Danspace Project

02/07/2025

“𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘀 (𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆) 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝘀𝘁.” -Ain Gordon
“𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘀 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯” -Wally Cardona

For our 50th anniversary, we invited 50+ artists who, in addition to their artistic work, have labored behind the scenes at Danspace, including serving on our Board of Directors, Artists Advisory Board, Admin & Tech Staff, or more recently as Research Fellows, to create a 50-second video with the prompt “The future is...” Find all of the films and written responses on our Online Journal.

02/06/2025

to Seán performing his solo Bottom Doubt at Danspace Project at St Marks Church in 1993!


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in during the late 1990s.

02/06/2025

‼️Two weeks until DraftWork: Jelani Taylor + Nile Harris on Saturday, February 22 at 3PM! RSVP for FREE: https://danspaceproject.org/calendar/draftwork-feb-ws25/

Curated by Ishmael Houston-Jones, Danspace Project’s DraftWork series hosts free, informal showings of new works in varying stages of development. This afternoon features performances by Jelani Taylor and Nile Harris.

Showings are followed by a reception, conversation, and Q&A between the artists.

📷: Photo of Jelani Taylor by Sebastian Barbaran
📷: Photo of Nile Harris by Ahad Subzwari

02/04/2025

💨 Tickets are going fast for “Steve Paxton - a video amble” on Friday, February 14 at 6:30PM!

This special evening with Lisa Nelson and Cathy Weis marks the opening of Danspace 50th festival celebration and includes video and remembrances of the groundbreaking artist Steve Paxton (Jan 21, 1939 – Feb 20, 2024). Paxton was a singular, iconic dance artist who graced the sanctuary over many decades and whose influence spans five generations.

📷: Photos by Ian Douglas of Yvonne Rainer, Steve Paxton, and Simone Forti rehearsing “Tea for Three”, presented by Danspace Project from October 26–28, 2017

02/03/2025

This manifesto for Fred Holland and Ishmael Houston-Jones’s 1983 Untitled Duet at Contact at 10th and 2nd was not disclosed to the audience. The Institute for Contemporary Art, Philadelphia printed this poster as part of the installation, Endless Shout, in 2017.

Houston-Jones writes, “I’ve chosen to give the Wrong Contact Score to AJ Wilmore, Stephanie Hewett, and Kris Lee, three AFAB dancers of color who are extraordinary performers, highly skilled improvisors, and innovative DJs to Q***r this duet from 40 years and bring it to a new generation.”

🎫 Tickets are available for performances of “OO-GA-LA Reimagined” (The Fred Holland and Ishmael Houston-Jones 1983 Duet Danced into the 21st Century) from February 27–March 1 at Danspace Project.

01/31/2025

❤️ Become a Danspace Member, join us for our 50th Season Festival!

In honor of our 50th anniversary year, tickets are on a sliding scale from $10–$100. When you become a Danspace member, benefits include $10 tickets to performances, discounts on publications and merchandise, and more!

Memberships start at just $25❣️ https://danspaceproject.org/support/membership/

📷: Photos by Pamela Moore, Suzanne Harris, and John Cyr

01/28/2025

💫 From March 27–29, Danspace Project will present Bebe Miller Company’s “Vespers, Reimagined” (2025), a reimagining of her 1982 solo on a group of five young dancers—Chloe London, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Bria Bacon, Stacy Matthew Spence, and Jasmine Hearn. https://danspaceproject.org/calendar/ws2025-miller/

“Returning to Vespers now, reimagined with these artists, has been a kind of archeological dig into how we’ve all arrived at our various understandings of the art, the currencies, as well as the physics of dancing.” —Bebe Miller

📷: “Vespers, Reimagined” rehearsal, Danspace Project, November 2024. Bebe Miller and Angie Hauser watch Jasmine Hearn, Stacy Matthew Spence and Chloe London watching Bebe performing “Vespers” (1982). Photo: Lila Hurwitz

01/27/2025

🖤 Get tickets for “OO-GA-LA Reimagined” (The Fred Holland and Ishmael Houston-Jones 1983 Duet Danced into the 21st Century) at Danspace Project from February 27–March 1! https://danspaceproject.org/calendar/ws2025-holland-houston-jones/

Ishmael Houston-Jones writes: “In 1983 at the Danspace Project festival Contact at 10th and 2nd which celebrated the 11th year that Steve Paxton named the form Contact Improvisation, Fred Holland and I were invited to perform a duet on the Partners Program along with Steve and Nancy Stark Smith and others. Fred and I, who considered ourselves to be the Black Punks of Contact, decided to do our C.I. duet by doing everything wrong. We rehearsed in East Village bars like the Pyramid Club on Avenue A after midnight and were given a cassette tape of sound loops from Kung Fu movies compiled by composer Mark Larson. But it was Fred who named the first ‘wrong’ item in our unpublished score when he said, ‘We are Black.’ We were one of very few people of color included in the festival or inhabiting the C.I. milieu at all. The videos of the two performances of OO-GA-LA by Cathy Weis and Lisa Nelson were largely unseen after the festival until found by Karen Nelson in the early 2000s. I’ve chosen to give the Wrong Contact Score to three AFAB dancers of color who are extraordinary performers, highly skilled improvisors, and innovative DJs to Q***r this duet from 40 years and bring it to a new generation.”

📷: Photos of Ishmael Houston-Jones and Fred Holland by Lorie Novak (1982)

01/25/2025

This semester at the Center for the Arts features a wealth of exhibitions, live performances of commissioned works, and student-led events, as well as Artist in Residence Anna Deavere Smith Hon. '97 leading a convening with the campus community. Read more in The Wesleyan Connection: https://bit.ly/40xBTND

Image: mayfield brooks, "Sensoria: An Opera Strange," June 2022, Danspace Project. Photo by Ian Douglas, courtesy of Danspace Project. This spring, "AFTERWORDS: assembly," the CFA series of public programs that asks what happens after the encounter with the work of art, will feature an event with mayfield brooks, who will be the 2025–2026 Artist in Residence at the Center for the Arts.


Wesleyan University
Mayfield Brooks
Wesleyan University Alumni

01/24/2025

💥 RSVP for FREE to our first DraftWork of 2025 on Saturday, February 22 at 3PM! https://danspaceproject.org/calendar/draftwork-feb-ws25/

Curated by Ishmael Houston-Jones, Danspace Project’s DraftWork series hosts free, informal showings of new works in varying stages of development. This afternoon features performances by 𝗝𝗲𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗶 𝗧𝗮𝘆𝗹𝗼𝗿 and 𝗡𝗶𝗹𝗲 𝗛𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗶𝘀.

📷: Photo of Jelani Taylor by Emily Farthing
📷: Photo of Nile Harris by Matthew Leifheit

01/22/2025

💘 On Friday, February 14 at 6:30PM, Danspace Project presents “Steve Paxton - a video amble” with Lisa Nelson and Cathy Weis. Get tickets now! https://danspaceproject.org/calendar/ws2025-paxton/

Lisa Nelson, Paxton’s oft-collaborator and life companion, writes “Prolific to a fare-thee-well, Steve’s thinking with the body left us a multiplex of paths to ponder. It would be hard to say which traces of his lifetime of giving dance will be most enduring—his writing, correspondence, talking, performing on and off stages, improvising, collaborating, composting, gardening, teaching, learning, playing, and hanging out. We are deeply grateful that video technology came of age close to the beginning of Steve’s adventure and we’ve had 50+ years to learn how to see through it.”

📷: Photos by Suzanne Harris, Gil Grossi, L’Attico, Olive Bieringa, and Paula Court

01/21/2025

👀 Check out this new piece in Culturebot by Miya Shaffer on Jade Manns + Glenn Potter-Takata’s shared evening at Danspace Project from December 12–14!

A palm resting against each balloon surface, this was a gesture of care, of protection.

01/18/2025

Danspace Project presents “Dedications / State of Heads (1999)” by Donna Uchizono Company from March 13–15! 👥

Uchizono, alongside artists David Thomson and Jodi Melnick, will offer a series of dance dedications exploring the body’s expansive capacity to listen. “State of Heads” (1999) originated with the idea that the “heads” of states seem to be disconnected from the “body” of the country. For Danspace Project’s 50th anniversary—performed to the “Bessie” Award-winning sound score by James Lo—the original cast, Levi Gonzalez, Rebecca Serrell Cyr, including Donna Uchizono, who has not performed this work in 25 years, will hand the baton over to a younger generation, Tim Bendernagel, Chelsea Hecht, and Paulina Meneses.

📷: Photo by John Cyr of Levi Gonzalez, Rebecca Cyr, and Hristoula Harakas

01/17/2025

“𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗱𝘀 (𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱).” -Yvonne Rainer

For our 50th anniversary, we invited 50+ artists who, in addition to their artistic work, have labored behind the scenes at Danspace, including serving on our Board of Directors, Artists Advisory Board, Admin & Tech Staff, or more recently as Research Fellows, to create a 50-second video with the prompt “The future is...” Find all of the films and written responses on our Online Journal.

🎥: Video of Deborah Hay by Ella Romero

01/16/2025

Today, Getty and a coalition of foundations, arts organizations, and individuals created the LA Arts Community Fire Relief Fund. Currently at $12M, the fund will support the arts community impacted by the Los Angeles fires.

The ongoing fires have destroyed residences, studios, archives, artworks, and places of employment for LA’s vibrant arts community.

Impacted artists and arts workers can visit cciarts.org to apply for an emergency grant starting on January 20.

Learn more—including how to contribute: https://gty.art/firerelief

01/16/2025

♥️ Thank you to everyone who joined us last month at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts to celebrate Danspace’s 50th anniversary with a panel featuring Cynthia Hedstrom, Wendy Perron, Judy Hussie-Taylor, Ishmael Houston-Jones, and Carol Mullins!

🗓️ Mark your calendars! On June 9, NYPL will present “15 Years of Danspace Project’s Platform Series”, with a conversation featuring Judy Hussie-Taylor, Seta Morton, Okwui Okpokwasili, Eiko Otake, and Reggie Wilson.

01/14/2025

Join us tomorrow in prayer and to plan support for our siblings in LA ❤️🙏