New York Live Arts Reveals Fall 2024 Programming

New York Live Arts has announced Fall 2024 programming. Taking place on site at 219 West 19th Street, NYC and beyond, Live Arts’ 14th season fully embodies the organization’s values: Question Everything, Inclusivity, Fierceness, Rigor, Change. All Live Arts Fall 2024 season presentation tickets are on sale now at www.NewYorkLiveArts.org  /  212-924-0077.

“At a time when the leaves change and the nation's future direction is at stake, can the arts play a meaningful role in fostering dialogue, reflection, and unity. The works by Lenio Kaklea (Greek artist based in Paris), Nadia Beugré (Montpellier based artist from the Ivory Coast), Ismaël Mouaraki (Moroccan French artist based in Montreal), and our Live Feed Residency Artist Wally Cardona offer a unique perspective on freedom, identity, resilience, spirituality and our place in the world, resonating deeply with our belief that the communal begins with the personal,” said Jones and Wong. “We are very excited (and somewhat trepidatious) about the remount of Still/Here at BAM. This rigorously formal work held the messiness of an era and ignited a wild discourse probably unworthy of revisiting. Thirty years after its premiere, a work that attempts to make sense of mortality, survival and the human spirit will hopefully remain resonant and relevant, especially in this moment.” 

On the heels of a raucous premiere in Times Square and tour to Meany Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Washington in Seattle, The Motherboard Suite has its next stop in Hollywood at The Ford on August 9th. Groundbreaking actor, poet, and songwriter Saul Williams and fellow musicians perform live selections from his albums MartyrLoserKingand Encrypted & Vulnerable, featuring choreography by Maria Bauman, Kayla Farrish, Marjani Forté-Saunders, d. Sabela grimes, Jasmine Hearn, Shamel Pitts, and Jade Solomon Curtis. Directed by Bill T. Jones, the powerhouse concert welcomes audiences to the intersection of technology and race, exploitation, and mystical anarchy, where hackers are artists and activists. It’s “about being together,” said The New York Times. 

Visitors to Live Arts will be welcomed back this Fall by a brand new exhibition in the Ford Foundation Live Gallery from visual artist Isaiah Gardner. Gardner’s site specific collage captures the disgusting and beautiful essence of our human instincts. With over 200 pieces, he welcomes you to his deepest catalog to date. The pieces were crafted with 3d fabric paint, acrylic, spray paint, and posca paint pens and digital mediums, and some have been curated as early as age 16 for a moment to display them. The free exhibition will be on view in the Live Arts lobby daily September 17, 2024 - March 30, 2025 with an opening reception on September 17th.

30 years after its premiere, the groundbreaking dance theater work Still/Here by Bill T. Jones returns to the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, October 30 - November 2, 2024. In its 42nd season, The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company remounts this timeless “landmark of 20th century dance”, underscoring its ongoing resonance with today and its ability to evoke a spirit of survival. Created during one of the most contentious and terrifying periods, the AIDS epidemic, Still/Here broke boundaries between the personal and the political and exemplified a form of dance theater that is uniquely American. The highly formal structures of Still/Here are delivered with simplicity and sophistication, marked by spoken text, video portraits, dance and the abstract nature of gesture. Gretchen Bender’s visual concept and multimedia environment is joined by music from Kenneth Frazelle (sung by Odetta) and Vernon Reid. Long-time collaborators include Liz Prince (costumes) and Robert Wierzel (lighting). At the heart of Still/Here are the "Survival Workshops: Talking and Moving about Life and Death."  These workshops were conducted across the country with people living with life-threatening illness. The participants living on the front lines of the struggle to understand our mortality are in possession of information - info possible of being a gift and a burden. The participants' generosity of spirit and willingness to express their experience both with words and gestures was both inspiring and difficult. They are the essence of Still/Here. The recreation of Still/Here is produced by New York Live Arts with lead support from BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) and Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels. Additional support generously provided byASU Gammage, Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth and UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance.

Kicking off performances onsite in the Live Arts theater will be three International Artists co-presented with L’Alliance New York’s Crossing The Line Festival: 

• October 9-11: In Αγρίμι (Fauve), dancer, choreographer, director and writer Lenio Kaklea meticulously choreographs a ‘rewilding of bodies’. Through on-stage exercises, dances and rituals, she explores the forest as a place – both physical and imaginary – for the dissolution of identities and the metamorphosis of bodies. Linking Kaklea’s choreographic creation to the geographical, environmental and poetic richness of the forests for the first time, Αγρίμι (Fauve) presents dance as another wild zone to be defended. Born in Athens, Greece, she is currently based in Paris, France, and a nominee for the 25th Pernod Ricard Foundation Award. 

• October 24- 26: Nadia Beugré’s Quartiers libres (free rein) questions if there are spaces that we cannot go…that we do not have the right to explore, and what happens if we penetrate them. Twelve years after its premiere in France, Beugré revisits this emblematic solo by inviting two young artists from the Ivorian scene to explore these moving territories. Alongside sounds and piles of plastic bottles mingling with bodies, burying and concealing them, QUARTIERS LIBRES revisited persists to reveal those peculiar spaces we are trapped in, those forbidden places in which we choose to wander: spaces open to endless possibilities, spaces to submit and reveal.

• November 8-9: Inspired by the Lila ceremonies, traditional mystical and musical celebrations of his native Morocco, Ismaël Mouaraki explores trance with a group of male dancers in his newest creation. Through them, the French-Moroccan-Canadian retraces his own journey before the eyes of the public. Meaning “night” in Arabic,  a “Lila” is a set of nocturnal healing rituals that blends singing, dancing, and music, traditionally found in some North African countries. Mouaraki transposes the rites and codes of these dance rituals onto the stage, while infusing his signature contemporary street dance style to reveal the sensitivity and sensuality of the male body. Tinted with the tastes and colors of Morocco, the artists transform the performance into a celebration and exaltation of bodies that unfolds with an undeniable energy. In 2023, the piece received the award for the best choreographic work at Prix de la Danse de Montréal, given by the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec. This highly symbolic work marks the 25 years of Ismaël Mouaraki's immigration and the 20 years of his company Destins Croisés.

The first world premiere coming out of Live Arts’s Live Feed creative residency program will take place November 14-16. a plump single-color bulb, or a dance marks Wally Cardona’s choreographic return to a stage after several years of making work off-road. Cardona partners with a tiny red ball (gifted by a former collaborator) and a small wooden mallet (from his time in Myanmar). Their mutual curiosity has evolved into a rigorously refined relationship, operating in a dance that values perpetual curiosity over that rare achievement of resolution. The piece features an original musical score performed live by Jonathan Bepler and lighting design by Thomas Dunn.

Bill T. Jones has “chatted” with over 30 artists, thinkers, and influential figures in our live conversation series Bill Chats, including Elizabeth Alexander, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Louis Chude-Sokei, Elizabeth Diller, Oscar Eustis, Howard W. French, Salman Rushdie, Moisés Kaufman & Mary Marshall Clark, Jacqueline Woodson, Hank Willi Thomas, Damian Woetzel, and many more. Guests this season will be announced in real time and tandem with Jones’ academic, ideological, and creative interests, inviting audiences into both important dialogues and a glimpse of his present musings. The first chat will take place on December 4th. 

The ‘23-24 Randjelović/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist (RCA) Miguel Gutierrez’s world premiere of Super Nothing will be a highlight of the Spring 2025 season, featuring performers from New York and Los Angeles. The piece engages with our ideas about place/home, time, history, and the strength and failings of “community.” The RCA program was created in 2011 and is one of the nation's most comprehensive mid-career choreographer awards, providing two years of full-time salary, health benefits, studio time, a major commission of a new work to premiere at Live Arts, and artistic, administrative and production support. The 2024-2025 season also welcomes Roderick George, Ain Gordon, Benjamin Akio Kimitch, Ogemdi Ude, Lisa Fagan & Lena Engelstein to the Live Feed creative residency program, Live Arts’ central platform for the commissioning and incubation of new work. The annual Fresh Tracks Residency & Performance program for emerging movement-based artists will celebrate its 60th year in 2025 and will begin accepting applications at the Live Arts website on July 1st.

All Live Arts season presentation tickets are on sale now at www.NewYorkLiveArts.org  /  212-924-0077. Onsite performance tickets start at a standard price of $30. Live Arts is proud to launch new community ticket pricing, allowing the public to choose a price that fits any budget. Limited “Pay-What-You-Wish” tickets are now available for all onsite events. To support this, Live Arts has introduced a "What-It-Really-Costs" ticket at $250, reflecting the true cost of a performance in NYC. Students and Seniors receive 20% off standard prices and $10 Student Rush tickets are available for any onsite show that is not sold-out.