[ ] (work-in-progress)

[ ] is a corporeal and sonic exploration into histories of womxn ancestors created by choreographer Adrienne Westwood and composer Angélica Negrón. Together with five performers, they create an embodied exploration of untold and imagined histories. Weaving throughout a musical sculpture, the group uses performance’s hyper-attentive care to call in and hold experiences of private and personal memories of family lore, real and imagined histories, and womxn’s visible/invisible labor, ultimately asking “what is long ago, but still right now?”

Choreographer: Adrienne Westwood

Composer: Angélica Negrón

*Friday’s performance will be audio described and live transcribed. Please update Zoom to version 4.5.0 or higher to access these features.*

Lead artists

Adrienne Westwood
Adrienne Westwood is a Brooklyn-based dance artist whose multi-layered work incorporates objects into embodied explorations of memory, bringing traces of other times and places into the present moment. Her work has been presented widely in NYC and at Jacob’s Pillow, CCN-Ballet de Lorraine (France), WUK (Vienna), The Firkin Crane (Ireland), and The Philly Fringe Festival. She was a 2018-19 CUNY Dance Initiative Space Grant recipient, in partnership with Snug Harbor on Staten Island, where her evening-length “s o u n d i n g line ” was developed and presented in the Historic Gardener’s Cottage in 2019; it was described as “an evocative new multimedia dance performance” (BroadwayWorld.com).

Her work has also been called “a finely crafted progression” (Lisa Kraus, The Philadelphia Inquirer) and noted for its “precision, attention to detail and unspecific but tangible sense of the barely remembered” (Andy Horwitz, Culturebot). She has had extensive residencies at One Arm Red in DUMBO, and the pilot Parent-Artist Space Grant from Brooklyn Arts Exchange, through which she developed her evening-length work “Record.” From 2011-2018, she served on the selection committee for “The Bessie” NY Dance and Performance Awards on the Current Practices subcommittee. She holds an MFA from Hollins University/the American Dance Festival where she studied under the close mentorship of Donna Faye Burchfield.

Angélica Negrón
Puerto Rican-born composer and multi-instrumentalist Angélica Negrón writes music for accordions, robotic instruments, toys and electronics as well as for chamber ensembles, orchestras and choir. Her music has been described as “wistfully idiosyncratic and contemplative” (WQXR/Q2) while The New York Times noted her “capacity to surprise.” Negrón has been commissioned by the Bang on a Can All-Stars, loadbang, MATA Festival, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Sō Percussion, the American Composers Orchestra and the New York Botanical Garden, among others. Upcoming premieres include works for the LA Philharmonic, Dallas Symphony Orchestra and National Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Girls Chorus and the NY Philharmonic Project 19 initiative. She continues to perform and compose for film as well as with her tropical indie band Balún.

Collaborators

Nick Yulman
Nick Yulman (instrument designer) works with sound and technology in a variety of ways including musical robots, interactive installations, and documentary audio. He has presented his own creative work at venues around the world and has collaborated extensively with composers, choreographers, animators, designers, and other artists. He studied creative technology at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program and has taught there, as well. He is currently Head of Design & Technology at Kickstarter and previously worked with the national oral history project StoryCorps.

Seth Easter
Seth Easter (production designer) is an Emmy-award winning designer for life performance and large-scale televised events. He has been collaborating with Adrienne since 2005. Off-Broadway credits include The Summer Play Festival (Courting Vampires and How Love is Spelt at Theater Row Theaters) and The Boy In The Bathroom (Urban Stages) for which he received the New York Musical Theater Festival (NYMF) Award for Best Design. He also designed Sonnet Repertory Theater’s Twelfth Night (for which his “sharp set” was hailed by the New York Times), Nighttime Traffic for NYMF at Urban Stages, Harry Connick Jr.’s run at the Neil Simon Theater, and James Taylor/One Man Band for PBS. Seth is a graduate of University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

Rebecca Fitton
Rebecca Fitton (she/her) (performer) is from many places. She creates community spaces through conversation, food, and movement.

Amanda Kmett’Pendry
Amanda Kmett’Pendry (performer) is a dancer hailing from Southern Maryland. Since receiving a BFA from The University of the Arts, in Philadelphia, she has had the pleasure of working with artists Jonathan Allen, Wally Cardona & Jennifer Lacey, Jodi Melnick, Sam Kim, Katie Swords, Teddy Tedholm, Romeo Castellucci, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Adrienne Westwood and Netta Yerushalmy.

Solana Yemaya Hoffmann-Carter
Solana Yemaya Hoffmann-Carter (she/her) (performer) is a dance artist and Waldorf teacher living between New York City and central Jersey. Since receiving her BFA in dance and minoring in Religion and Philosophy at the University of the Arts, she has worked with many NYC based companies and projects, as well as traveled internationally to pursue her passion of discovering and connecting with new people and places. Driven to work within creative spaces that continuously strive to provide an inclusive and equitable environment, she has found many opportunities to teach, which furthered her desire for a practice in education. Currently at the Sunbridge Institute she has launched into her studies of Waldorf education while keeping her language of movement always at the forefront.

Kathryn Nusa Logan
Kathryn Nusa Logan (performer) is a collaborative and interdisciplinary artist and dance educator who utilizes experimental art practices to explore perspective, lineages, and environment. Her current research is an investigation of collaborative dance with the camera, acts of agreement in improvisation, and genre-specific expectations of viewership. Through this work she seeks to interrogate the dominant gaze by engaging in new, somatic-based practices of looking and interacting with cameras. She is dedicated to the slow work of dismantling systems of oppression in the arts, which starts at the hyper-local level in her artwork and pedagogy, and through the collaboration of an Anti-Racist Working Group at The Ohio State University (u.osu.edu/arwg). She began working with Adrienne Westwood in 2011, and is grateful to be consistently diversifying her role in their creative collaborations. Kathryn holds a BFA from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and an MFA from The Ohio State University’s Department of Dance where she is currently teaching.

Katie Swords Thurman
Katie Swords Thurman (performer) is a choreographer, dancer and teacher. Since 2011, she has taught modern dance technique at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where she is an Assistant Professor. While at UArts, she has choreographed several original works in collaboration with her students and colleagues, and she has co-directed student educational and work-exchange projects in partnership with academic and art institutions in France, Belgium, and Luxembourg. She has performed or collaborated with numerous choreographers throughout her career, including Douglas Becker, Daniel Charon, Helen Simoneau, Adrienne Westwood and Jesse Zaritt. She is a performer with, and co-founder of VIA Dance Collaborative, and her choreography has been exhibited and she has taught throughout the United States, Europe and in Israel and Mexico. She received her B.F.A. degree from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and her M.F.A. from Hollins University/The American Dance Festival under the tutelage of Donna Faye Burchfield.

Laura Witsken
Laura Witsken is a dance artist who received her BFA from The University of the Arts. Currently living in Queens, NY she continues to research creative pathways of movement, writing, and photography with her instinctual practices of collaging and collecting. Her interest in expanding and sustaining the practice of dance led her to becoming the Company Assistant for MICHIYAYA Dance and into art activism focused cohorts.