Archival Press

The Undead

Collaborative Perversions & Haunted Temporalities: Revisiting "The Undead"

By Rebecca Teich | ON MIND | The Kitchen | JUL 20, 2023

Variations on Themes from Lost and Found

Harmonies Missing, Harmonies Added

By Noa Rui-Piin Weiss | Danspace Project JOURNAL: ISSUE 15 | SPRING/SUMMER 2023

“Variations… has completely changed what it means to revive choreography. Or rather, it has crystallized the knowledge that performers hold and put into practice. There is no perfect version, no finalized performance set in stone to be repeated ad infinitum. It does not promise authenticity or accuracy. It’s a performance that gains integrity through relationships and research.”
—Noa Rui-Piin Weiss

TRY

Review: Queer performance “TRY” gives powerful shoutout to ancestral land

By Kathleen Wessel | ARTS ATL | MAR 22, 2022

“In the end, we were left — all of us — playing like kids with a mountain of soapy water, mesmerizing and fragile. One touch and it changed; eventually it will disappear. The image harkened back to the beginning, when Calvert blessed the space with a water song. The climate crisis looms, and the painful history of colonization, oppression and subjugation remains a constant presence.

With TRY, Houston-Jones and his collaborators envision a collective path forward. All we can do is keep trying.” — Kathleen Wessel

Teaching

Embracing the awkward with Ishmael Houston-Jones

By Joshua Glucksman | The Middlebury Campus | MAR 16, 2023

Long View: CI as political practice?

A Panel Discussion with
Nita Little, Keith Hennessy, Ishmael Houston-Jones, and Ann Cooper Albright

Contact Quarterly | special edition | CI 50th Anniversary 2022

Relations: A Performance Reunion

with Tara Aisha Willis, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Ralph Lemon, and Bebe Miller

Contact Quarterly | Summer/Fall 2019

“I can’t take my eyes off his dancing. He scares me a little. I don’t understand why he dances the way he dances, like he’s mad at somebody, with an odd kind of grace”. -Ralph Lemon

Part family reunion and part-first time encounter, they [Ishmael Houston-Jones, Ralph Lemon, and Bebe Miller] pay homage to their past selves, gesture to the futures of dance that they have inspired, and testify to their present-tense artistry.

THEM

Ishmael Houston-Jones in Conversation with Chris Cochrane

Movement Research Critical Correspondence | AUG 22, 2018

THEM was first conceived in 1985 as a collaboration between choreographer Ishmael Houston-Jones, musician Chris Cochrane and writer Dennis Cooper. They set off to create a poetic reflection on their experiences as gay men and in the process, the AIDS crisis started advancing as a devastating force that entered their lives, and thus also the performance. Having been shown many times over the years, we asked Ishmael Houston-Jones and Chris Cochrane to have a conversation about the re-staging of THEM at Performance Space New York last June.

Variations on Themes from Lost and Found

The Materiality of queer loss

By Anh Vo | Medium | APR 11, 2018

“To accept loss is to accept queerness”.

This beautifully simple quote from José Muñoz gently reverberates in my ears during and after my experience of Variations on Themes from Lost and Found: Scenes from a Life and other works by John Bernd.

Platform 2016: Lost and Found

Our Own AIDS Time: Keith Hennessy and Ishmael Houston-Jones in Conversation

Open Space SF MOMA | FEB 7, 2017

The choreographers Keith Hennessy and Ishmael Houston-Jones have long laid their bodies on the line, investigating, however obliquely, the myriad sociopolitical concerns that have shaped their lives. This past fall, in New York City, Houston-Jones was the guest artist-curator with Will Rawls of Danspace Project’s Platform 2016 Lost and Found: Dance, New York, HIV/AIDS, Then and Now. Just last weekend, Hennessy presented his performance lecture at Open Space’s Lost and Found: Bay Area Edition, co-presented with CounterPulse. In between these two events, I asked these two friends to look back on what it is to continue living and making work through this epidemic.

Interview

IN TERMS OF PERFORMANCE

IToP | The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Philadelphia, Arts Research Center, University

of California, Berkeley | 2016

In 1982 (Ishmael Houston-Jones) curated “Parallels” at Danspace, asking, “What is post–Alvin Ailey Black Dance?” Thirty years later, with Platform 2012: “Parallels,” he offered an updated reflection on the relation between dance makers of the African diaspora and postmodern choreography. (In Terms of Performance is a keywords anthology designed to provoke discovery across artistic disciplines)

Platform 2016: Lost and Found

They’ll Perform and Talk to Remember Those Killed by AIDS

By Brian Seibert | NY TIMES | OCT 6, 2016

One day in the middle of the 1980s, John Bernd took a taxi to St. Mark’s Church in the East Village, where he did a solo show for Danspace Project. Then he took a taxi back to where he had come from: New York University Hospital, a few blocks away. A friend had to sneak him out for his performance. Mr. Bernd had been sick with AIDS since 1981, before the syndrome had a name.

13 Love Songs: dot dot dot

Ishmael Houston-Jones and Emily Wexler talk about heartbreak

TimeOut New York | JAN 6, 2014

(The) American Realness Festival includes Ishmael Houston-Jones and Emily Wexler's 13 Love Songs: dot dot dot. To develop the duet, the artists sifted through old mixtapes, journals and love letters to determine the nature of love. But after Houston-Jones suffered a heart attack and Wexler became his primary caretaker, the duo found answers closer than they anticipated.

Platform 2012: Parallels

A History Lesson

By Joan Acocella | The New Yorker | Culture Desk | FEB 21, 2012

…things have changed. Black artists are no longer trapped in a communal subject matter, race, or in the simple, presentational style (as Houston-Jones put it) that such a subject is normally thought to require… …They have become as various, as individual, as other artists.

—Joan Accolla

Platform 2012: Parallels

What is Black Dance?

TimeOut New York | JAN 30, 2012

After Ishmael Houston-Jones moved to New York from Philadelphia in 1979, he felt isolated, but instead of wallowing in it, he wrote to Cynthia Hedstrom, then-director of Danspace Project, to ask about curating a series of works by black choreographers. In 1982, the resulting "Parallels" showcased artists including Ralph Lemon, Bebe Miller, Blondell Cummings and Fred Holland. The point? Black artists weren't working merely in mainstream modern dance. Houston-Jones is commemorating the event this year by creating a new version of "Parallels" as part of Danspace Project's latest Platform series.

THEM (Interview) 

Ishmael Houston-Jones: The ’80s are back with Them.  

By Gia Kourlas | TimeOut New York | SEP 23, 2010

Them, which celebrated its premiere in 1986, features text by Dennis Cooper, music by Chris Cochrane, six male dancers and a dead goat (yay, right?). Though he stopped actively making work in the early 2000s, Houston-Jones —a choreographer, teacher, curator, writer, performer and improviser— has been a force in the New York dance world for more than 30 years.

THEM

A Look Back to a Time of Feral Play and Fear

  By Claudia La Rocco | NY TIMES | OCT 29, 2010

"...'Them' had its premiere at P.S. 122 in 1986, when the city was in the grip of the AIDS crisis. As Burt Supree wrote in a Village Voice review that year, “ ‘Them’ isn’t a piece about AIDS, but AIDS constricts its view and casts a considerable pall.”

In 2010 this grip has eased somewhat, but it is still very much present. “Them,” likewise, reads differently now. But it does not feel like a reconstruction. It is poetic and disturbing, backed by the full force of its history without being diminished by it..."

Antistatic 99 (Interview)

Antistatic and the beast

By Eleanor Brickhill | realtime | Australian and international exploratory performance and media arts

JUN 1, 1999

I often feel like a member of a band of vagrant minstrels, criss-crossing the worldwide countryside of postmodern dance. We steal into a town, dance for our supper and a place to sleep, and then move on. Because the friendly villages are few and well-known to members of my merry band, we invariably run into each other at semi-regular intervals. I might see David Z in Havana, then David D in Glasgow; I’ll have a dance with Jennifer M in London, and the other Jennifer M in Northern Venezuela; I’ll watch a performance by Lisa in Arnhem, and she’ll watch my dress rehearsal in Sydney. This has been my life for 20 years.

Specimens

Fallen Angels In Energetic Theatricality

By Jennifer Dunning | NY TIMES | DEC 12, 1998

Mr. Houston-Jones clearly has a strong, sure sense of theater. He uses every inch of atmospheric bare stage space, studded with odd props that function as stolidly as the lost middle-class world that his dark angels once inhabited and remember here.

Unsafe / Unsuited (A High Risk Meditation)

The Space Between

By Deborah Jowitt | The Village Voice | MAR 21, 1995

When Contact Improvisation was spawned in the 1970s — love seemed easy and trust was a major word … These days, sex and peril are partners, and who can you trust for sure? … Anger and desire shape this meditation by three gay male artists … What pulls the piece together is the tension between the men’s fierce physicality and the inherent utopianism of Contact Improvisation

Tell Me

Houston-Jones, Meier at Sushi

By Janice Steinberg | LA Times | JAN 11, 1993

...Remarkably, the dancers (Yvonne Meier and Ishmael Houston-Jones) sustained a high sense of danger. In one section, both catapulted across the space on intersecting diagonals, at first barely missing each other. After the inevitable crash, Meier dove at, somersaulted over and propelled herself off of Houston-Jones, who pushed her away. Each time she landed, gasping audibly, she picked herself up and returned for more....

Dead and The End of Everything

Dance: Field Trips, a Mix of Styles and Standpoints (excerpt)

By Jennifer Dunning | New York Times | AUG 25, 1988

Ishmael Houston‐Jones seems intent, these days, on throwing himself to the ground as

bruisingly as possible...

Interview

PERFORMANCE STRATEGIES

By Marc Robinson | Performing Arts Journal, Vol. 10, No. 3, | 1987

In a recent program note Ishmael Houston-Jones lists over fifty major influences on his work: among them are the AIDS epidemic, the fall Allende, the Jonestown suicides, the Nicaraguan Revolution, and Palestine and the Palestinians. He also lists Meredith Monk, Yvonne Rainer, Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane, and Singin’ in the Rain. The program gave him away: Houston-Jones makes that rare hybrid, socially conscious dance.

f/i/s/s/i/o/n/i/n/g, Dead, and Relatives

Ishmael Houston Jones Performs at LACE

By Lewis Segal | LA TImes | DEC 13, 1986

Ishmael Houston-Jones is a remarkable artist committed to the themes of social justice and personal witness that are the bedrock of black dance in America, yet he boldly embraces the conceptual and technical innovations of late - '80s postmodernism.

Discovering Gay Identity Through the Energy of Dance

Advocate | JAN 21, 1986

Gayness is a fact of my existence, like being black”, declares choreographer and dancer Ishmael Houston-Jones. Therefore, the existence of provocative social material in his performance work is hardly remarkable, since, he explains, “it all springs from my own biography.

THEM

Men With Men

 By Burt Supree | The Village Voice | DEC 22, 1986

Them isn’t a piece about AIDS, but AIDS constricts its view and casts a considerable pall. It’s a loosely organized work about some ways men are with men - physically, sexually, emotionally.

THEM

À La Recherche des Tricks Perdue

The most negative review that Ishmael ever received, to date

By Robert Sandla | New York Native | DEC 29, 1986

And then a man comes out and fucks a dead pig.

Cowboys, Dreams, and Ladders

The Tenderfoot Gang

By Burt Supree | The Village Voice | MAR 13, 1984

Ishmael Houston-Jones and Fred Holland’s Cowboys, Dreams, and Ladders at the Kitchen had

that amiable roominess that allows viewers to hook into what they like and let whatever doesn’t

especially grab them slide by. It’s so easy, especially when the performers have such affability

and charm...

Part 2: Relatives

Black Choreographers’ ‘Parallels’

By Anna Kisselgoff | The New York Times | OCT 30, 1982

Mr. Houston-Jones's excerpt from Relatives was a warmhearted delight. The sense of dissociated humor permeating the piece began with the choreographer scattering mothballs in the dark and then dancing a stamping spinning solo in the dark as well. When the lights came up, he offered a fragmented account of his family tree and carried his mother, Pauline Jones, onto the floor.