Shows | Page 17 of 46 | Performance Space New York

John Giorno Octopus Series – Ballroom Has Something To Say: An Ode To Black Queer Men

Performers and Presenters: Michael Roberson, Icon Pony Zion, Rev. Ken Alston Jr., Ricky Tucker, Legendary Kaos Lanvin, and Brad Walrond.

WHAT IS PERFORMANCE? Does it have a politic? Does it have a theology? What are the conditions in which performance opens up spaces of freedom? Tonight we will explore these propositions through the history and narrative of the house/ball ballroom community, an intentional kinship structure that has it’s roots stemming from the Harlem Renaissance, created through the ethos of black trans-women and today has globalized across the world. We will examine this community’s pains, it’s struggles, it’s joys, it’s triumphs, it’s cultural productions, beyond 1990’s documentary PARIS IS BURNING, and Madonna’s vogue song/video, and even beyond the FX television show “POSE” and HBO/MAX’S “LEGENDARY.” We will do this through dialogue, through the black poetics, through the written text, and through the ballroom signature dance form vogue; all through the lens and hermeneutics of the black queer/gay man, an ode to his perseverance, his strengths, his resilience in the face of both struggles and catastrophe. It is a true sentiment, that ballroom really has something to say, to teach the world over about what it means to be human, and the struggle for freedom, in the face of catastrophe.

About Octopus

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.

Livestream

+ Captions

John Giorno Octopus Series

Performers: Vanessa Dion Fletcher, Elisa Harkins, Izayotilmahtzin Mazehualli & Marcela Torres.

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.

Livestream

+Captions

John Giorno Octopus Series

Artists: J Arriaga (DJ Set), BALACLAVA, Beau Banks, Ansel Combs, Jacqui Dugal, Robin Ediger-Seto, Sarai Frazier, Gallermic (DJ Set), Aminah Ibrahim, kat sauma, Jørgen Skjaervold, Jazzy Romero with Quentin Long and William Logan, and John Wade.

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.

Marathon Reading of Urvashi Vaid’s Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation

Readers: Susan Allee, J. Bob Alotta, Jess Barbagallo, Lisa Baltazar, Eliza Byard, Alison Bechdel, Michael Bennett, Jennifer Camper, Anne-christine d’Adesky, August Eckhardt, Ruth Eisenberg, Laine Eliot, Ariel Goldberg, Gayatri Gopinath, David Groff, Jim Hubbard, Sue Hyde, Aruna Krishnakumar, Shelley Marlow, Terry McGovern, Lydia Polgreen, Nancy Polikoff, Debbie Richards, Cindy Rizzo, Sara Jane Stoner, Bina Sharif, Kendall Thomas, Linda Villarosa, Ann Viitala, Deborah Weinstein, Jana Welch, Marisa Zalabak

Performance Space New York’s Marathon Readings shares important, influential, and experimental work by women who have passed away, to collectively remember their words. Previous readings were: black looks: race and representation by bell hooks, Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker and DICTEE by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldúa.

Knowledge of Wounds

Installation

Neilma Sidney Theatre, Open Room, 122CC Courtyard
January 13 – February 4
Thursday – Sunday | 12 – 6pm
Free

Reading

With Demian DinéYazhi’ (Diné, Naasht’ézhí Tábąąhá and Tódích’íí’nii clans) and Jazz Money (Wiradjuri)
January 13 | 7pm
Free with RSVP

With: Billy-Ray Belcourt (Driftpile Cree), Demian DinéYazhi’ (Diné, Naasht’ézhí Tábąąhá and Tódích’íí’nii clans), Ellen van Neerven (Mununjali Yugambeh), Jazz Money (Wiradjuri), Joshua Whitehead (Oji-Cree), Alison Whittaker (Gomeroi), Hannah Donnelly (Wiradjuri), and Manu Tzoc (Maya K’iche’).

Organized by S.J Norman (Wiradjuri) and Joseph M. Pierce (Cherokee Nation Citizen) Knowledge of Wounds (KoW) is an autonomous gathering space, a ceremony, a fire, a calling to vibrate in good relations across Indigenous time and space. The third iteration of KoW offers a mid-winter space of generative respite, reflection and deep listening amidst the ongoing reverberations of collective rupture.

Continuing their mission as the stewards of this vessel of Indigequeer knowledge exchange, Norman and Pierce have worked with composer Chloe Alexandra Thompson (Beaver Lake Cree), audio-visual artist DB Amorin (Pacific Islander) and a line-up of esteemed First Nations poets to create a hypnotic sonic installation, an audiovisual loop which entwines the voices of Indigenous queer and two-spirit poets from four continents. Centering the Wiradjuri principle of Yindyamarra- a word meaning to move with slowness, gentleness and respect – this offering from Knowledge of Wounds honors the Indigenous body at rest. Conversant with the established currents of Black thought which name rest as an active praxis of defiance in a culture of extraction, the artists of KoW 2023 invites a consideration of rest-as-refusal within an Indigenous framework. What does it mean to offer our bodies to stillness? To move with seasonal cycles of withdrawal? To pause and listen deeply to the voices and vibrations of Land, as we navigate the sacred thresholds between the making, unmaking, and re-making of worlds?

Visit the Knowledge of Wounds online bookstore.