- audience distant relative (1977) Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
Program
Danspace Project Presents
PLATFORM 2022: The Dream of the Audience (Part II)
iele paloumpis
In place of catastrophe, a clear night sky
Thursday, May 26, 3pm Saturday, May 28 3pm
ACT I: Ζωστηρια
Gilded Armor or, the ones who make life through movement
~ Intermission ~ ACT II Αλέτωρ
Rooster or, the one who perceives the first light
This performance runs approximately 90 minutes.
Audio Description (AD) will be provided by the performers.
Director:
iele paloumpis
Created and performed in collaboration with the Core Cast:
Marielys Burgos Meléndez
Seta Morton
Alejandra Ospina
M. Rodriguez
Ogemdi Ude
Krishna Christine Washburn
Marýa Wethers
Narrative Audio Description:
Alejandra Ospina
Guest Singers:
Rae De Vine
Joanna Groom
CJ Holm
Samita Sinha
Adrien Lorenzo Weibgen
Set Design:
Textiles by iele paloumpis, Adrien Lorenzo Weibgen, and Core Cast Mycelium կարասներ (Armenian-style vases) by Nora Chavooshian
Costuming:
iele paloumpis, with headpieces by lily gold
Dramaturgy:
Seta Morton
Souli Song:
Seta Morton, iele paloumpis, and Adrien Lorenzo Weibgen
Sound Design / Editor:
Everett Saunders
Additional Sound Consulting:
M. Rodriguez
Lighting Design:
Kathy Kaufmann
Project Management:
Seta Morton and Benedict Nguyen
Stage Manager / Production Assistant:
Katherine De La Cruz
Production Assistant:
Caroline Kittredge Faustine
Danspace Project Production Team Production Management:
Niko Tsocanos
Lead Audio Technician:
Vincent Dee
Electricians: Blaize Adler-Ivanbrook, Mara Einson, Emily LaRochelle, Kristin Paige
Program Notes
What vitality allowed our ancestors to survive generations of trauma, and what wisdoms have been passed down to us? What embodied magics are all our own? In place of catastrophe, a clear night sky traverses these questions through voice and movement, exploring transgenerational resilience within a disability justice framework. Incorporating vocalization, audio description, and tactile set design, iele paloumpis creates an immersive, multi- sensory landscape that de-centers sight as a primary mode of experiencing dance and invites audience members to inhabit nuanced forms of perception.
A dance film featuring a 3D binaural soundscore, captioning,
and ASL will be released later in 2022 in collaboration with Aden Hakimi (Videography), Emilia Aghamirzai (Videography), and Tamer Hany Hassa (Video Editor). In place of catastrophe, a podcast co- produced by iele paloumpis and M. Rodriguez, shares our research into creating poetic audio description for dance and multi-sensory performance. For updates, visit inplaceofcatastrophe.com.
Biographies
Marielys Burgos Meléndez (Core Cast) I am an Afro-
Arawak artistic researcher, mover, audio describer, writer, and communicator from Boriké (P.R.). Rooted in decolonial/ liberation practices, I investigate mobility-migration-displacement, embodied spiritualities, indigenous and western somatics, ancestral wisdom, and my own indigeneity. I hold an MA in Dance Studies and currently work as Digital Communications Consultant/ Strategist for arts organizations. Errática (2019) is my first self-published artist book in collaboration with Taller Asiray. Marielysbm.com
Nora Chavooshian (Set Designer: Vases) is a sculptor and production designer. She has designed several films for director John Sayles, sculptural set pieces for director Martin Scorsese, videos for Bruce Springsteen and Madonna, and many other films and videos. Her sculpture has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and is in private and public collections in the U.S. and Europe. In the casting of mycelium, she is exploring the sustainable and revelatory world of growing this network of living interwoven organisms as opposed to using extracted material.
Katherine De La Cruz (Stage Manager / Production Assistant) is an Afro Dominican dancer, choreographer and arts administrator based in Brooklyn, New York. She is an alumna of Hunter College where she earned a BA in Anthropology and Dance. She has performed in various venues and festivals both live and virtually including City Center’s Fall for Dance festival, The Estrogenius Festival and The American Dance Festival. Currently she is a member of the Soul Dance Company.
Rae De Vine (Guest Singer) is an interdisciplinary artist and facilitator who engages with the arts as an invaluable vehicle for healing and building community. A storyteller and weaver, their work spans multiple genres, contexts and locales. @raeraendem
Caroline Kittredge Faustine (Production Assistant) is a transsexual divorcée, stage director, sound designer, and musician. She develops new queer plays, plays bass guitar for comedian Tessa Skara and Canine Wedding, and makes soundscapes for cash. Her work as a director has been seen in NYC, Maine, and Chicago, and she has designed sound in Chicago and NYC. She cofounded the Brooklyn queer arts incubator Undiscovered Countries. Her cat is named Rhinoceros.
lily gold (Costume Designer: Headpieces) is a dance artist and witch who lives and works with/on the occupied lands of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and Lenape, where she was born. Compelled by the reality of our deep interconnectedness, lily’s work currently turns to interoceptive curiosity to decolonize power within ourselves and the structures we weave. These practices straddle spiritual and material realms. lily also studies and practices somatic healing through an anti-oppression framework. lilysgold.com
Joanna Groom (Guest Singer) is a lifelong singer who has
had the pleasure of working and collaborating with paloumpis
on such previous works as Oceanic End and not unordered in
not resembling. Joanna is honored to lend her voice to such an important piece. Having recently uncovered long lost familial connections to Anatolia, specifically an Armenian/Iranian heritage, she is grateful to play a part in this beautiful work.
CJ Holm (Guest Singer) is a dancer, choreographer, vocal artist, writer, and educator living in Lenapehoking since 2006. Their main
work right now is facilitating dance creation and performance in a public school for young adults with multiple disabilities. They are honored to sing with iele and crew once again.
Kathy Kaufmann (Lighting Designer) A New York City native, she is happy to be back at Danspace and collaborating with iele and company. She designs regularly for Dorrance Dance, Joanna Kotze, Mariana Valencia, Rebecca Stenn, Leonardo Sandoval & Gregory Richardson’s Music From the Sole, Vicky Shick, The Bang Group, and Ephrat Asherie Dance. Upcoming projects include designs for Nami Yamamoto at Roulette, Mariana Valencia at Abrons, Ephrat Asherie at Vail Dance Festival and Dorrance Dance. Ms. Kaufmann is a two time Bessie recipient.
Seta Morton (Core Cast, Dramaturge, Project Manager) is
a curator, writer, arts-administrator, and dance artist based in Lenapehoking. She is the Associate Curator, Public Engagement and Managing Editor of Publications at Danspace Project.
Benedict Nguyen (Project Manager) is a dancer, writer, and creative producer based on Lenapehoking and Wappinger lands (South Bronx, NY).
Alejandra Ospina (Core Cast, Narrative Audio Describer) is a first-generation native New Yorker and full-time wheelchair user whose family has roots in Colombia. She has been active for several years in various advocacy and performance projects online, locally and beyond, and also works as a media access provider, creating closed captions and audio descriptions. Alejandra is the Program Coordinator for Dark Room Ballet with Krishna Washburn and the principal audiobook narrator for the collection Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century.
iele paloumpis (Director) is a visually impaired dance artist, herbalist, astrologer and end of life doula living in Canarsie/ Munsee territory in Lenapehoking. Their work is rooted in kinesthetic awareness, trauma-informed griefwork, and ancestral re-membrance practices that reflect fragmented lineages across queer, trans and crip aural histories, alongside their Greek, Anatolian and Irish-American diasporic bloodlines. Most recently, iele has been exploring intergenerational trauma and resilience related to centuries of occupation, forced displacement, and eventually the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey, known to Greeks as “The Catastrophe.” iele’s choreographic work has been presented throughout the U.S. and abroad, including at Brooklyn Arts Exchange, New York Live Arts, Franklin Street Works, and the Zil Culture Center in Moscow, among others. In 2020-21, iele was a Danspace Artist Research Fellow and a Founding Member of Movement Research’s Accessibility Advisory Team. www.ielepaloumpis.com.
M. Rodriguez (Core Cast, Sound Consultant) is a sound artist and educator living in Canarsie and Munsee Lenape territory.
They are white, Latinx, non-disabled and trans. Their creative pursuits include singing, recording audio, and manipulating digital soundscapes. While in-process for In place of catastrophe, M has developed a perspective in audio description that incorporates kinesthetic empathy, speech, poetics, and vocalization. Their study of audio description has been profoundly influenced by the cast.
Everett Saunders (Sound Design / Editor) is a Sonic Artist who’s composed on numerous scores for theater, film, and Bessie award- winning projects. He has worked with directorial minds from Ron Howard’s Project Imagination and internationally renowned dance artists including Urban Bush Woman and Jaamil Olawale Kosoko. Collaborating with partner and choreographer Marjani Forté-Saunders, Saunders has produced 7 award-winning works over the last decade and founded ART & POWER (2018), a platform for radical thought, innovation, and action.
Samita Sinha (Guest Singer) is an artist and composer who investigates voice and consciousness through the raw material of vibration.
Ogemdi Ude (Core Cast) is a Nigerian-American dance artist, educator, and doula based in Brooklyn. Her performance work focuses on Black femme legacies and futures, grief, and memory. Her work has been presented at Danspace Project, Abrons Arts Center, BRIC, ISSUE Project Room, Recess Art, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, and Center for Performance Research. She is honored to have developed her audio description practice through this project.
Krishna Christine Washburn (Core Cast) has performed with many leading dance companies including Jill Sigman’s thinkdance, Infinity Dance Theater, Heidi Latsky Dance, Marked Dance Project, and LEIMAY. Krishna has also collaborated with many independent choreographers including Patrice Miller, Perel, Vangeline, Micaela Mamede, Apollonia Hoelzer, and A. I. Merino. Dark Room Ballet
is Krishna’s specialized dance curriculum for blind and visually impaired dancers, for which she teaches weekly virtual classes at introductory and advanced levels.
Adrien Lorenzo Weibgen (Guest Singer, Stage Hand) is an occasional performer and writer and a full time racial justice advocate. They have partnered with directly impacted communities of color from South Dakota to the South Bronx in the fight to win a world where all of us can thrive. Adrien is also the author of “The Right to be Rescued: Disability Justice in an Age of Disaster.” They previously collaborated with iele paloumpis on Oceanic End.
Marýa Wethers (Core Cast) has lived and worked in Lenapehoking (NYC) since 1997. Marýa received a 2017 NY Dance & Performance (“Bessie”) Award for Outstanding Performance with Skeleton Architecture. Curatorial credits include conceiving and creating the three-week performance series “Gathering Place: Black Queer Land(ing)” at Gibney; Queer NY International Arts Festival (2016 & 2015); and the Out of Space @ BRIC Studio series for Danspace Project (2003-2007). She proudly serves on the Board of Directors of Kunsi Keya Tamakoce (www.kunsikeya.org).
Thanks and Acknowledgements
To the core cast, you have been a lifeline for me and each other in ways I cannot fully express, but truly, what powerful witnessing, holding, and kinship we have created together over the years.
To Marielys, thank you for your soulful observations, uplifting
the connective tissues, and consistently bringing us back to the spiritual energies present within our work, it’s been so grounding and validating. To Seta, how can I thank you enough? This mending that we’ve done together is profound. The way we’ve continually shown up to the work of loving each other through the process of ancestral re-membrance (which is some hard, messy work!!) has been a balm to some of my deepest wounds. Thank you for being a mirror, a teacher, my spirit sib. I can feel our ancestors rejoicing in our shared growth and healing. To Alejandra, thank you for creating our world through your words, keen observations, and care. Thank you for your openness to shifting needs as we traversed so many changes together. Becoming your friend through this project is
one of the greatest gifts. To M., thank you for your exuberance, your steadiness, and for being SO READY FOR EVERYTHING.
You contain multitudes, make space for all of us to come as we are, and have the voice of a gay angel. To Ogemdi, your ability to simultaneously bring such honesty, vulnerability, reckoning with grief and all the really hard shit while still remaining centered in laughter, lightness, and keeping it cute is the medicine we’ve all needed in these times. Thank you for teaching me more about holding all the complexities of being alive, death in one hand, rebirth in the other. To Krishna, you will always hold such a tender and special place in my heart as the first blind dance artist I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with. Finding and creating pathways to uplift our community together has really changed the landscape of dance in ways that I could not have dreamed when we first entered the studio together almost 5 years ago. I’m truly excited
to experience whatever comes next on our journeys of pushing forward radical accessibility for blind, low vision, partially sighted and visually impaired community. No more FOMO! To Marýa, the way you synergize movement in space never ceases to amaze me. I learn so much whenever you dance. Thank you for being one of my dearest friends and collaborators over the course of so many years now. The ways we’ve witnessed and shown up for each other’s growth is beyond words. As this chapter closes, I feel steadied by the roots of our kinship, knowing that whatever comes next, we
will be there for one another. To Adrien, my husband, thank you for continually showing up during the hardest times, often doing the most unglamorous tasks with genuine care, keeping me laughing even when I’m crying, and helping me notice the small beauties all around. I can’t wait to be in the mountains, go roller skating, sleep in, and just enjoy the slowness of summertime together after we cross this epic threshold.
To Christopher and Kayla for being yourselves in a field that often pressures otherwise. I learn so much from you. Your questions, research, embodiment, and commitment to our extended community of blind, V.I., low vision and partially sighted artists and audiences opens doors, windows and all kinds of unimaginable portals for ALL OF US to traverse through together.
To Live Active Cultures kin for planting seeds of re-membrance with equal parts curiosity and deep old knowings.
To the guest singers for lending your voices to the ancestors. To lily, Nora Everett, and Kathy for helping us build our world. To Kat, Caroline, Niko, and Benedict for holding it down. And finally to Judy
Hussie-Taylor, the Danspace staff, Barbara Bryan and Movement Research thank you for all of the ways you’ve supported this project and my artistry over the course of the many lives of this piece.
Funding and support for In place of catastrophe, a clear night sky
This project is made possible, in part, by the Danspace Project Commissioning Initiative and Production Residency Program funded by the National Endowment for the Arts as part of Platform 2022: The Dream of the Audience (Part II); with additional
support through a 2019 Movement Research Residency, funded
by the Scherman Foundation’s Katharine S. and Axel G. Rosin Fund; and is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC); as well as Dance/NYC’s Disability. Dance. Artistry. Dance and Social Justice Fellowship Program, made possible by the generous support of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs CreateNYC Disability Forward Fund and the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, with additional support from the New York Community Trust. Creative developmental residencies at The Chocolate Factory Theater, Queer|Art|Pride at Abrons Arts Center, AUNTS Residency at Mount Tremper Arts, and the Zil Culture Center in Moscow through the GPS/Global Practice Sharing program of Movement Research
with funding from the Trust for Mutual Understanding, have also contributed to this ongoing research.
About PLATFORM 2022: The Dream of the Audience (Part II) curated by Judy Hussie-Taylor
Featuring artists mayfield brooks, Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener, iele paloumpis, and Ogemdi Ude
The Platforms were launched by Danspace Project in 2010
as “exhibitions that unfold over time” shaped by guest artist- curators. Since the series’ inception, the Platforms have resulted in multifaceted performances, public programs, and publications that provide rich context for audiences.
Platform 2022, curated by Danspace Project Executive Director & Chief Curator, Judy Hussie-Taylor, follows its 2021 predecessor, building on impossible questions as we continue to navigate precarious times.
Like Part I, Platform 2022 takes inspiration from a 1977 poem* by the late artist and writer, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951-1982), wherein she addresses the audience “as a distant relative.” Platform 2022 delves into ancestral explorations, connections, and disconnections, as well as accessibility, and disability aesthetics, sustainable relationships to land, site, and water, and how these connections find their way into the artists’ choreographic work.
Dance artists mayfield brooks, Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener, iele paloumpis, and Ogemdi Ude have each noted different considerations of time amidst the ongoing Pandemic. Considering the intersections between life and dancing, how do life practices — building, birthing, weaving, planting, surviving — feed into dancemaking?
@DanspaceProject #PLATFORM2022