Events – Danspace Project
Josiah McElheny and Jodi Melnick. Photo: Judy Hussie-Taylor.

Josiah McElheny’s Prismatic Park: Jodi Melnick

Check our website, FacebookTwitter, and Instagram for daily updates on Jodi Melnick’s residency schedule!

Danspace Project has been invited by artist and MacArthur Foundation Fellowship recipient, Josiah McElheny, to participate in Madison Square Park Conservancy’s thirty-fourth exhibition, Prismatic Park. Danspace Executive Director & Chief Curator, Judy Hussie-Taylor, has invited four dance artists to “inhabit” the Park to realize new commissions throughout the exhibition. The project features three large sculptures of painted wood and prismatic glass on view in Madison Square Park from June 13, 2017 through October 8, 2017. The resident artists will create ambitious new work that summons the potential for imagination, creativity, and performance inspired by spontaneous audiences and chance encounters.

Choreographer Jodi Melnick will inhabit Prismatic Park from Tuesday, September 12 through Sunday, September 24, 2017.

New York City-based Melnick is a choreographer, dancer, performer, and teacher. Her work engages with the continuous act of creating, driven by her physical expressiveness and investigation with movement and the body. For this residency, she explains, “the body continues to be my aesthetic material…During my two-week occupancy [at Madison Square Park] I will be working and looking at past, present, and developing new work with an array of bodies.”

“I am inviting other performers that I have recently worked with, artists that I have admired from near and afar, and collaborators. I will be generating new movement, destroying older material, waiting, waiting, waiting, running, walking, watching, interacting, listening, listening, listening. The green public space, the people in the park, sounds of the city, smell of Shake Shack, and Josiah McElheny’s Prismatic Park installation are my set designers and will provide the collaborative nature of this occupancy.”

Invited artists include: Jared Angle, Kyle Bukhari, Yoshiko Chuma, Shirley Dai, Kareem Alexande​r Hewitt, Natalie Jonas, Joseph Lennon, Pareena Lim, Sara Mearns, Sara Rudner, Vicky Shick, Gretchen Smith, Maya Lee-Parritz, Rochelle Wilbun, and Isadora Vandergaw Scott.

The schedule for week one is as follows. Danspace Project will update the schedule daily here on the website, and will post updates on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Week 1
Tuesday, September 12
10-11am: Jodi Melnick/Sara Rudner
3:30-6pm: Jodi Melnick/Kareem Alexander Hewitt/Maya Lee-Parritz/Rochelle Wilbun
6-6:30pm: Jodi Melnick

Wednesday, September 13
1:30-4:30pm: Jodi Melnick/Maya Lee-Parritz/Rochelle Wilbun/Kareem Alexander Hewitt

Thursday, September 14
2-4pm: Jodi Melnick/Maya Lee-Parritz /Clara Chapin Hess/Cauveri Suresh
4-5pm: Jodi Melnick

Friday, September 15
3:30-4:30pm: Jodi Melnick/Kareem Alexander Hewitt
4:30-6pm: Jodi Melnick/Maya Lee-Parritz/Isadora Vandergaw Scott
6-6:30pm: Jodi Melnick/Maya Lee-Parritz
6:15-6:45: Jodi Melnick/Joseph Lennon

Saturday, September 16
2-4pm: Jodi Melnick/Pareena Lim/Maya Lee-Parritz/Kareem Alexander Hewitt/Rochelle Wilbun
4-6pm: Yoshiko Chuma with guest artists

Sunday, September 17
2-4pm: Jodi Melnick/Kareem Alexander Hewitt/Pareena Lim
4:30-6pm: Yoshiko Chuma with guest artists Megumi Eda, Vicky Shick, Kathy Ray, Christine Bonansea Saulut, Emily Coates, Marilyn Maywald Yahel

Week 2

Tuesday, September 19
10-11am: Jodi Melnick/Sara Rudner/Vicky Shick
3-5pm: Jodi Melnick/Colleen Thomas/Asli Bulbul/Maya Lee-Parritz/Kareem Alexander Hewitt
5-6:30pm:  Jodi Melnick in collaboration with Jon Kinzel (Headdress by Jon Kinzel)

Wednesday, September 20
1-3pm: Jodi Melnick/Maya Lee-Parritz/Asli Bulbul
2-4pm:
 Jodi Melnick/Rochelle Wilbun/Isadora Vandergaw Scott/Juli Brandano

Thursday, September 21
12:45-1:30pm:  Jodi Melnick/Emily Coates
2-3pm: Jodi Melnick/Rochelle Wilbun/Colleen Thomas
4:45-5:30pm: Jodi Melnick/Asli Bulbul/Nicky Paraiso/Iréne Hultman

Friday, September 22
5-6pm:  Jodi Melnick/Rashaun Mitchell
5:45-6:30pm: Jodi Melnick/Nicky Paraiso
6:30-7:15pm: Jodi Melnick in collaboration with Jon Kinzel (Headdress by Jon Kinzel)

Saturday, September 23
2-5pm: Jodi Melnick/Juli Brandano/Shirley Dai/Nathalie Jonas/Pareena Lim/Maya Lee-Parritz/Kareem Alexander Hewitt/Isadora Vandergaw Scott/Rochelle Wilbun

Sunday, September 24
4:30-5:15pm: Jodi Melnick/Sara Mearns/Jared Angle
5:15-6pm: Jodi Melnick/Maya Lee-Parritz/Kareem Alexander Hewitt/Asli Bulbul/Isadora Scott/Rochelle Wilbun/Nathalie Jonas/Shirley Dai/Juli Brandano/Cauveri Suresh
6-6:45pm: Jodi Melnick in collaboration with Jon Kinzel (Headdress by Jon Kinzel)

More information: https://www.madisonsquarepark.org/mad-sq-art/mad-sq-art-josiah-mcelheny

Other performances

Photo by Richard Louissaint

André M. Zachery/Renegade Performance Group: Untamed Space

Half hour long pre-show discussions will take place each night at 7pm! Facilitators for the discussions include:
Rosamond S. King (Thursday, September 28)
Dr. Nadine George-Graves (Friday, September 29)
Dr. Layla Zami with André Zachery (Saturday, September 30)

*Please note: there is no late seating for these performances.*

In Untamed Space, Renegade Performance Group artistic director and choreographer André M. Zachery calls upon his familial lineage in the Southern United States and Haiti and his upbringing on the south side of Chicago to construct an interdisciplinary performance about “marooning” in the 21st Century.

Historically, maroon colonies were liberated communities of Africans who escaped to hills, mountains, and forests upon their arrival to the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries. Untamed Space considers the spiritual dimensions of maro​on colonies and, in Zachery’s own words,​ “how the creation of those impassible spaces has influenced contemporary identities of African-blooded people in the Americas.​”

This is Zachery’s latest foray under his AFROFUTURISM series, an ongoing artistic investigation exploring and reinterpreting Black signifiers and culture through technology with a contemporary perspective. Untamed Space covers the trajectory of marooning across time and space: starting in Haiti, moving to Mississippi, and, as Zachery explains, “arriving at my point of departure in Chicago, and into the Afrofuture.”

Performers: Kentoria EarleCandace Thompson, Nehemoyia Young, and André M. Zachery.
Artistic Director/Choreographer/Visual Media Designer: André M. Zachery
Composer/Sound Artist: Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste
Lighting Designer: Carol Mullins
Costume/Visual Designer: Joy Havens
Dramaturge: Rosamond S. King
Musical Contributor: King Britt

 

Watch a trailer for Untamed Space below:

Photo by Natalie Fionl; courtesy of Jessie Young.

DraftWork: Jonathan Gonzalez / Jessie Young

Curated by Ishmael Houston-Jones, the DraftWork series hosts informal, free Saturday afternoon performances that offer choreographers an opportunity to show their work in various stages of development. Performances are followed by discussion and a reception with the artists and curator.

DraftWork is made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

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