Okwui Okpokwasili News

Live Artery 2017, New York Live Arts' dynamic showcase of new and recent works by Live Arts residency and commissioned artists, opens January 6 and runs through January 9, 2017.

Performance Space 122's annual performance festival, Coil, returns for its twelfth edition with 13 individual events. The festival explores the constant vitality of live performance in New York City through contemporary artists from diverse genres, cultures and perspectives. Featuring work created locally, across the U.S., and around the world, Coil is known for its groundbreaking contemporary performance across interdisciplinary art, working with new technologies and forms. Through installations, live and virtual practices, PS122 is committed to redefining how, where, and when performance is experienced.

Performance Space 122's annual performance festival, Coil, returns for its twelfth edition with 13 individual events.

The Museum of Modern Art announces the first monograph on the dancer and choreographer Ralph Lemon, as part of the new Modern Dance publication series on practicing choreographers. Born in Cincinnati in 1952, Ralph Lemon is one of the most significant figures to emerge from New York's downtown dance and performance world in the past forty years. A polymath and shape-shifter, Lemon combines dance and theater with drawing, film, writing, and ethnography in works presented on the stage, in publications, and in museums. He builds his politically resonant and deeply personal projects in collaboration with dance makers and artists from New York, West Africa, South and East Asia, and the American South. Lemon describes his explorations as a "search for the forms of formlessness."

The fall season at New York Live Arts, home of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company and under the artistic leadership of MacArthur Genius Award and National Medal of the Arts recipient Bill T. Jones and Associate Artistic Director Janet Wong, presents a dynamic roster of new works including five world and four New York City premieres, eight Live Arts commissions and an engaging schedule of humanities events.

This summer, Elastic City, the pioneer of artist-led participatory walks, will present The Last Walks, its seventh and final festival.

New York Live Arts, home of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company and under the artistic leadership of MacArthur Genius Award and National Medal of the Arts recipient Bill T. Jones, announced its upcoming 2016-2017 season today.

Iconic non-profit arts organization, Performance Space 122 (PS122) announces that Vallejo Gantner has decided to step down as Artistic Director. He will remain with the organization until a new director is in place. Performance Space 122's Board of Directors has launched a search for new leadership with the goal of filling the position by the end of 2016.

The Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) presents the third annual OnEdge, the experimental live performance series, February 19 - March 4, 2016.  The FREE admission series will feature Chicago and world premieres from national and international artists and companies at venues including the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington St.), the Storefront Theater (66 E. Randolph St.) and Links Hall (3111 N. Western Ave.). 

The Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) presents the third annual OnEdge, the experimental live performance series, February 19 - March 4, 2016.  The FREE admission series will feature Chicago and world premieres from national and international artists and companies at venues including the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington St.), the Storefront Theater (66 E. Randolph St.) and Links Hall (3111 N. Western Ave.).  

Tony and Obie Award-winning playwright and performer Sarah Jones presents an exclusive first-look production of her latest full-length performance piece SELL/BUY/DATE at New York Live Arts for 12 performances only as part of New York Live Arts' annual Live Artery season. This dynamic multi-character, one-person play is inspired by stories of people, especially women and girls, directly impacted by sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation.

Tony and Obie Award-winning playwright and performer Sarah Jones presents an exclusive first-look production of her latest full-length performance piece SELL/BUY/DATE at New York Live Arts for 12 performances only as part of New York Live Arts' annual Live Artery season. This dynamic multi-character, one-person play is inspired by stories of people, especially women and girls, directly impacted by sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation.

Tony and Obie Award-winning playwright and performer Sarah Jones presents an exclusive first-look production of her latest full-length performance piece Sell/Buy/Date at New York Live Arts for 12 performances only as part of New York Live Arts' annual Live Artery season.

The Kitchen is pleased to present the New York Premiere of Scaffold Room in an expanded format created by choreographer, director and conceptual artist Ralph Lemon. This installation, performance and reading series of seminal, subversive texts refracts ideas and images of the female artist in American pop and contemporary art.

The Kitchen is pleased to present the New York Premiere of Scaffold Room in an expanded format created by choreographer, director and conceptual artist Ralph Lemon. This installation, performance and reading series of seminal, subversive texts refracts ideas and images of the female artist in American pop and contemporary art.

Times Square Arts announced today the artists that will participate in their Residency at the Crossroads program for Fall 2015 and Winter 2015-2016. This fall's residency by writer, performer and choreographer Okwui Okpokwasili, in partnership with New York Foundation for the Arts, will explore the potential of creating one song from the disparate collection of voices that converge on Times Square. During the Winter of 2015-2016, as part of a six-month partnership with Eyebeam, composer Kenneth Kirschner & visualist and software designer Joshue Ott will develop a smartphone app that transforms the way that one sees and hears Times Square and other urban places.

A solo creation at the intersection of theatre, dance and visual art installation, Bronx Gothic gives palpable force to the charged relationship between two girls on the verge of adolescence in 1980s outer-borough New York City - where Newport cigarettes are bought in singles at the corner bodega and sex-saturated notes are passed in class. 

The Kitchen, founded in 1971, has continued to serve as an important catalyst for a broad community of groundbreaking artists working across disciplines. In today's landscape, where contemporary artists and arts institutions are collaborating in new ways, and generating new contexts for the continuing evolution of multi-disciplinary art, The Kitchen, as a nimble, smaller-scale organization, plays an especially vital role: it provides emerging and established artists a hot-house environment for the presentation and discussion of their work, supporting and seeking to foster a vibrant, living dialogue among artists from every field and area of culture.

New York Live Arts today announced the recipients of a number of new works residency programs for the 2015-16 season and beyond as part of its newly envisioned new work development program, reflecting a renewed, industry-leading commitment to the support of the creative process. The celebrated New York-based writer, performer and choreographer Okwui Okpokwasili will be the organization's third recipient of the Resident Commissioned Artist (RCA) award, the largest of its kind in the nation. Andrea Kleine, Sonya Tayeh, Adrienne Truscott, Preeti Vasudevan, Larissa Velez-Jackson and Gillian Walsh have been curated to develop new work to premiere in future seasons on the New York Live Arts stage through the Live Feed Program (formerly Studio Series).