Gibney and The Simons Foundation Reveal Open Interval Residency 2024-2025 Awardees

Gibney and the Simons Foundation have revealed the 2024-2025 Open Interval Residency cohort. This marks the third year of a partnership that began in 2022 with the aim of providing crucial support to New York City-based choreographers to grow and develop their practice through a residency with scientists at the Simons Foundation’s Flatiron Institute. Each year the organizations select two choreographers and two scientists to work together over the course of 8 months.

Сhoreographer, performer and producer Sophia Noel, known for blending Hip-Hop, Salsa, Swing, and Ballet into her dynamic performances, will work with Kyle Eskridge, Ph.D., a Flatiron Research Fellow at the Center for Computational Quantum Physics (CCQ). 

Choreographer, dancer and teacher Colin Heininger will work with Joseph Long, Ph.D., who joined the Center for Computational Astrophysics as a Software Flatiron Research Fellow in 2023.

In a special initiative within the Open Interval Residency program,  Gibney and the Simons Foundation will facilitate a unique collaboration between the American postmodern dancer and choreographer Lucinda Childs, known for her unique style of choreography that utilizes patterns, repetition, dialect and technology, and Michael Shelley, Ph.D., an applied mathematician and director of the Center for Computational Biology at the Flatiron Institute. Taking place in the spring of 2025, this collaboration is in the context of the creation of a new work by Childs for Gibney Company, the contemporary repertory dance company led by Gina Gibney, Artistic Director and Gilbert T Small II, Company Director, which will premiere  at The Joyce Theater on May 6, 2025.

Expanding Gibney’s support for dance artists in New York City, OPEN INTERVAL is a residency program for emerging and established choreographers created through a pioneering partnership between Gibney and the Simons Foundation. Each year, two choreographers are provided with studio space, financial support, and paired with scientific researchers, with the aim of conducting focused research related to the basic elements of their practice through exchange, dialogue, and collaboration. Focusing on research and process to explore the connections between science and dance, the 8-month residency features significant support for two curated artists–a $10,000 stipend and 100 hours of free studio space at Gibney. In OPEN INTERVAL, each choreographer is paired with a scientist based at the Simons Foundation’s Flatiron Institute. Together, artist and scientist develop unique ways to conduct informal and non-product oriented research and experiments related to their individual practices and professions through exchange, dialogue, collaboration, and play.

ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS

SOPHIA NOEL

Sophia Noel is a New York-based contemporary dancer, known for blending Hip-Hop, Salsa, Swing, and Ballet into her dynamic performances. After spending five years in Tokyo as a professional dancer, model, and actor, she honed her craft further at Steps on Broadway in Manhattan. Alongside her work as a choreographer and performer, Sophia is the executive producer of Tonari, a cross-cultural and cross-generational storytelling project. Tonari debuted as a live performance in Tokyo and San Francisco, and its evolution into an award-winning short film continues to inspire audiences with its fusion of jazz and contemporary dance. Sophia holds a BA in Art History from Columbia University.

KYLE ESKRIDGE

Kyle Eskridge joined the Center for Computational Quantum Physics (CCQ) as a Flatiron Research Fellow in June of 2023. His main focus is contributing to the ongoing auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo (AFQMC) software project, which aims to provide a usable, general purpose open source AFQMC code to the scientific community. Prior to joining the CCQ, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at William & Mary where he implemented spin-orbit coupling (SOC) in ab initio AFQMC and applied it to single molecule magnets. In 2019, he received his Ph.D. from William & Mary in physics.

COLIN HEININGER

Colin Heininger is a choreographer, dancer, and teacher based in New York City. He recently has danced for Twyla Tharp, ZviDance, and Peridance Contemporary Dance Company, where he has also served as company coordinator and rehearsal director. Originally from Hollidaysburg, PA, Colin graduated as an Honors Scholar with a BFA in Dance and a minor in Musical Theater from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where he was named the Valedictorian of the School of Dance and received a full tuition scholarship. In the past couple of years, Colin has set work on Peridance Contemporary Dance Company and the Youth Ensemble at Peridance, was commissioned to create a new work in New Hampshire for the Lila Dance Festival, has premiered works at The Brick Theater during several ?!:New Work festivals, has shown work at Dixon Place, is a choreographer for Dance Lab New York’s Fall 2024 Cycle, and is creating a new work on the BFA students at Ailey/Fordham.

As a dancer they have performed works by Sharon Eyal, Ohad Naharin, johannes wieland, Robert Battle, Netta Yerushalmy, Andrea Miller, Helen Simoneau, Beth Gill, Sidra Bell, Norbert de la Cruz III, Adam Barruch, Yue Yin, Yoshito Sakuraba, Alice Klock, Jae Man Joo, Tommie Waheed-Evans, and Igal Perry. In addition, Colin attended the Jacob's Pillow Contemporary program and Springboard Danse Montreal. Outside of the company, Colin teaches on faculty at the School of Peridance and is a professional math tutor.

JOSEPH LONG

Joseph Long joined the Center for Computational Astrophysics as a Software Flatiron Research Fellow in September 2023. He works on exoplanet and disk direct imaging, with a focus on data-intensive approaches for post-processing data to improve contrast. He is a member of the MagAO-X instrument team, developing extreme adaptive optics technology for high-contrast imaging on current and future telescopes.

Long earned his Ph.D. in astronomy & astrophysics from the University of Arizona in 2023. Prior to graduate school, he earned a B.A. in physics from Pomona College and worked at the Space Telescope Science Institute, where he supported James Webb Space Telescope and Roman Space Telescope mission preparations with optical simulations.

LUCINDA CHILDS 

Lucinda Childs began her career as choreographer in the early 1960s, as a member of the seminal Judson Dance Theater. She formed her own company in 1973 and three years later was featured in the landmark avant-garde opera Einstein on the Beach by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson, for which she won an Obie Award. In 1977, she and Wilson co-directed and performed in I Was Sitting on My Patio This Guy Appeared I Thought I Was Hallucinating, which they revived for the Festival d’Automne in Paris in 2021, where they also created an evening length work titled, Bach 6 Solo with the violinist Jennifer Koh.
In 1979, Childs choreographed one of her most enduring works, Dance with music by Philip Glass and film décor by Sol LeWitt, for which she was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship. Dance toured internationally and has been added to the repertory of the Lyon Opera Ballet, for which she has also choreographed Beethoven’s Grande Fugue. In 2015 she revived Available Light, created in 1983 with music by John Adams and a split-level set by Frank Gehry, for the Festival d’Automne in Paris. Available Light was presented at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York in 2018 and that same year Childs’s company performed some of her early work as part of the exhibition Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

In addition to work for her own group, Childs has choreographed over thirty works for major ballet companies. She has also directed and choreographed a number of contemporary and eighteenth-century operas, most recently, Philip Glass’s Akhnaten for l’Opéra de Nice Côte d’Azur with Childs’ role as the narrator on film. The premier was streamed in November 2020, and live performances took place in Nice in November 2021, and won the 2021 trophy for Best Lyrical Production by Opera Forum readers. Her additional opera productions include Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice for the Los Angeles Opera; Mozart’s Zaide, Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol and Oedipus Rex, Vivaldi’s Farnace, and John Adams’s Dr. Atomic for the Opéra national du Rhin in Strasbourg; Handel’s Alessandro at the Megaron Concert Hall in Athens; and Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Atys and Jean-Marie Leclaire’s Scylla and Glaucus for the Theater Kiel in Germany.

Childs holds the rank of Commandeur in France's Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2017 she received the Golden Lion award from the Venice Biennale and the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival award for lifetime achievement. She has been inducted into the Hall of Fame of the National Museum of Dance in Saratoga Springs, New York, and received an honorary doctorate from the Université Côte d’Azur in 2021.

MICHAEL SHELLEY

Michael Shelley joined the Simons Foundation in 2016 to work on the modeling and simulation of complex systems arising in physics and biology. He is an applied mathematician who co-founded and co-directs the Courant Institute’s Applied Mathematics Laboratory at New York University. Shelley joined the Courant Institute in 1992 and is the Lilian and George Lyttle Professor of Applied Mathematics. He holds a B.A. in mathematics from the University of Colorado and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the University of Arizona. He was a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University and a member of the mathematics faculty at the University of Chicago before joining NYU. Shelley has received the François Frenkiel Award from the American Physical Society and the Julian Cole Lectureship from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and he is a Fellow of both societies. He is also an elected member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.

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