Experimental Multidisciplinary Street Performance HARLEM AIR SHAFT Announced

HARLEM AIR SHAFT is a multidisciplinary performance ritual examining the relationship between jazz and memory in the context of a Harlem streetscape, conceived by the award-winning multimedia artist Justin Randolph Thompson in collaboration with choreographer Stefanie Nelson and visual artist Bradly Dever Treadaway. The piece invites viewers to immerse themselves in an improvisation-driven performance featuring dancers, a musician, a jazz union representative, and a poet in perpetual motion. HARLEM AIR SHAFT disrupts everyday reality to remind viewers of the rich cultural heritage of the place, the economics of memory and the complex history of community, resilience, art, and healing. The 40-minute-long piece can be viewed at no charge on Thursday, June 24, 2021, starting at 5:00 pm and will be presented on the city blocks 126th and 125th Streets between 5th and Madison Avenue. For more information, visit https://www.sndancegroup.org/events/harlem-air-shaft-1.

Inspired by the tradition of DIY Harlem rent parties of the 1930s and 40s, HARLEM AIR SHAFT draws its title from a Duke Ellington composition, a sonic narration of an architectural space meant to bypass building codes that were designed to ensure adequate living conditions. The piece, focuses on the economics of jazz, and the capacity of historic sites to hold memory, enveloping a city block around 17 East 126st Street - famously known from Art Kane's iconic jazz greats photo, A Great Day in Harlem - in a ritual procession weaved into the flow of everyday traffic. Featuring four dancers (Bianca Cosentino, Dolores Sanchez, Emily Tellier, and Omari Wiles, choreographed by Stefanie Nelson) with portable dance floors rhythmically driving the work in Morse code and a cast of other participants addressing the audience from moving cars through the speaker systems. Musicologist Kwami Coleman speaks to the comings and goings of jazz in Harlem; jazz union representative Todd Bryant Weeks talks about the economic hardship in the field through the language of the soapbox, poet Thomas Sayers Ellis delivers a meditation on the language and fleetingness of memory, while saxophonist James Brandon Lewis plays a solo meditation on Duke's composition.

The creators of HARLEM AIR SHAFT are longtime collaborators working on infusing the overlapping of art, performance, economics, and community. Harlem has figured prominently in past collaborations as a site layered with tactics for self-sustained spiritual and economic practices. History is evoked through the collaboration as a means for seeking connection and healing in relation to inequities and economic realities that are tethered to the arts, made increasingly relevant by the aftermath of the recent pandemic.

Justin Randolph Thompson explains: "With HARLEM AIR SHAFT, I continue the work that started with Friskin' the Whiskers - a performance project I initiated in 2014 which focuses on bringing together people connected to the jazz community to highlight the economic realities in which jazz musicians have to function. Jazz and economy have a long and complicated history where strategies for developing new systems of community support have always been prevalent. The pandemic made evident to all what many of us already knew. To me, the various forms of cultural production as represented by practitioners from different fields in this piece speaks to the constant need for reminding ourselves about art's inherent social dimension."

Stefanie Nelson adds: "I have a longstanding interest in the fleeting nature of memory, which I have been exploring in numerous projects with my dance ensemble. Justin, who has been my collaborator over the years, gave me an idea of presenting this concept in the context of jazz and the history of this unique neighborhood. We would like for this piece to inspire the memory of Harlem's resilient past for a more hopeful, community-driven, creative future."

A post-performance exhibition curated by Arden Sherman at the Hunter East Harlem Gallery is planned for 2022. The show will bring together video documents and objects from the performance along with an experimental documentary that will be an outgrowth of the performance - details to be announced.

HARLEM AIR SHAFT was made possible in part with funding from the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corporation administered by LMCC and in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.