Brooklyn Academy of Music Launches Seven Residencies in October

In an effort to lay out a larger welcome mat to artists of many disciplines, BAM is offering residencies to seven artists/artistic teams to support the development of their work at a challenging time. The dynamic, New York-based artists-Sophia Brous, Timothy DuWhite, Marjani Forté-Saunders & Everett Saunders, Jonathan González, Jerome & James, Annie-B Parson, and Ashley Tata-will receive $5,000 honorariums and the use of BAM's rehearsal rooms and theaters. Artists are not asked to make work for presentation specifically at BAM, though Annie-B Parson/Big Dance Theater does have work slated for BAM in late 2021.

The program represents BAM's broadest artist residency initiative to date and underscores its interest in forging new relationships and supporting the creation of new work and creative exploration. The artists were chosen by a committee of five members of BAM's programming team, ensuring the casting of a wider net for talent and greater transparency. BAM will continue the residency program beyond its initial cohort.

Initially scheduled for a summer launch before the COVID-19 pandemic, the residency program has been adjusted to begin in October and run through May 2021. Until artists can safely gather in BAM's rehearsal rooms and theaters, they will receive honorariums and work in their personal spaces.

BAM Artistic Director David Binder said, "BAM is launching this new residency program to support artists in all phases of their development, not just when they're ready to premiere their work in New York. With this support, these seven artists will have the opportunity to explore, invent, create, and advance their work on their own terms."

About the residency artists:

Sophia Brous is an interdisciplinary artist and performance-maker based in New York and Melbourne, Australia. A vocalist, composer, performance-maker, director, and curator, she creates and performs in new contemporary music performance internationally for festivals, concert houses, and major events.

Brous is a former artist-in-residence at National Sawdust, the Watermill Center, and Red Bull Studios New York. She was a finalist of the 2019 Melbourne Prize for Music and recipient of the World Tour Scholarship from the Berklee School of Music. Brous is Curator at Large of Brooklyn arts institution Pioneer Works New York, and ongoing Artistic Associate of the Arts Centre Melbourne, where she founded Supersense: Festival of the Ecstatic in 2015.

Her recent works have included large-scale music and film installation Dream Machine for Red Bull Music Festival New York/Pioneer Works (with guests Iggy Pop, Master Musicians of Jajouka; Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Zeena Parkins, Greg Fox); When The World's On Fire for The Kennedy Centre Washington (with Marc Ribot, Shahzad Ismaily, Simon Hanes); the world premiere of Ursula K Le Guin's Music and Poetry of the Kesh for RVNG International (with Okwui Okpokwasili, Sara Serpa, Judith Berkson and Corey Fogel); song cycle Lullaby Movement with Leo Abrahams and David Coulter (for Sydney Festival, Arts Centre Melbourne, Operadagen Rotterdam); and New York large ensemble EXOTECH, with collaborators including David Byrne, Kimbra, Moses Sumney, Questlove, Caroline Polachek, Yuka Honda, Dave Harrington, Mauro Refosco, and Bilal.

Brous has performed in new works for The Barbican, Southbank Centre, Paris Philharmonie, BAM/Brooklyn Academy of Music, Operadagen Rotterdam, Pioneer Works, National Sawdust, Dark MOFO, VIVID, and at Primavera, Meredith, All 3 Tomorrow's Parties, Laneway, Big Day Out, Adelaide, Sydney, and Melbourne Festivals. As a vocalist, she has performed in productions including The Barbican's In Dreams: David Lynch Revisited; The Arthur Russell Retrospective (Brooklyn Academy of Music); DOCUMENTA 2017 (Hallucinations/Greek Film Archive, with Oliver Coates+Leo Abrahams); Southbank Centre's 200 Motels with the BBC Concert Orchestra/Frank Zappa; Marina Abramovic's Private Archaeology (MONA); Anthony McAll's Solid Light Works (Pioneer Works); and motion pictures Mary Magdalene (2018), Judy and Punch (2019), and The Invisible Mountain (2021).

During the BAM residency, Brous will be developing The Invisible Opera, a contemporary music-theater piece, with Australian theater maker Lara Thoms and choreographer Faye Driscoll. Next year she will premiere a commissioned work, Mount Analogue, a music and performance installation for Ultima Festival/Oslo Opera House 2021, with filmmaker Ben Russell and sound artist Nicolas Becker.

Alongside Brous' own performance work, she is a recognized curator and festival director, and was appointed Program Director of the Melbourne International Jazz Festival at the age of 22, before becoming Curator of Music of the Adelaide Festival of the Arts and founding curator of Supersense: Festival of the Ecstatic at the Arts Centre Melbourne. She studied music at the New England Conservatory of Music, Boston and Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne.

Timothy DuWhite (he/they) is a Black/queer poet, actor, and activist based out of Brooklyn, NY. His essays and poetry can be found in The Rumpus, The Root, Afropunk, Black Youth Project, The Grio, and elsewhere. In the summer of 2018, Timothy debuted his one-man show NEPTUNE as the headliner for Dixon Place's annual "Hot Festival." Following rave reviews and sold-out performances, NEPTUNE was then restaged as the 2019 kick-off event for Brooklyn Museum's acclaimed "1st Saturday" series. Timothy was named a "Black LGBTQ+ playwright you need to know" by Time Out NY. He is an alumnus of The Public Theater's #BARS program, brainchild of actors/writers Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal. He is a current member of The Public Theater's Emerging Writers Group 2020-2022 cohort. Timothy is the Senior Editor at RaceBaitr.com, Program Director at NY Writers Coalition, and is represented by A3 Artist Agency for Acting & Playwriting.

7NMS| E + M is the work of collaborative music and dance duo Everett Saunders and Marjani Forté-Saunders, now operating bi-coastally (Pasadena, CA and New York, NY). They are students and descendants of Black liberation movements, and radically engage music and dance forms as alchemic mediums of elevation, healing, and futurity. Their latest work is A Prophet's Tale: Portrait of the Lyricist, a multi-year Film, Literary, Music, and Performance Project, discussing the life-journey, the mystic pilgrimage, of Hip Hop music's Emcee/Lyricist. The project marks their eighth collaboration, and is an awardee of the MAP Fund 2020 4 and New Music USA Award 2020. Thus far the work has been incubated in residencies at the Petronio Residency Center and Baryshnikov Arts Center, 7NMS's own Satellite Residency (in response to COVID-19) in partnership with cocommissioners Abrons Arts Center and Kelly Strayhorn Theatre. 7NMS are also the architects behind Art & Power, a platform dedicated to Black Purpose and Innovation, fueling their initiative behind #SatelliteResidencies, and a burgeoning network of Black radical experimenters and innovative critical thinkers.

Everett's work as a composer/sound designer include projects with violinist Juliette Jones, award-winning filmmaker and screenwriter Damon Colquouhoun, Sony Music, and the internationally renowned Urban Bush Women. His most recent work can be heard in Jaamil Kosoko's multi-media project and film Chameleon (2020).

Marjani is a three-time Bessie award-winning choreographer and performer. She is a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grantee, an inaugural recipient of the Jerome Artist, Dance USA, and UBW Choreographic Center Fellowships and a two-time Princess Grace Foundation awardee. Her work has been incubated in residencies at MANCC, LMCC Extended Life Residency, BAX, CUNY Dance Initiative, 651 Arts, and Movement Research.

Jonathan González, from Queens, New York, is an artist working at the intersections of performance, text, sculpture, and other time-based media. González's work speculates on the political utility of the "stage" as a method to interface with publics upon systems of liveness, objects, and economies of data that construct the built environment.

Their works include Not Total (homeschool PDX, Yale Union x Paragon Arts Gallery, 2019), Working on Water in collaboration with Mario Gooden (Columbia School of Architecture, 2019), h/S: Jonathan González (Ciccio Gallery, 2019), Maroonage: Elaborations on the Stage and Staying Alive (Contact Quarterly), Lucifer Landing I & II (MoMA PS1 x Abrons Arts Center, 2019), Collaborative Curiosity (Contemporaryand), and their upcoming publication, Liar Liar (53rd Press). Their curations include Sunday Service @ Knockdown Center and Movement Research Fall Festival: invisible material. Previously an LMCC Workspace Resident (2018-19), NARS Foundation AIR (2018), Jerome Foundation Fellow (2019), Mertz Gilmore Grantee (2018), Art Matters Fellow (2019), Shandaken Project/Governors Island AIR (2019-20), and Bessie-nominee for Outstanding Production (ZERO, Danspace Project, 2018) and Breakout Choreographer (2019).

González collaborates with designer Rudy Gerson, a race traitor, a second generation white-assimilated Jewish-Cuban, a third-generation American settler in a diaspora, a queer abolitionist artist, and an educator based in occupied Lenape and Canarsie territory (Brooklyn). Rudy creates time-based media through 5 sculpture, performance, and theatrical design with attention to interactive media and immersive installation. The technical methods may animate the abstract hydraulics of systems of oppression while amplifying an affection of liberation. They are unwavering in their commitment to intersectional solidarity of economies, aesthetics, and care and are weary of the non-performance of this very declaration. The work can be situated across the categories of relational art, institutional vandalism, queer use, and de-patriation/reparations.

Jerome & James JJJJJerome Ellis is a stuttering, Afro-Caribbean composer, performer, and writer. His current practice explores Blackness, music, and disabled speech as forces of refusal and healing. Jerome's work has been heard at the Poetry Project, Sotheby's, Soho Rep, and WKCR. He's a 2019 MacDowell Colony Fellow, a writer in residence at Lincoln Center Theater, and a 2015 Fulbright Fellow.

James Harrison Monaco is a storyteller, writer, performer, and composer. Along with JJJJJerome Ellis, he is one half of the music and storytelling duo Jerome & James (www.jeromeandjames.org). Works by Jerome & James have been presented at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Public Theater's Under the Radar Festival, the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, and Bushwick Starr, among others. His other storytelling works have appeared at such venues as Ars Nova, The New Ohio Theatre, and variety nights all over town. He's also a prose/fiction writer, a translator from Spanish and Italian, a dramaturg, and a writer in residence at Lincoln Center Theater.

Annie-B Parson is a choreographer and the artistic director of the Obie/Bessie award-winning Big Dance Theater. She co-founded Big Dance in 1991, and with her company has created over 20 large scale works for such venues as BAM, The Japan Society, The Old Vic/London, Sadler's Wells/London, The Walker, The National Theater in Paris, Japan Society, and The Kitchen.

Outside of her company, Parson has also made choreography for rock shows, marching bands, movies, museums, objects, television, augmented-reality, opera, ballet, theater, symphony orchestras, string quartets, and a chorus of 1,000 amateur singers. Some of the artists she has worked with include David Byrne, David Bowie, St. Vincent, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Wendy Whelan, Anne Carson, Laurie Anderson, Jonathan Demme, Spike Lee, David Lang, Esperanza Spalding, Suzan-Lori Parks, Nico Muhly, Jonsi, and Salt-N-Pepa. Parson has two large scale works in the repertory of the Martha Graham Dance Co. Her work with David Byrne has spanned over 13 years and includes dance-making for his tours with Brian Eno and St. Vincent. Their most recent work, American Utopia, toured the world and became an award-winning show Broadway. Spike Lee's movie of the show premieres this fall. The live show will re-open on Broadway TBD.

Parson has published two books on choreography, as well as many articles on dance. Her most recent book was published by Wesleyan Press in 2019. She teaches and lectures on the body in space, dance-making, and the virtuosity of structures in art making. Among other awards, Parson has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, Bessie Awards, the Jacobs Pillow Dance Award, a USA Artist Award, the Doris Duke Award, and an Olivier nomination.

Ashley Tata, director, creates multimedia works of theater, contemporary opera, performance, cyberformance, live music, and immersive experiences. These have been presented in venues and festivals throughout the US and internationally including Theatre for a New Audience, LA Opera, Austin Opera, Miller Theater, National Sawdust, EMPAC, BPAC, Crossing the Line Festival, Holland Festival, Prelude Festival, National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, and the Fisher Center at Bard. These works have been called "fervently inventive," by Ben Brantley in The New York Times, "extraordinarily powerful" by the Los Angeles Times, and Tata's staging of Kate Soper's Ipsa Dixit was named a "notable production of the decade" by Alex Ross of The New Yorker.

Since the pandemic-induced theatrical shut down, Tata has conceived and directed a live cyberformance of Caryl Churchill's Mad Forest which transferred from Bard College's Fisher Center, Off-Broadway to TFANA; a Zoom-accessed Virtual Nightclub and dance party called The Boot with Beth Morrison Projects; a music video for rock band Sylvan Esso which aired on Stephen Colbert's YouTube Covid channel and a physically-distanced adherent, landscape-integrating adaptation of John Luther Adams's Ten Thousand Birds with ensemble Alarm Will Sound at PS21 in Chatham, NY. and the live performance webcasting of "Out of the Silence" Bard Music Festival's 2020 concert series. Tata is currently in residence at Coffey Street Studios working on the first phases of a number of projects including an exploration of works by playwright and novelist Chana Porter and two multi-media "opera" works for music, Crown Poppea!, a music-videoelectronic-sample-remix-opera (after Monteverdi) re-scored by Ted Hearne and featuring Eliza Bagg, and a virtual reality opera about the time code of trees. Working Title, Virtual RealiTree it is being created in collaboration with interdisciplinary, cross-platform composer/designer/artists, Eliza Bagg, Afsoon Pajoufar, Sadah Espii Proctor, and Aoshuang Zhang. Elements of these and other projects continue to build on an investigation of live-streaming technologies with partners at Liminal Entertainment and designer/director Eamonn Farrell.

After earning an MFA in directing from Columbia University Tata has taught, guest taught, or been a guest artist at Columbia University, Mannes School of Music, Harvard University, MIT, Marymount Manhattan College, Colgate College, Bard College, and LIU Post. Member of Lincoln Center Theater's Directors' Lab; recipient of the Lotos Foundation's Emerging Artist Award in Arts and Sciences, and a winner of the 2017 Robert L. B. Tobin Director/Designer grant. More info including contact for collaboration can be found at: tatatime.live ig:@tatatime_

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