Thursday night’s performance will be followed by a discussion moderated by Jonathan González.

Johnnie Cruise Mercer is a maker, performer, educator, and artistic entrepreneur, and Director of TheREDprojectNYC based in NYC. Mercer’s process memoir 4: The word, the spirit, and Little Rock is an active generational collaboration/conversation that incites the practice of simultaneous deconstruction and reconstruction of gospel music, black spiritual imagery/idols, and physicalized otherhood through trance.

The process is made in creational collaboration with artists Shanice Mason, Adrianne Ansley, Thomas Tyger Moore, and Mikaila Ware, with Music direction/re-innovation by performer/recording artist, Monstah Black, and costume curation directed by multi-disciplinary artist, Trebien Pollard.

Through her work, NYC-based Bessie award-winning dance artist, dance maker, and dance educator, Angie Pittman, investigates how her body moves through ballad, groove, sparkle, spirit, spirituals, ancestry, vulnerability, and power.

“Came Up in a Lonely Castle” is created with collaborator and friend Anita Mullin. This work, performed by Pittman and Mullin, emerges from Pittman’s interest in Black quiet, Black nuance, and Black subtlety in performance as an act of resistance.

Creator & performer: Angie Pittman
Performer: Anita Mullin
Costume collaborator: Athena Kokoronis of The Domestic Performance Agency
Lighting designer: Carol Mullins 

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