Today, the organization announces Sarah Schulman, Emily Johnson, Gillian Walsh, Sarah Ortmeyer, and Angela Dimayuga as the Associate Artists who will actively contribute to programming and administrative decision making in the years to come-honoring Performance Space New York's roots as a space run by the very people experimenting within it.

The Philadelphia Artists' Collective returns to the Philadelphia FringeArts Festival with a hauntingly beautiful site-specific work by the famous author of Peter Pan. Mary Rose, by J.M. Berrie, will be presented both inside the historic and ornate mansion - and outside under the stars in the cemetery itself. The show runs for a total of 12 performances through September 22, 2018. All shows are at 7:00pm. Woodlands offers patrons free parking and the cemetery is just one block from a major SEPTA bus hub. Tickets are $20 to $25 each. Tickets are available by calling 215-413-9006 or visiting https://fringearts.com/event/mary-rose/.

Performance Space New York continues its second themed season of performances and events-the Posthuman Series-with the U.S. Premiere of choreographer and dancer Mette Ingvartsen's 21 pornographies(October 3-5). The solo performance expands on Ingvartsen's body of work exploring an all-pervasive sexuality, here using physical action and narrative description to take audiences through pornographic history in associative tour de force that is equally stimulating, disturbing, cheerful, and sensuous. Ingvartsen also brings The Permeable Stage - Reimagining the Social, a new installment of her ongoing series of performative conferences, to Performance Space New York (October 7),engaging artists, thinkers, filmmakers, and activists in a dialogue drawing on various Posthuman ideas.