Archives: Shows

With: Aarron Ricks, Akanbi, and Ley

In the Valley Pools our Sorrow is inspired by nightclubs as communal spaces of care, emotion, and expression. On December 1, we will together open a valley within the relentless pulses of daily life.

Our world today is possessed by extraordinary change and turmoil–climate crisis, political upheaval, and an ongoing pandemic create difficult, often violent, conditions for life. Amidst these conditions, capitalist expectations for unceasing production continue. We are driven to continue without pause despite our pain.

Instead, we make space to pause and feel together. In the heart of this valley, we allow our sorrow, anger, hope, exhaustion and drive to keep trying to pour into the fore. These feelings are our sanity.

Nocturnal Medicine creates a deconstructed nightclub that repositions essential elements of the nightclub experience–deep listening, collective movement, and catharsis. An immersive soundscape invokes reflection while a series of cues performed by Aarron Ricks invite guests into stillness, movement, and expression. A ritual sculpture is co-created over the course of the night. In the second half of the evening, DJ Akanbi takes the helm for a potent set, moving us from a meditative state to a high-octane, cathartic dance.

With In the Valley Pools our Sorrow, we acknowledge the painful challenges we face. We honor the strength it takes to weather them. We weave connection to our bodies, one another, and our world.

Performers: Jeffrey Meris and Vivian Vivas

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.

*Audio Description is available for the in-person performance.

 
With Joy Norton, Amanda Wallace, Kate Williams, Maxi Hawkeye Canion, and Reed Rushes.
Original music by ADR (Aaron David Ross) and including music by Eartheater.
 
In all things under dog, where two things are always true, Monica Mirabile looks at the ‘mafia’ as an outlaw ecosystem rising from a lack of resources to cultivate a support structure. Working on a therapeutic level within this architecture, Mirabile builds out a collapsing of time from the combined personal histories of the performers and herself—working through questions of grief, trauma, support, and ultimately resilience in family systems and the society they are influenced by. all things under dog travels through symbolic representations of a house—with five distinct rooms dividing The Keith Haring Theatre—and a black hole. Heightening the intimacy of the work, the audience, viewing the piece in small groups, move through the rooms with the performance.
 
Mirabile seeks to bring the “often healing, life-affirmation that happens for the performers in rehearsal” to the performance. In this way, all things under dog, where two things are always true exists along the continuum of the work the artist has been doing at Performance Space, including leading Open Movement, and her participation as a cohort member of 02020.