Using the Octopus’s decentralized nervous system as an inspiration for Performance Space New York’s curatorial practice, the John Giorno Octopus Series invites artists and guest curators to organize an evening-length program with several artists working in any number of disciplines. The series is named after legendary performance poet, John Giorno, and continues Performance Space’s legacy of artist-centric programming and creating space for risk-taking.
Archives: Shows
Sueños de anfibios / Amphibians dreams
Using the Octopus’s decentralized nervous system as an inspiration for Performance Space New York’s curatorial practice, the John Giorno Octopus Series invites artists and guest curators to organize an evening-length program with several artists working in any number of disciplines. The series is named after legendary performance poet, John Giorno, and continues Performance Space’s legacy of artist-centric programming and creating space for risk-taking.
Gnaw
Where everybody knows your name, Gnaw explores the social organization of the kitchen and the fermentation of gender from the inside out. Set within Open Room, quori theodor creates an otherworldly diner that pushes our sense of edibility and recontextualizes the performativity of food.
Countertops as flooring, an evolving ferment library, a vending machine stocked with toothsome experiments, ingredients underfoot, and food mess lining the walls—Gnaw invites visitors to explore the limits of food, decaying a sense of normalcy around the customs of eating and their structural implications.
All are welcome to use the space: taste it, loiter in it, marinate in it, repose in it, lick it. Gnaw will additionally be activated through a series of performances, workshops, experiments, and communal meals that will be announced throughout the year.
The mouth is a room, come sit.
octps/12072023
Using the Octopus’s decentralized nervous system as an inspiration for Performance Space New York’s curatorial practice, the John Giorno Octopus Series invites artists and guest curators to organize an evening-length program with several artists working in any number of disciplines. The series is named after legendary performance poet, John Giorno, and continues Performance Space’s legacy of artist-centric programming and creating space for risk-taking.
Open Movement
In its third season, Open Movement is continuing its open format of carving out space for free shared studio time and Artist led movement workshops every Sunday in Performance Space New York’s theaters. This season’s Open Movement exists in 3 parts:
First, come move your body however you like at Open Movement Studio. There will be music playing, lights will be contributing to the atmosphere and you can come and go as you please. This is a shared studio where people stretch, draw, write, lay on the floor, noodle, dance and rehearse with others and by themselves. Bring friends and family, make friends and family. This is an opportunity to be grounded in your body and just feel. Many participants refer to this as “church”.
In the second part of Sunday at 4pm, participate in movement concept WORKSHOPS led by artists and practitioners. These workshops have something different to offer every week as each artist or practitioner shares a two hour participatory practice, exploration or sequence of actions. Some lend themselves to performance ethos of shared practices as others ground in wellness ontologies while others are experiments in the human condition. All are of the body and within community.
This year, sprinkled in is a call for experimentation and poetic sentiment around the body’s relationship to science as it merges with the mystical or spiritual. Open to broad interpretation, the Open Movement ethos is expansive and can go beyond the typical practices of “dance”. Check the schedule and Instagram every week for specific details.
The third part of Open Movement is the new, WIP FEEDBACK FRONT. This is a showcasing of artist works in progress. Throughout the year we will have five events where 2 artists or artist groups will show us what they are working on. This is a performance event with wine and drinks served in a casual atmosphere. Built within the event is an opportunity to write feedback for the artists anonymously if you choose. WIP FEEDBACK FRONT is an opportunity for New York artists and audience members to witness and experiment with the living experience of performance in its broadest form.
All of this is meant for all people, “non-dancers” welcome. A major component of the ethos is to utilize empty space for people to reconnect, ground and expand within themselves and with others, wherever we are at the moment.
Working from combined somatic acting related practices – we will explore building narrative through the body, and repetition as meaning mining.
A melange of contrasting elements found within body language and movement qualities dating from the ancient Greek theatre times to current forms of expression, including folklore dance, sensual floor flow and more.
Fact or fiction. Everything I say is the truth, and everything I say is a lie. Let’s use our bodies to unfurl into language and collectively ask: are you being f*ing for real right now?
This workshop is a playful and provocative step into my recurring dance nightmare: I am put onstage with a dance company in front of hundreds of people, and everyone except me knows the choreography. We will draw from that fear and learn how to use forgetting to our advantage. I will introduce improvised scores and memory games and choreographic tools that ask us to make something out of our disjointed memories. We will also employ weight, tension, rebound, speed, and rigor. We will make complex choreographies from empty beginnings. We will find new ways to be brave in a scary field.
THERE’S A CRACK IN MY VESSEL methodology emphasizes a soothing focus on the
entire body, uncovering fluid and dynamic pathways to understand and challenge our
potential. In this 3 day workshop, we will identify, unlock, crack and explore focal points in our vessel as well as our environment, delving into our own performative alchemy. Through guided meditation and continuous motion exercises, we allow light and matter to travel dimensions, gaining insights into our personal history and future desires. In the durational practice of intuitive improvisation we construct ideas of dimensional movement cartography as well as lucid cinematography, creating an empathetic centrifuge experience between ourselves and the present moment.
THERE’S A CRACK IN MY VESSEL methodology emphasizes a soothing focus on the
entire body, uncovering fluid and dynamic pathways to understand and challenge our
potential. In this 3 day workshop, we will identify, unlock, crack and explore focal points in our vessel as well as our environment, delving into our own performative alchemy. Through guided meditation and continuous motion exercises, we allow light and matter to travel dimensions, gaining insights into our personal history and future desires. In the durational practice of intuitive improvisation we construct ideas of dimensional movement cartography as well as lucid cinematography, creating an empathetic centrifuge experience between ourselves and the present moment.
GARBAGE TEXTS is a workshop about words and what we do with them. Engaging in intuitive writing exercises, we’ll dip below the surface of meaning and dig into our individual undergrounds. We will then exchange words with each other, listening to our inside voices made outside. As we let go of legibility and punctuation, our words will slip in and out of coherence and into and out of pure acoustical presence. From there, we will trawl the formless space between sound and movement and make some shapes. Everyone of all abilities and experience is encouraged to attend.
This workshop explores the relationship between the mind and body, emotions and
movements, by applying sense memory practice in method acting as a tool to create
movement. The practice aims to approach movement through basic acting practice, exploring and experimenting with how feelings and imagination can stimulate and trigger movement. The workshop includes activities that expand sensations and emotions through memories, creating movement from within, ultimately “dancing” from the inside out.
With the physical and emotional awareness that the sense memory practice brings to the
participants, the practice can be applied to contact improvisation, expanding the exploration from self to others. Participants are required to prepare an object in mind that has a certain memory linked to it for
the workshop.
Fame, Center Stage, Step Up (1 & 2 only), Honey, You Got Served, Save the last dance, black swan and more! Dress in your most cliche dance rehearsal outfit (open to interpretation) and prepare to sweat while being incandescently happy!