Live Arts Receives Prestigious Grant From The William Penn Foundation

As an ever expanding regional arts organization with a dedication to conceptual rigor, formal experimentation, and active socio-cultural engagement, New York Live Arts is honored to share that our efforts have been significantly aided by an award from the William Penn Foundation's Creative Communities program. New York Live Arts will receive $366K to be used over 15 months for multi-dimensional artist Rashaad Newsome's project FIVE. This interdisciplinary project, rooted in the vogue dance style, blends together several practices: collage, sculpture, video, music, computer programming and live performance with the goal to bring credit to the vogue community for its contributions to American culture. Culminating in a tour to Philadelphia, the project includes the staging of a traditional vogue ball, The King of Arms Ball, hosted by Newsome featuring performers from the local gender non-conforming (GNC) community, a full evening length multimedia main stage performance, and an exhibition at the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center. As producers of this project, New York Live Arts will present two performances of FIVE in New York City, Fall 2019, prior to the Philadelphia engagements.

The William Penn Foundation is dedicated to improving the quality of life in the greater Philadelphia region, through efforts to improve education for low-income children, ensuring a sustainable environment, and fostering creative communities.

Located in the heart of Chelsea in New York City, New York Live Arts produces and presents dance, music and theater performances in its 20,000 square-foot home, including a 184-seat theater and two 1,200 square-foot studios. New York Live Arts offers an extensive range of participatory programs for adults and young people; it supports the continuing professional development of performing artists. New York Live Arts serves as home base for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company; it is the company's sole producer, providing support and the environment to originate innovative and challenging new work for the Company and New York's creative community.

The Philadelphia Photo Arts Center is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization founded in 2009 and is dedicated to fostering the study, practice, and appreciation of contemporary photography. These three pillars of PPAC's mission support the production and exhibition of work at the leading edge of photographic practice, in-depth education, and innovative programming connecting artists with audiences, engaging them as more than just passive viewers of work, but as part of the creative process.

Rashaad Newsome is a multidisciplinary artist whose work blends several practices together including: collage, sculpture, video, music, computer programming and performance, to form an altogether new field. Best known for his visually stunning collages housed in custom frames, Newsome's work is deeply invested in how images used in media and popular culture communicate distorted notions of power. Using the equalizing force of sampling, he crafts compositions that surprise in their associative potential and walk the tightrope between intersectionality, social practice and abstraction. Newsome's works opposes cultural essentialisms. They lead us into a realm of uncertainty, in which the symbols presented transform, but are nonetheless made tangible.Newsome lives and works in New York City.