Crossroads series curated by Pioneers Go East Collective at Judson Church.
Free event (& sliding scale tickets). All are welcome!
RSVP: Eventbrite
Featured artists: Amanda Loulaki, Janessa Clark, Lydia Mokdessi, Vanessa Rappa, Marija Krtolica, Daniel Diaz
Crossroads performance and video art series curated by Pioneers Go East Collective.
CROSSROADS (CROSSWINDS, CROSSCURRENTS, CROSSFIRES) Performance + art + poetry + music + dance + food + community. A curated series presented by Pioneers Go East Collective. Crossroads Series features artists who explore new genres and known performance and art-making modes to share their creative practices with other artists and their audiences. Each evening we witness different generations of artists dealing with actual, day-to-day, contemporary challenges to further discussion between artists and to activate a network of exchange and inclusion with social and artistic intervention.
DEVOTION DEVOTION IV by Lydia Mokdessi and Jason Bartell. Dancer: Lydia Mokdessi; Guitar and Synth: Jason Bartell; Vocals: Syd Island.
DEVOTION DEVOTION IV is a performance for dance, guitar, and voice. Performed by Lydia Mokdessi, Jason Bartell, and Syd Island, opulent loops and cinematic imagery create a pleasurable meditative experience within a harsh audiovisual environment. DEVOTION DEVOTION IV is a performance for dance, guitar, and voice. Initiated by dancer Lydia Mokdessi and musician Jason Bartell in 2017, the duo have developed shared practices of sonic and physical droning, employing opulent loops and cinematic imagery to create a pleasurable meditative experience within a harsh audiovisual environment. Accompanied by vocalist Syd Island, this fourth iteration of the project intensifies shared intuition, dissolves individual authorship, invites failure, and troubles the relationship of the body to identity, spectatorship, objectification, service, submission, and control.
Bio: Lydia Mokdessi is a Brooklyn-based artist, writer, editor, and arts worker. She has performed in works by Buck Wanner, Maida Withers, Anthony Gongora, Anna Sperber, Heather McArdle, Katie Workum, Emie Hughes, Stevie May, Londs Reuter, Jordan Morley, Stormy Budwig, Alexandra Pinel, and others. She has performed and presented work in such venues as Center for Performance Research, Roulette Intermedium, Movement Research at Judson Church, Gibney Dance, AUNTS, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Dixon Place, Vital Joint, Triskelion Arts, Fourth Arts Block, The Wild Project, and Exponential Festival. She is the Editor of Culturebot and her writing has appeared in Movement Research Performance Journal, Movement Research Critical Correspondence, New York Live Arts Context Notes, American Realness Reading, Baryshnikov Arts Center BAC Stories, and Routine Magazine. She has served as Guest Curator for the CURRENT SESSIONS and co-organizer of Community of Practice, an initiative for early-career artists and writers supported by University Settlement. She served on the NY Dance & Performance Bessie Awards selection committee from 2017-2020.
Jason Bartell is a musician and visual artist. He studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he formed the band Fang Island, who went on to tour the US and Europe from 2008-2015. He has performed his work at Issue Project Room, Vital Joint, Glasslands, Saint Vitus, Cameo Gallery, Ace Hotel, Manhattan Inn, Babys All Right, and Rabbithole Studios.
Bio: Amanda Loulaki is a dance performance artist, programmer, curator and educator, born and raised in the island of Crete Greece. She spent her childhood years looking at the sea daily and wondering in the ruins of Knossos Palace of the Minoan Civilization dreaming of different ways of being. In 1990 she received a BA in Education from the University of Crete, Department of Pedagogy and in 2007 she received her MFA in Dance from Hollins University. In 1994 Amanda was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and moved to New York. In Amanda's work often the source material is biographical while presenting the body as a container of history, and the space as a container of the body .Her work has been presented at Danspace Project, La MaMa, Dixon Place, Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center PS 122, Joyce Soho, Dance New Amsterdam, The Kitchen, Dance Theater Workshop, 11th Biennale of artists of Europe and the Mediterranean, BucharEast.West International Dance Festival, the Choreographic Center Archauz, Denmark, and ZVRK Festival (B&H). Amanda was selected for The Barnard Project in 2007 at DTW and was appointed Adjunct Associate Professor at Barnard College of Columbia University during the 2007 fall semester. Amanda has taught at the American Dance Festival, M.I.T., Dance New Amsterdam and N.J.I.T. For the past 28 years Amanda finds fulfillment in teaching in schools grades Pre K -8, in New York City and internationally. Since 1998, Amanda has been the Programming Director at Movement Research and programmed the Improvisation Festival NY from 1999-2003. As an advocate of investigative movement-based art Amanda Loulaki has been invited to attend in conferences and platforms Internationally.
Infinite Subjectivity - a study from the dance-theatre work “Re-Inventing Love”. Choreography and concept in collaboration with the participating artists: Marija Krtolica. Live music and reading: Jason Ciaccio. Performed by: Michael Mangieri and Marija Krtolica. Text: an excerpt from Soren Kierkegaard’s “Concluding Unscientific Postscript”
Infinite Subjectivity examines the thinking body in relationship to “the society of spectacle”. It positions the body as both a living, feeling, continually changing material entity, and a metaphor for the thinking process. The viewer(s) follows the mover while the mover engages the problems of subjective absorption; becoming without seeking a result; grace (‘holy marionette’), and child-like innocence.
Jason Ciaccio is a musician, writer, and scholar who holds a PhD in comparative literature and teaches writing and literary studies in the City University of New York. He studied music at Berklee College and specializes in improvisatory acoustic guitar and classical guitar repertoire.
Marija Krtolica is a native of Belgrade. She has been making dance-theater works since the early 1990s. Marija earned a PhD in dance from Temple University with the dissertation The Embodiment of the Unconscious: Hysteria, Surrealism, and Tanztheater (2018). In her recent work, Marija aims to join an experimental artistic practice with a critical analysis of changing meanings of the expressive embodiment in society. In 2020/21 her current collaborative project — Re-Inventing Love was supported by the Downtown Brooklyn Rehearsal Initiative and presented at The Brick, Brooklyn.
Michael Mangieri is a movement-based artist, improviser, and food maker. His work and play explore collectivity, the physical manifestation of psychological states, and radical hospitality.
Concords Confessions by Vanessa Rappa
Concords Confessions is a casual contemplation of casually killing people while examining the disconnection we feel between ourselves and other people, as a response to past and/or current internal trauma. A poetic play with music and movement, it grants the audience a glimpse of Concord's interpretations of the world and their interactions with other people, as they explore the limits of their humanity.
Vanessa Rappa is an interdisciplinary artist, exploring in and creating for the realms of poetry, music, theater, and movement as a poet, singer/songwriter, actor, and dancer. Recently, they performed their original piece Scribbled Lines at Alchemical Studios as a recipient of the NY City Artist Corps Grants, presented by Poetic Theater Productions. Vanessa hopes to continue spilling bits of herself and falling into other people’s pools. Stalk ‘em if you want to on instagram @mistressvee
Future Becomes Past. Director/Choreographer Janessa Clark. Performer Courtney Drasner. Cinematographer Kathleen Kelley. Music Ben Lukas Boysen and Sebastian Plano.
The film Future Becomes Past follows dancer Courtney Drasner as she revisits a 13 year old live solo she last danced in 2003 for translation to the stage. How does her body feel embodying the themes and movements last visited more than a decade ago? How has her relationship to the text written all over her body changed? The film was shot in 2018 during the height of the Trump administration's terror reign, creating an added layer of anger and oppression to work through. The film is an independent piece but more importantly refers back to Clark's practice of translating live work to film and following individual dancers and their trajectories over the space of several decades.
Future Becomes Past (2018) film
Future Becomes Past is a solo about becoming, transforming from a contained being into a liberated self. This film was developed as an adaptation of a live dance piece of the same name which accesses themes of feminism, empowerment, and perseverance. The dancer begins tucked into a tiny horse stall in a 200-year-old barn. Her body is covered in handwritten text (all anti-feminist quotes from the early 20th century to present day). Historically the female body has been identified, marked, subjugated, and oppressed. By wiping away the words from the body, experiencing the physical and emotional labor of undoing an inscribed body, navigating through various expressions of time and space, and interrogating the weight of words and the gravity of history, the dancer is finally empowered. She liberates herself from the confines of her environment towards a brave new world. She cultivates agency and ownership of herself. A piece for the Feminist Age. © Janessa Clark 2018, All rights reserved.
Janessa Clark (American/Swedish) is a Brooklyn-based BESSIE Award-nominated choreographer, performer, and installation artist. Her practice combines dance, video, language, and social engagement to explore themes surrounding identity, co-authorship, agency, memory, cultural production, and the body. Janessa holds an MA in Performance Practices and Research from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London where she also received distinction for her thesis Vicious Terrain: Rupturing Choreography through Co-Authorship. She also holds a BFA in Choreography Arizona State University. Janessa founded and directed the New York City-based dance collective, Janessa Clark/KILTERBOX, from 2001-2012, and nomadthenewcompany, which worked from Stockholm 2012-2018. As a dancer and performer, Janessa has collaborated and performed with acclaimed artists such as Tino Sehgal, Gibney Dance, Laura Peterson Choreography, Noemie Lafrance Sens|Production, Michael Cole, Christopher Matthews, Lior Lerman, and Disa Krosness among others. Janessa is fortunate to have received a 2021 Emergency Grant from Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the 2020 Crojik’s Largesse from the Croft Residency and a 2019 artist fellowship in St. Petersburg, Russia through CEC ArtsLink’s prestigious Back Apartment Residency program. Prior to that she was a 2018-19 Artist in Residence at Jamaica Center for Arts and a 2018 resident at THE VISIONARY Artist Residency in Mt. Vision, NY. Janessa’s choreography and installations have been presented throughout the US and Europe most notably at HERE Arts Center, Danspace Project, the DanceNOW Festival, the Webber Douglas Performance Space in London, SDVIG and NCCA St. in Petersburg, Russia, CounterPULSE in San Francisco, Teatro Victoria in the Canary Islands, and Stockholm's Danscentrum. Her film work has also been presented internationally including at the Stockholm Dansfilm Festival, Thessaloniki Cinedance International, ViDEOSKiN Film Festival in Yukon Territory, the Jakarta Dance Festival, Cinedanza in Modena, Italy, and Moving Bodies in Bulgaria. For her work, Janessa has received grants from Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Swedish Arts Council, and Harlem Stage, and the Croft Residency. Currently, Janessa is developing a new video installation which will open in Boyne City, MI in 2022, touring her new dance film collaboration with Attack Theatre | : |, and returning to the studio to begin The Untitled, a new live work. Her video dance project, Communion, a response to the Covid-19 crisis, is nominated for a 2021 BESSIE Award for Outstanding Production, and has screened in 2021 at the Barry Art Museum in Norfolk, VA, the Soundance Festival in Berlin, HERE Arts Center in New York as a three-week in-person installation, American Dance Festival’s Movies by Movers, and Bates Dance Festival.
Courtney Drasner (film dancer) grew up in Minnesota and later received her BFA in dance from NYU. Since graduating, she has been fortunate enough to perform with Donnell Oakley, Max Stone, The Painted Ladies, Rocha Dance Theater, Jana Hicks, Gibney Dance, Jordana Che Toback, Erica Essner, Xan Burley + Alex Springer, Jenni Hong, Courtney Andrews, and Janessa Clark.
All guests will be required to be fully vaccinated (please bring proof of vaccination). All visitors will be required to wear a face-covering at all times while they are at Judson Church. In addition, all surfaces are being sanitized on a regular basis. Please note the performers will perform maskless, but they are fully vaccinated and observing New York State’s Department of Health protocols for in-person events.
DIRECTIONS:
Judson Church
The entrance is located at 55 Washington Square South, New York, New York, 10012
Subway: A, C, E, B, D, F, M to West 4th Street or N, Q, R to NYU 8th Street.
Accessibility: Our accessible entrance is by way of 243 Thompson St. Use the lift to get to the Meeting Room on Level 3 or our accessible bathrooms on Level B (basement). Return to Level 1 for street access back to the corner of West 4th & Thompson St.