Renowned educator, performer, and choreographer Ishmael Houston-Jones will receive the 2024 Balasaraswati/Joy Anne Dewey Beinecke Endowed Chair for Distinguished Teaching and its $5,000 honorarium at the American Dance Festival (ADF) on Sunday, June 30 in Durham, NC.

“I am honored to announce Ishmael Houston-Jones as the recipient of this year’s teaching award. As an educator, he pushes students to take risks, allowing them to discover that their abilities to create and find beauty in this world are boundless,” said Nile H. Russell, ADF’s Director of Education. “It becomes evident to any observer of Houston-Jones that he thrives off the energy he receives from teaching, which makes it a vital part of his practice.”

Ishmael Houston-Jones will present “Looking For Laure” as part of JAM, Just Above Midtown, Changing Spaces, at MoMA. This is a study on racial/gender pseudo binaries through a mashup of Eduard Manet, Nina Simone, Kurt Weil, Bertolt Brecht, The Jeffersons, The Help, Gone with the Wind, Imitation of Life, and others.

Growing up in Pennsylvania in the 1960s, there were domestic workers among my family members. When I took my first trip to Paris when I was 20 years old, a decades-long fascination began with the woman, Laure, who modeled as the maid in Eduard Manet’s painting Olympia (1865): Who was she? What did she desire? What were her joys, pains, and hatreds? Who were her loves? Who are her descendants?  

This rendition of "Looking for Laure” will be performed by Johnny Walker and Raymond Pinto.

More about JAM:

Celebrate the legacy of Just Above Midtown during an experimental evening of artist activations, short performances, and storytelling in response to the question, “What do you carry with you from JAM?” Connect with the people who made JAM a place that centered creativity, care, and support for artists and cultivated a wide and diverse public to engage and experience their work. Come on your own or bring your friends and family for food, music, creative prompts, and a chance to make new friends. Participating artists include Sydney Blum, Linda Goode Bryant, Maren Hassinger, Janet Olivia Henry, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Randy Williams, Tony Whitfield, and more.

Danspace Project’s DraftWork series hosts free, informal showings of new works in varying stages of development.

Showings are followed by a reception, conversation, and Q&A between the artists and DraftWork curator, Ishmael Houston-Jones.

Please note: DonChristian Jones was originally scheduled to present on this afternoon. Tess Dworman will now be presenting.

Photo of Stacy Spence by Liz Ligon

In 1982, Ishmael Houston-Jones curated the Parallels series, featuring Black choreographers working in new forms. Thirty years later, he revisited that idea in "Platform 2012: Parallels". In Ishmael's session of Black Diaspora, he will discuss the importance of Black curation.

Black Diaspora events are open to a Black- or Afro-Latinx-identifying audience only.
Conceived by curator Eva Yaa Asantewaa during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter uprising, Black Diaspora launched its first activities in September 2020 as a Zoom-based peer support program serving up-and-coming, Black-identified dance and performance artists from various cultural backgrounds and aesthetic traditions.

This event is free and will take place online.

The Duet Project is a series of duets between Eiko Otake and a diverse group of collaborating artists, living and dead. Collaborators come from different places, times and artistic disciplines. These duets will investigate how two artists collide and express what they care about.

a queer fantasy of improvised collaboration where body and land meet ancestry and futurity

TRY is a performance choreographed by Ishmael Houston-Jones created in deep collaboration with jose e. abad, Snowflake Calvert, Keith Hennessy, and Kevin O’Connor with music by Gabriel Nuñez de Arco and jose e. abad in an immersive installation by Monica Canilao & Kendra Azul~írís and lighting design by GG Torres. Here’s a review from the performance.

Image credit: Robbie Sweeny

Tickets and Performance Times to be announced soon

a queer fantasy of improvised collaboration where body and land meet ancestry and futurity

TRY is a performance choreographed by Ishmael Houston-Jones created in deep collaboration with jose e. abad, Snowflake Calvert, Keith Hennessy, and Kevin O’Connor with music by Gabriel Nuñez de Arco and jose e. abad in an immersive installation by Monica Canilao & Kendra Azul~írís and lighting design by GG Torres. Here’s a review from the performance.

Image credit: Robbie Sweeny

Tickets and Performance Times to be announced soon

Danspace Project’s DraftWork series hosts informal virtual showings of new works in varying stages of development. They are followed by a conversation and Q&A between the artists and DraftWork curator Ishmael Houston-Jones.

This event will take place online via Zoom.
A link will be sent to registrants via email 30 minutes prior to the event.
Registration closes 30 minutes prior to the event.

Da’ Von W. Doane. Photo: Rachel Neville. Maya Lee-Parritz. Photo: Injinash Unshin.

TRAILER

a queer fantasy of improvised collaboration where body and land meet ancestry and futurity

TRY is a performance choreographed by Ishmael Houston-Jones created in deep collaboration with jose e. abad, Snowflake Calvert, Keith Hennessy, and Kevin O’Connor with music by Gabriel Nuñez de Arco and jose e. abad in an immersive installation by Monica Canilao & Kendra Azul~írís and lighting design by GG Torres. Here’s a review from the performance.

Image credit: Robbie Sweeny

RSVP HERE

This event will take place online via Zoom. A link will be sent to registrants via email 30 minutes prior to the stream.

Registration closes 30 minutes prior to the program.

Danspace Project’s DraftWork series hosts informal showings of new works in varying stages of development. They are followed by a conversation and Q&A between the artists and DraftWork curator Ishmael Houston-Jones.

This season, Danspace has re-envisioned DraftWork as a series of virtual engagement.

Photo: J. Bouey by Phil Mahabeer. Jordan Lloyd by Nikolai Mishler.

Duets is a series of four improvised performances by Elliot Reed, the score for which calls Reed to invite a single guest for a unique hour-long encounter. Reinterpreting COVID-19 precautions as a formal challenge, Reed and his guests occupy an audience-less physical space at a distance from one another, navigating institutional public health guidelines. The performances are filmed in a private location within MoMA PS1 inaccessible to the public, and streamed live to a monitor onsite at PS1 and also to this webpage. In tandem, live footage of the monitor, as well as the visitors watching it, will be broadcast to PS1’s instagram. This tangle of multiplied feeds reflects the doubling of bodies in digital space, a conceptual extension of Reed’s work in This Longing Vessel.

Initiated in 2011 by Judy Hussie-Taylor and Jenn Joy, Conversations Without Walls (CWW) are long-form, Saturday afternoon, roundtable discussions that provide context and insight into the work of Danspace Project’s artists and Platforms. The nearly decade-long series facilitates intergenerational conversations between writers, scholars, choreographers, and audiences.

Choreographer and curator, Ishmael Houston-Jones and lighting designer, Carol Mullins have long and formative histories at Danspace Project. In this talk the two discuss the 1978 fire at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, the aftermath of that tragedy, and the architectural and programmatic reconstruction of Danspace Project and its shared home in the Sanctuary. Houston-Jones recalls his humble introduction to Danspace which soon evolved into his curating the 1982 groundbreaking series, Parallels, which included works lit by Mullins. 

The conversation concludes with a live screening of Relatives (Super-8, short, 1989) directed by Julie Dash and filmed by Arthur Jafa. 

This program will be captioned.

“Get a rare look at performance footage from the MCA’s archive in a livestreamed watch party of Relations, an evening of improvised dance by influential choreographers Ishmael Houston-Jones, Ralph Lemon, and Bebe Miller. This landmark performance was organized specifically for the MCA and was one of the highlights of the 2018 season…In Relations, three legendary shapers of experimental dance came together for the first time to perform as a trio. Part family reunion and party first-time encounter, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Ralph Lemon, and Bebe Miller paid homage to their past selves and gestured toward the future of dance in this evening of improvisation. Relive the kinship celebrated in this moment on stage after nearly 40 years of influencing each other from afar throughout their prolific careers. Stan Pressner was the lighting designer for these performances, and project management support was provided by Lila Hurwitz.

This virtual watch party is organized by Tara Aisha Willis, Associate Curator and Laura Paige Kyber, Curatorial Assistant in Performance and Public Practice.”

Curated by Ishmael Houston-Jones, the Danspace Project DraftWork series hosts informal Saturday afternoon performances that offer choreographers an opportunity to show their work in various stages of development. Performances are followed by discussion and a reception with the artists and curator.

DraftWork is free and open to all! No advance reservations.

Talking dancing race politics friendship

or
Dancing talking race politics friendship
or
Fragments of history experienced in real time

Distilling decades of both friendship and improvisation practice Ishmael Houston-Jones and Keith Hennessy will talk/perform/improvise, looking for ways to ask questions, spark conversations, and figure out how to dance together from inside and outside of racialized gazes, expectations, and power dynamics.

This performance-talk takes place within the frame of the SNDO Critical whiteness research initiative: Vol.2, which is conducted by Joy Mariama Smith and Bojana Mladenović . It aims to provide ongoing and ad hoc platforms and programs for the community to critically and transformatively engage with the notion of whiteness. The program aims at not only raising awareness, but also articulating and creating language around social change, privilege and ethics in art to name a few.

Ishmael + Keith (Amsterdam) and Critical whiteness research initiative: Vol.2 are financed from the Educational Development funds of the Academy of Theatre and Dance and presented within the academy’s cross-departmental platform Half6.

Curated by Ishmael Houston-Jones, the Danspace Project DraftWork series hosts informal Saturday afternoon performances that offer choreographers an opportunity to show their work in various stages of development. Performances are followed by discussion and a reception with the artists and curator.

DraftWork is free and open to all! No advance reservations.

Ishmael Houston-Jones will be a guest host for "David Vaughan's The Dance Historian is In," Wednesday, November 27th @ 1:00 PM, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, Third Floor Screening Room

David Vaughan was the archivist of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and author of Merce Cunningham/65 Years and Frederick Ashton and His Ballets. From 2012- 2017, Mr. Vaughan held monthly screenings of his favorite dance films and videos from our collection. David passed away in October 2017, and the Jerome Robbins Dance Division will continue screenings in his honor with guest hosts. 

Curated by Ishmael Houston-Jones, the Danspace Project DraftWork series hosts informal Saturday afternoon performances that offer choreographers an opportunity to show their work in various stages of development. Performances are followed by discussion and a reception with the artists and curator.

DraftWork is free and open to all! No advance reservations.

Curated by Ishmael Houston-Jones, the Danspace Project DraftWork series hosts informal Saturday afternoon performances that offer choreographers an opportunity to show their work in various stages of development. Performances are followed by discussion and a reception with the artists and curator.

DraftWork is free and open to all! No advance reservations.

The Edwin Booth Award was estab­lished in 1983 by the Doctoral Theatre Students Association (DTSA) of the CUNY Graduate Center to honor an individual or organization that has had a significant impact on theatre and performance in New York.

Ishmael Houston-Jones will be the 2019 recipient of this award.