Baryshnikov Arts Center has announced the launch of BAC Open, an artist residency program providing critical support to six artists and their collaborators developing projects of dance, theater, music, and multimedia. The program offers a pressure-free environment, encouraging artists to focus on their current priorities without the expectation of delivering a finished work. The BAC Open format hosts multiple residencies concurrently in BAC's studio spaces, providing opportunities for artists to meet and exchange ideas. BAC Open concludes in a day of public studio showings.
The Spring 2022 season marks 17 years of BAC Residencies, the core artistic program of Baryshnikov Arts Center, and the launch of BAC Open marks the first season of artist residencies selected via an open application process welcoming submissions from artists across disciplines and career stages. From 206 applicants, the six BAC Open artists were selected by BAC Programming staff in collaboration with an outside panel of artists and arts administrators: Jon Nakagawa, Charmaine Warren, and Shelley Washington. BAC Founder and Artistic Director Mikhail Baryshnikov shares: "This open application process was a unique opportunity to get to know the work of the most diverse group of creative minds, some of whom we knew and many of whom we did not. There is no doubt that we will continue to follow their work and find new ways to encourage their creativity to thrive."
The BAC Open Spring 2022 Resident Artists are: Musician Ian Askew, developing John Henry and High John, a collaborative performance project inspired by the 1940 musical John Henry, which closed only five days after its Broadway premiere and starred Paul Robeson in the title role; dance company Baye & Asa, developing HotHouse, a dance work exploring the impact of social isolation and the systemic criminal confinement of American people and communities; theater artist Aaron Landsman, developing Night Keeper, a multimedia performance exploring our changeable capacity for shared experiences and negotiating the spatial hierarchies that separate performer from audience; dance artist Gaspard Louis, developing Sodo, a work inspired by the photography of Phillis Galembo, whose portraits taken during the annual pilgrimage of thousands of Haitians to the Mirebalais waterfalls reveal the complexities of representation and the power inherent in being seen; writer, director, choreographer and performing artist Amanda Szeglowski, developing a work channeling Armenian psychic medium Roxy Mirajanian and examining our cultural obsession with the unknown; and dance artist Nami Yamamoto, developing Trooper Brother, inspired by her physical and mental experience of undergoing multiple surgeries and the ways our minds dissect our changing bodies even as we continue to survive and celebrate our lives.
Audiences are invited to observe these artists' works-in-progress during a series of public BAC Open Studio Showings at BAC (450 West 37th Street) on June 29. The schedule will be announced by May 18 at bacnyc.org.
For information about BAC Open, and the Spring 2022 Resident Artists, their collaborators, and their projects, please visit http://bacnyc.org/residencies/current.
ABOUT THE SPRING 2022 BAC OPEN RESIDENT ARTISTS
Ian Andrew Askew is an artist working in music and performance. Their research is concerned with historical absurdities, manufactured scarcities, and contrary negritudes. Their project SLAMDANCE began in residency at Arts @ 29 Garden in 2019 and continued at The Performing Garage in 2021. SLAMDANCE TV, a video component, was commissioned and premiered by The Kitchen online in 2021. Other performances include love conjure/blues at American Repertory Theater and : A Story Project at Farkas Hall. As a sound artist collaborating with Camila Ortiz, they have created scores for film, performance, public sculpture, gallery installation, and AR for artists including Christopher Myers, Kaneza Schaal, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Joie Lee, and Kamal Nassif. Their short essays and poetry have been published by Aperture and featured in To Make Their Own Way in the World, published by Aperture and the Peabody Museum Press. As an assistant director alongside Zack Winokur and AMOC, Ian has shown work at Lincoln Center, American Repertory Theater, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. As an associate director and sound designer with Kaneza Schaal, they have presented work with Michigan Opera Theater and Performance Space New York.
Baye & Asa is a company creating movement art projects directed by Amadi 'Baye' Washington & Sam 'Asa' Pratt. Individually they have performed with Akram Khan Company, Punchdrunk's Sleep No More, Abraham in Motion, David Dorfman Dance, Gallim, Kate Weare Company, and The Francesca Harper Project. For the past year thay have been presenting their short film, Second Seed. Second Seed has won numerous awards including the Jury/Audience Awards at Portland Dance Film Festival, the Best Director Award at Phoenix Dance Film Festival, and the Social Justice Award from Chicago's In/Motion Dance Film Festival. They are currently creating a new work as Artists in Residence at the 92nd Street Y. This duet, titled Suck it Up, was commissioned by The BlackLight Summit and premieres at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in early February, followed by an NYC premiere at the 92nd Street Y mainstage series on February 24. In March they will premiere The One to Stay With, a piece commissioned and performed by BODYTRAFFIC at the Joyce theatre. In October, they will debut HotHouse, a duet co-produced by Pioneer Works. They are also creating new work for the Martha Graham Dance Company for a Spring 2023 Joyce premiere, and have been selected as one of Dance Magazine's "25 to Watch" for 2022.
Aaron Landsman is a theater artist, researcher and teacher. His performance works have been presented at many venues in New York and other US cities, including The Chocolate Factory, Abrons Arts Center, HERE and PS 122, as well as in The Netherlands, Norway, Morocco and Serbia. He is a co-founder of the arts and advocacy working group Perfect City, based at Abrons Arts Center on the Lower East Side; the group builds community conversations, maps, articles and other items about safety, belonging and equity. His book The City We Make Together, co-authored with Mallory Catlett, will be published by the University of Iowa Press in 2022. Aaron is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Princeton Arts Fellowship and funding from MAP, NEFA's National Theater Project, The Jerome Foundation and NPN. He is an Abrons Social Practice Artist-in-Residence and has been in residence at ASU Gammage, Project Row Houses and Loghaven Arts Center. He has performed with Elevator Repair Service Theater, Tim Etchells, Tory Vazquez and Andrea Kleine. His writing has appeared in The Evergreen Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, River Teeth, and Theater Magazine. He teaches Theater and Interdisciplinary Humanities at Princeton University. Current collaborators include Jess Barbagallo, Flako JImenez, April Matthis, Erika Chong Shuch, the Serbian collective Kulturnaova, and other fine humans.
Gaspard Louis is the Founder/Artistic Director of Gaspard&Dancers (G&D). He received a BFA from Montclair State University and continued his dance studies on scholarship at Gus Giordano's in Chicago and Nikolais/Louis Dance Lab in New York. Following his studies, he joined the New York based company called AllNations where he performed traditional dances from many parts of the world for US troupes across the globe. Subsequently, he performed and traveled worldwide with Pilobolus Dance Theater. He collaborated on the choreography of nine major dance works with the company and taught master dance classes both nationally and internationally. As the sole choreographer of G&D, Gaspard has created over 20 works for the company, some of which have been performed by Lula Washington Dance Company as well colleges and universities. He received an MFA in Dance from the Hollins University/American Dance Festival Program and became the Director of ADF's year-round creative movement outreach program which provides free dance classes to youth in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill community of North Carolina. His passion for dance has continued to lead him to work with local dancers and musicians. Additionally, Gaspard has been a guest teacher at Duke, UNCSA, Elon and North Carolina Central Universities.
Amanda Szeglowski, Founder and Artistic Director of cakeface, is a NYC-based writer, director, choreographer and performing artist. A 2020 Bessie Honoree for "Outstanding Production" for her latest premiere, this is now, and now, and now., she is a recipient of the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation's Women Playwrights Commissioning program, and was a HERE Resident Artist (2014-17). In 2008, she launched her all-womxn company, cakeface, which Culturebot described as "a group of fierce, funny, talented women," and later offered, "Think Monica Bill Barnes for the Amy Schumer Generation." Her iconic show, Stairway to Stardom, was deemed "vastly entertaining and ridiculously clever" (This Week in NY) and received 4 stars and a critics' pick by Time Out New York. cakeface has been presented by Ars Nova, JACK, En Garde Arts, AUNTS, HERE, Dance Place (DC), Stony Brook University, and many others. Additional awards of note include two National Performance Network (NPN) grants, a Brooklyn Arts Council grant, and a Marble House Project Residency. Amanda is an alumna of the University of South Florida, graduating summa cum laude with a degree in Dance and Business Administration. She is the Associate Artistic Director at HERE, and proud to be a working-artist mama.
Nami Yamamoto, from Matsuyama, Japan, holds an MA in Dance Education from New York University and a BA in Physical Education from Ehime University. Her work has been funded by Creative Capital, Jim Henson Foundation, Creative Engagement by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, City Artist Corps, and others. She has been nurtured and inspired by her residency experience at Movement Research, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, New Dance Alliance, and Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography. Her work, Headless Wolf (2017) received a Bessie Award for outstanding production. In 2021, she was a Gibney DiP Resident Artist and an Artist in Residence at Center for Performance Research to develop her piece, Trooper's Brother. Nami enjoys teaching dance at NYC public schools through Dance Makers Program at Movement Research.
Comments
To post a comment, you must
register and
login.
