This unique conversation, led by Kyle Kidd and Joy Guidry, transcends traditional dialogue by incorporating movement, songs, affection, and divine love. As participants, you will witness and partake in a ceremonial journey that baptizes the soul, carrying and tarrying for newfound understandings of self. This event will unfold as a living expression of the truth, “In this truth I live, move, and have my being,” creating a space of profound connection and revelation.
Show Category: Performance
Vortex ACTIVATION: Resonance Unfolded
Step into the Memory Vortex Inn as it comes alive with the powerful synthesis of Black Quantum Futurism, where Black Quantum Futurism, Melanie Dyer, and Tcheser Holmes will activate the vortex by weaving an intricate tapestry of sound and movement, unlocking the resonances of our shared temporal heritage. This event will blend the auditory and kinetic, creating a dynamic experience that taps into the deeper frequencies of Black temporalities and quantum echoes. BQF will present a piece that intertwines with Dyer and Holmes’ improvisational soundscapes, inviting participants to immerse in the cosmic dance of past, present, and future.
Palabre/s en mode marron
Symposium
The Neilma Sidney Theatre
December 6 – 7
Free
Performance
The Keith Haring Theatre
December 6 – 7 | 7pm
Tickets
Artist Bintou Dembélé presents Palabre/s, a gathering of artists, academics, activists, and more with connections to Paris and the French West Indies. This program will feature a day of exchanges and encounters with conversations, film screenings, readings, DJ sets, and workshops, culminating in a dance performance by Dembélé, performed by Michel “Meech” Onomo. Palabre offers a dedicated space for artists’ voices, conflict resolution and community engagement while cultivating diasporic exchange among scholars, stakeholders, and activists (conversations with Bintou Dembélé, their guests and communities from New-York, movie screenings, a family space and a DJ set). Working collaboratively with Performance Space and L’Alliance New York to bring communities together, Dembélé demonstrates the multifaceted nature of performance.
Dembélé’s work explores ritual and corporeal memories, interrogates gender dynamics, and addresses both individual and collective wounds of the past. Palabre/s is an iteration of a series she has presented several times in the past, which, with the blessing of the Bushnengue elders of French Guiana, allowing her to invent a ‘Maroon Dance,’ a memory of marronnage – of descendants of Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean who created new, free societies on the margins of slavery and colonization.
As part of the invitation (we would like to keep the word invitation to stay within the semantics of a ritual), Bintou Dembélé also presents movement-based work (this formulation is weird – can you elaborate) that blends together this ritual practice of palabre (conversation) with the essence of Hip Hop. They assume the role of MC and orchestrate the flow of speech within the space, inviting vulnerability and fragility and enabling participants to find common ground and collectively reimagine new narratives. As an artist, Dembélé unearths the memories buried in bodies, souls and minds, as a living archive of another point of view on histories of French enslaved people and colonial histories more generally.
LIBRARY
LIBRARY is a four act performance program that celebrates the library as a space for communal gathering in an expansive reconception of a traditional reading that includes poetry, dialogues, and live performance. Whitney Mallett is the curator and organizer of LIBRARY and the founding editor of The Whitney Review—a new publication that features reviews and criticism of new writing and interviews with writers.
Mallett found inspiration in Jorge Luis Borges’s 1941 story The Library of Babel, which conceives of the universe as an infinite library, reimagining its “labyrinthine…hexagonal galleries, corridors, staircases, mirrors, and reflections” as a strip club, casino, and convention center. The program features a performance by Kellian Delice engaging choreographies of processing; a conversation between Esmé Naumes-Givens, contributing writer to The Whitney Review, and their father David Givens, writer and librarian; a demonstration of poet and painter Whitney Claflin’s language-based card game, its hyper-mediated presentation inspired by televised poker tournaments; and a performance by poet and performer, Maya Martinez, and writer and deputy editor of The Whitney Review, Mani Mekala, combining dance and spoken word.
The Whitney Review creates community around the printed word and LIBRARY embodies the communal function of the library, inspired by the many contributors to The Whitney Review. As the program unfolds, audience members are invited to participate in the ongoing narrative, the infinite act, where the spirit of the library lives on.
¡Cuidado!
Installation
The Neilma Sidney Theatre
November 8 – 23 | Tuesday – Sunday | 12 – 6pm
Free
Performance
The Neilma Sidney Theatre
November 8, 23 | 7pm
Tickets
Adán Vallecillo has been at the forefront of Central American creative and political praxis for decades working in sculpture, installation, and video, with roots in performance and sociology. Vallecillo’s installation and performance, ¡Cuidado!, marks his debut performance in New York. This title holds dual meaning in Spanish: both caution and care. Vallecillo explores this duality through performance and video installation, showcasing the honest experiences of Honduran migrants working as home care aides in New York City. Inspired by and dedicated to Vallecillo’s sister, Mabel Vallecillo, an immigrant who has worked for over two decades caring for the elderly in the United States, this project illuminates the essential but undervalued nature of care work. Vallecillo emphasizes the beauty of caregiving in the midst of a culture that considers mortality to be taboo and generates panic and shame around aging. This framework highlights the political and social relationships between the United States and Honduras. Care also frames Vallecillo’s interpersonal relationships with his community and forms the foundation of his methodologies of working with home care aids who often face issues such as racism, xenophobia, and labor exploitation.
Central to Vallecillo’s approach is extensive on-the-ground research, engaging intimately with communities to create site-specific and locally relevant exhibitions. ¡Cuidado! is informed by a series of interviews with home care aides of different backgrounds, ages, and experiences in Central American neighborhoods such as the South Bronx and Bushwick, as well as conversations with unions that center health care workers’ rights. This research forms the foundation of ¡Cuidado!, conveying the nuances and poetics of care work and giving the audience an intimate yet abstracted view of migrants’ daily lives. The installation will include video work—directed by Vallecillo and recorded and edited by Honduran videographer Xavi Portillo—that documents private performances that have taken place in various locations throughout the city. These video works will be displayed in the installation alongside other sculptural, visual, and audio works exploring different modalities of care work. The opening of the exhibition will feature live performances.
¡Cuidado! is the culmination of the inaugural Keith Haring Curatorial Fellowship, curated and co-produced by X Arriaga Cuellar.
Edición en Español
Adán Vallecillo ha estado a la vanguardia en la praxis creativa y política centroamericana durante décadas a través de su trabajo en escultura, instalación, con raíces en performance y sociología. La instalación y performance de Vallecillo, ¡Cuidado!, marca su debut de performance en Nueva York. El título carga doble significado: tanto precaución como cuidado. Vallecillo nos muestra esta dualidad a través de las experiencias vividas por los migrantes hondureños que trabajan como cuidadores de personas de la tercera edad en la ciudad de Nueva York. Inspirado por su hermana Mabel Vallecillo, una inmigrante que ha dedicado más de veinte años al cuidado de ancianos en Estados Unidos, este proyecto ilustra la naturaleza esencial y a su vez subestimada del trabajo de cuidado. Vallecillo destaca la belleza del cuidado dentro de una cultura que considera tabú la mortalidad y genera temor y vergüenza en torno al envejecimiento. A la vez este cuadro resalta las relaciones políticas y sociales entre Estados Unidos y Honduras. El concepto del cuidado también enmarca las relaciones interpersonales de Vallecillo con su comunidad y forma la base para sus metodologías de trabajo con cuidadores de personas envejecidas, quienes a menudo enfrentan problemas tales como el racismo, la xenofobia y la explotación laboral.
La práctica de Vallecillo está centrada en una investigación contínua sobre el terreno, interactuando íntimamente con las comunidades para crear exhibiciones específicas al lugar y localmente relevantes. ¡Cuidado! consiste de una serie de entrevistas con cuidadores de diferentes orígenes, edades y trasfondos, en barrios con grandes poblaciones centroamericanas como el Sur del Bronx y Bushwick, así como en conversaciones con sindicatos que defienden los derechos de los trabajadores de la salud. Esta investigación constituye la base de ¡Cuidado!, transmitiendo los matices y la poesía del trabajo de cuidado y ofreciendo al público una perspectiva íntima y abstracta de la vida diaria de los migrantes. La instalación incluirá obras de video dirigidas por Vallecillo, grabadas y editadas por el videógrafo hondureño Xavi Portillo, que documentan acciones privadas realizadas en varios lugares de la ciudad. Estas obras de video se exhibirán junto con otras obras escultóricas, visuales y auditivas que exploran diferentes modalidades del trabajo de cuidado. La inauguración de la exposición incluirá performances en vivo.
¡Cuidado! es la culminación del becario curatorial inaugural Keith Haring de Performance Space New York, curada y coproducida por X Arriaga Cuellar.