The Department of Performing and Media Arts presents:

2024 Annual Spring Dance Presenting Series

THIS TABLE HAS BEEN A HOUSE IN THE RAIN

An evening-length interdisciplinary dance and performance project inspired and shaped by laboratories with distinguished guest artists Ishmael Houston-Jones, Keith Hennessy, and Eiko Otake, followed by a body-based and dance-driven mixed media installation in the Schwartz Center atrium.

The Kiplinger Theatre, Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts
430 College Avenue
Thursday, April 25th, 7:30 p.m.
Friday, April 26th, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 27th, 7:30 p.m.

This event is made possible through the generosity and support of Cornell University's Freedom of Expression Theme Year, Cheryl Whaley and Eric Aboaf, and the Lisa Lu Foundation.

Perhaps the World Ends Here from The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (1994), with permission from the author Joy Hart and publishing house, W. W. Norton.

In culmination of the yearlong Choreographing Justice Series and Cornell University’s Freedom of Expression Theme Year, the Department of Performing & Media Arts is pleased to present the 2024 Annual Spring Dance Presenting Series with the premiere an evening-length interdisciplinary dance project that reimagines and reclaims the Kiplinger Theatre, entitled This table has been a house in the rain, followed by a walk-thru installation of body-based and dance-driven mixed media in the atrium of the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts on April 25-27, 2024.

Over the course of the spring semester, participants in this year’s dance project laboratory had the unique opportunity to work with and to be mentored by internationally acclaimed choreographers and dance artists whose bodies of work have catalyzed community, social advocacy, and critical archival by [re]claiming and activating freedoms of their own bodily expression: distinguished guests Keith Hennessy, Ishmael Houston-Jones, and Eiko Otake, and faculty Danielle Russo. Otake introduced students to exercises and practice towards body-based democracies and autonomous expression, prompting participants to locate themselves, their stories, and their intentions for making and for performing. This set the foundation for improvisation, and experimental inter/play with collective scores and scenes inspired by their existing work Try by Houston-Jones and Hennessy, and choreographic studies, dramaturgy, and direction led by professor Russo. In response to Indigenous Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s Perhaps the World Ends Here, students ultimately generated, self-directed, and collaboratively designed an original 75-minute performance project for the Kiplinger Theatre with set, costume, sound, projection, and lighting faculties, students, and guests, building upon legacies of dance and performance as freedom practice.

What Adrienne Marie Brown might call emergent strategy turns into futurist action, encouraging us to trust and engage with the synergetic space that Fred Moten refers to as “figuring it out together.” Whether seated at, bringing to, cards on, always room, turning, clearing, or as Nina Simone said, “to learn to leave the table when love’s no longer being served,” what is the power, the promise of gathering and of taking time to come to the table today? How can dance and performance be portals for embodied inquiry into power, collaboration, equity, and liberated imagination?

The Choreographing Justice Series is a yearlong programming of guest artist talks, curricular and extracurricular workshops, symposia, and live and multimedia performances helping us think and move in more just ways. How does the art and act of dance serve as a powerful model for social activism, civil disobedience, and community mobilization? The series features artists who employ/deploy dance and movement to disrupt, revolutionize, and reshape issues linked to racism, sexism, anti-intellectualism, and anti-LGBTQ2S laws. From bachata to breaking to tap, the series centers the dancing body as a site of healing, empowerment, spiritual conjure, and resistance to systemic injustices and erasures. The programming is united in identifying and promoting choreographic thinking and practice as critical to being politically engaged—of moving with a cause.

The Choreographing Justice Series was conceived and co-produced by professors Juan Manuel Aldape Muñoz and Danielle Russo.

The vision of the Department of Performing and Media Arts is to nurture and mentor artists, performers, writers, and thinkers through the process of event programming. We recognize that all people should see their stories represented, and envision their stories as valuable.

We commit ourselves to creating spaces that actively seek to break down systems of oppression based on race, gender, sexuality, class, ability, and place of origin and empower all to be involved. We seek to stimulate thoughtful discussion and enact social change within our productions and our audiences. It is our goal to make our events accessible to the wider Cornell and Ithaca community, to strengthen bonds and engage inquiry, dialogue, and impact around social and cultural change.

In the 2023-2024 academic year we will help realize a wide range of students’ creative projects, from original plays, to solo performances, to readings, to choreographies, to acting, directorial, and curatorial projects. We are particularly happy that in addition to supporting live performances, we are now also supporting the production of student films. Enjoy the shows!

THIS TABLE HAS BEEN A HOUSE IN THE RAIN

Created & Performed by
Isabel Padilla Carlo, Wei Jian Cheng, Molly Hudson, Irene Minchae Kim, Taylor Janeen Pryor, Eliza Salamon

In Collaboration with
Keith Hennessy and Ishmael Houston-Jones

Direction & Choreographic Contributions by
Danielle Russo

Set Design by Jason Simms
Costume Design by Sarah Bernstein
Lighting Design by Steve TenEyck
Assistant Lighting Design by Claire Chesne
Lighting / Video Supervision by Michael Garrett
Sound Coordination by Warren Cross
Costume Shop Supervision by Lisa Boquist
Production Management by Andrew Deppen
Stage Management by Alexa Alfonsi
Technical Direction by Alfred Berstein
Assistant Technical Direction by Savannah Relos
Props Coordination by Tim Ostrander
Media Assistance by Randy Hendrickson
Audio Recording by Christopher Christensen

Dressers:
Sharyn Schweitzer
Joanna Teran

Costume First Hands:  
Bella Peters
Ana Mocklar
Isabel Berkenblit
Sharyn Schweitzer

Costume Stitchers:
Jacob Duffles-Andrade
Havily Nwakuche

Production Technology Lab:  
Jack Manor
Emily Rubenstein

Run Crew:
Claire Chesne - ALD and Programmer (Ithaca College)
Theo Roe - Projectionist (Ithaca College)
Joanna Albanese - Mixer (Ithaca College)
Christopher Kim

Scene Shop Workstudy Students:
Arianna Louise Marie Josue
Ashley Herrera
Bailey Hecht
Benjamin Okoronkwo
Julianna Lee
Kate Turk

Scenic Independent Study Students:
Kassandra Nguyen
Kate James

Lighting Work Study Students:
Ethan Ordower
Andrew Lewis

Music
Horns for Breonna and Empty Ghosts by Julien St. Joel (2020),Sleep by Eric Whitacre as performed Eric Whitacre Singers (2010), Get your Fkng Laws off my Body by Planningtorock (2022), Deface VII and Fred Moten remix by Marc Kate, Hyna Ruje by Digital Moss (2022), Follow the Dark As If it Were Light by A Dancing Beggar (2011), Awake by Forever.Sleep (2017).

With original text by Isabel Padilla Carlo and Taylor Janeen Pryor

This table has been a house in the rain is an embodied reference and response to Joy Harjo’s Perhaps the World Ends Here from The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (1994), with permission from the author and W.W. Norton & Company publishers.

Collectively, it is inspired and shaped by laboratories with distinguished guest artists Keith Hennessy, Ishmael Houston-Jones, and Eiko Otake, and faculty Danielle Russo.

The 2024 Annual Spring Dance Presenting Series is made possible through the generosity and support of Cornell University’s Freedom of Expression Theme Year, Cheryl Whaley and Eric Aboaf, and the Lisa Lu Foundation.

The cast and crew would also like to acknowledge Yangxi Yu for her contributions to the creative process.

75 Minutes • No Intermission

This production contains mature themes and language

This production collaborated with the following courses: PMA 1610: Production Laboratory, 1611: Rehearsal & Performance, PMA 3350: Technology and the Moving Body I, and PMA 4350 Technology and the Moving Body II.

Dr. Samantha N. Sheppard Chair, Department of Performing & Media Arts
Christopher Riley, Department Manager

Dance Faculty:
Dr. Juan Manuel Aldape Muñoz, Assistant Professor
Danielle Russo, Assistant Professor of the Practice
Olive Prince, Visiting Lecturer

The 2024 Annual Spring Dance Presenting Series would not be possible without the support of our collaborators and community. We are grateful for the generous contributions of our distinguished guests Keith Hennessy, Ishmael Houston-Jones, and Eiko Oake. Thank you to our Chair, Dr. Samantha N. Sheppard, and the department’s tremendous staff and production team. We also extend our sincere appreciation for the generosity and support of Cornell University’s Freedom of Expression Theme Year, Cheryl Whaley and Eric Aboaf, and the Lisa Lu Foundation. And, of course, thank you to our students, whose hearts and visions are at the center of what we do and why we do it.

Cornell University is located on the traditional homelands of the Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' (the Cayuga Nation). The Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' are members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, an alliance of six sovereign Nations with a historic and contemporary presence on this land. The Confederacy precedes the establishment of Cornell University, New York state, and the United States of America. We acknowledge the painful history of Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' dispossession, and honor the ongoing connection of Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' people, past and present, to these lands and waters. This land acknowledgment has been reviewed and approved by the traditional Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' leadership.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49622/perhaps-the-world-ends-here

The post-show atrium installation was created by a group of students enrolled in the course “Technology and the Moving Body,” taught by Olive Prince. Students produced dance films, stills, and object explorations around ideas of power, collaboration, and freedom of expression. Students worked to locate an artistic point of view in relationship to design, concept, and the dialog between the body and technological modalities. The installation was built to give audiences another portal into the expressive power of the moving body.

Created and Designed by:
Adams Anaglo, Aaron Baculi, Dahyun Ryu, & Yiqi Tran

Under the Direction of: Olive Prince

Projection Installation Design by Michael Garrett
Production Management by Andrew Deppen
Stage Management by Alexa Alfonsi

Whispers In Motions (image collage)
Name of Creator: Yiqi Tan
Name of Collaborators: Molly Hudson and Olive Prince
Material used: photoshop, lightroom

Funiculus Umbilicalis (dance film)
Name of Creator: Dahyun Ryu
Materials Used: Adobe Premiere Pro, Photoshop, Clip Studio Paint

A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes (dance film)
Name of Creator: Dahyun Ryu
Materials Used: Adobe Premiere Pro

Membrane (image)
Name of Creator: Dahyun Ryu
Materials Used: Photoshop, Clip Studio Paint

Warm and Necklace (objects and images)
Name of Creator: Dahyun Ryu
Materials Used: Jewelry jump rings, natural dried flowers, aquatic food (freeze dried earthworms)

Through The Eyes Of A Child (dance film)
Name of Creator: Yiqi Tan
Name of Collaborators: Molly Hudson
Materials Used: Adobe Premier Pro

Starry Night (images)
Name of Creator: Aaron Baculi
Materials Used: Self-portraits on iphone

C-C-C-C-C-F-A, you know! (dance film)
Name of Creator: Aaron Baculi
Name of Collaborators: Cornell Filipino Association & Filipino Traditional Dance
Materials Used: Traditional Filipino Malongs and Adobe Premier

Fallen Angel (dance film)
Name of Creator: Adams Anaglo
Name of Collaborators: Molly Hudson
Materials Used: Amaran 60x Lighting Kit, Canon M50, Black Box theatre

Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She served three terms as the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2019-2022 and is winner of Yale's 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry. The author of ten books of poetry, including the highly acclaimed, Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: Fifty Poems for Fifty Years, several plays and children's books, and two memoirs, Crazy Brave and Poet Warrior, her many honors include the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the Ruth Lily Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Foundation, the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Harjo delivered the 2021 Windham-Campbell Lecture at Yale, part of the virtual Windham-Campbell Prize Festival that year. That lecture was the basis for Catching the Light, published in 2022 by Yale University Press in the Why I Write series. As a musician and performer, Harjo has produced seven award-winning music albums including her newest, I Pray for My Enemies. She served as Exec­u­tive Edi­tor of the anthol­o­gy When the Light of the World was Sub­dued, Our Songs Came Through — A Nor­ton Anthol­o­gy of Native Nations Poet­ry and the editor of Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry, the companion anthology to her signature Poet Laureate project. She is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Board of Directors Chair of the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation, and is the first Artist-in-Residence for Tulsa's Bob Dylan Center. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Ishmael Houston-Jones is a choreographer, author, performer, teacher, and curator. His improvised dance and text work has been performed world-wide. He has received three New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards for collaborations with writer Dennis Cooper, choreographers Miguel Gutierrez and Fred Holland and composers Chris Cochrane and Nick Hallett, and a fourth "Bessie" for contributions to the field of dance. Houston-Jones curated Platform 2012: Parallels which concentrated on choreographers from the African diaspora and postmodernism and co-curated with Will Rawls Platform 2016: Lost & Found, Dance, New York, HIV/AIDS, Then and Now. As an author Houston-Jones' essays, fiction, interviews, and performance texts have been published in several anthologies. His first book, FAT and other stories, was published in June 2018 by Yonkers International Press. Houston-Jones is a 2022 recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship. His work has been supported by The Herb Alpert Foundation, The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts and The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. For more information, please visit www.ishmaelhouston-jones.com.

Keith Hennessy (MFA, PhD) is a frolicker, imperfectionist, and witch working in the fields of live performance, dance, affordable housing, and sexual healing. Raised on Atikameksheng Anishnawbek lands in Canada, living in Ramaytush Ohlone lands (San Francisco) since 1982, Keith tours internationally. Hennessy’s work is interdisciplinary and experimental, motivated by anarchist, anti-racist and queer-feminist movement. He engages practices of improvisation, ritual, collaboration, play, and protest to respond to political crises and their embodiments. Hennessy directs Circo Zero, co-founded the dance/culture spaces 848 and CounterPulse, and was a member of Sara Mann’s Contraband, 1985-1994. Awards include Guggenheim, USArtist, NY Bessie, and Bay Area Izzies. With a focus on the poetics and politics of relationship, Keith’s work prioritizes collaboration, the politics of relationship, and community process. Keith's artistic collaborators include Ishmael Houston-Jones, Sarah Crowell, Peiling Kao, Peaches, Snowflake Calvert, Jassem Hindi, Annie Danger, Meg Stuart, Brontez Purnell, jose abad, and Gerald Casel. For more information, please visit www.circozero.org.

Born and raised in Japan and a resident of New York since 1976, Eiko Otake is a movement-based, interdisciplinary artist. She worked for more than 40 years as Eiko & Koma, but since 2014 has been working on her own projects. Eiko & Koma created numerous performance works, exhibitions, durational “living” installations, and media works commissioned by American Dance Festival, BAM Next Wave Festival, the Whitney Museum, the Walker Art Center, and the Museum of Modern Art, among others. Eiko has performed her solo project A Body in Places at over 70 sites, including a month-long Danspace Project PLATFORM (2016) and three full-day performances at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2017). Collaboratively created with photographer and historian William Johnston, A Body in Fukushima (2014–) is a multifaceted project that records Eiko‘s solo performances in post-nuclear disaster Fukushima. It consists of photo exhibitions, video installations, mix-media performances, lectures, a book publication, and a feature-length film that has been screened at festivals internationally. The Duet Project (2017–) is a series of experiments with artists of different disciplines, races, genders and generations. The project has produced performances and media works, including feature length documentary No Rule is Our Rule, collaboratively created with Wen Hui. Eiko is currently working on her 10-year project, I Invited Myself (2022–), a series of exhibitions and screenings of her media works. A recipient of an honorary degree from Colorado College (2020), she teaches at Wesleyan University, New York University, and Colorado College.

Olive Prince is a Visiting Lecturer in Dance at Cornell University. She is a movement-based artist, performer, and educator. Her work focuses on corporeal intuition and crafting dance in relationship to unique spaces, installation, objects, costuming, and other art forms. She has been commissioned to create dance for many Philadelphia companies and colleges including site-specific work in the Blackwell Library at William Smith College, the Philadelphia Museum of Arts, Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens (a mosaic art garden), and the Iron Factory. Prince’s work has been presented at the International Night of the Singapore Youth Festival, Triskelion Arts Center (NYC), the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, the Live Arts Festival (PHL), the International Contemporary Dance Conference, and the Philadelphia Fringe Festival among others. Most recently, her work was featured in an interview on WHYY’s piece “Articulate with Jim Cotter” and she was 2023 recipient of NYS Choreographer’s Initiative Grant. As a veteran Philadelphia performer, she worked with Merian Soto, Silvana Cardell and Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers for over a decade. She earned her MFA in Dance from Temple University. Olive Prince worked as an Assistant Teaching Professor in Dance at Drexel University and was the Director of Drexel's Dance Ensemble where she curated, produced, and created 4 performance experiences a year for 60+ dance students. These experiences included Sites of Dance (a walking tour of site-specific dance), Dance Films, and traditional dance concerts.

Danielle Russo is an Assistant Professor of the Practice (Dance & Critical Dance Studies) at Cornell University. Her creative and scholarly research concentrates on aesthetics, philosophies, and thresholds of experimental dance/performance and interactive technologies for unconventional ‘stages’ and environments, frequently in the public realm and through socially engaged praxes. As a choreographer, she has been presented nationally at the American Dance Festival, Detroit Institute of Arts, Jacob’s Pillow, Lincoln Center for Performing Arts at Damrosch Park, The Oculus at the World Trade Center, and The Yard; and internationally in Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Mexico, Panama, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, and Trinidad and Tobago. Residency and fellowship awards have included C.N.N. - Ballet de Lorraine (FR), Danscentrum Jette (BE), Nadine Laboratory for the Contemporary Arts (BE), Independent Artists Initiative WUK (AT), Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation (US), LEIMAY (US), Mana Contemporary (US), Performing Arts Forum (FR), and Springboard Danse Montréal (CA), among others. She is a multi-year grant recipient of the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Carnegie, Dance/NYC, Harkness Foundation for Dance, One Brooklyn Fund, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Additional highlights include Armory Arts Week, Julian Schnabel’s Casa del Popolo, Governors Island, HERE Arts Center, The High Line Nine, La MaMA (fabNYC), LMCC River to River, Moynihan Station, National Academy for Performing Arts (POS), Place des Arts, and Solange Knowles’s Saint Heron, to name a few. Driven by social and civic impact, she has been creative placemaking and producing large-scale performances and experiential artwork in architectural, historical, and politically-charged settings since founding Danielle Russo Performance Project/DRPP in 2010 (www.drpp.nyc). With an emphasis on the intersection of local arts and public access, DRPP aims to bridge existing gaps between live arts curation and the larger, multi-cultural milieu that is New York City–its homebase. Outside of her own devising, Russo danced with The Metropolitan Opera for several seasons. Prior to arriving at Cornell, she was faculty at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance, CUNY Queens College, University of Iowa, and The Joffrey Ballet School BFA and Professional Divisions. Most recently, she was awarded Cornell’s Arthur C. and Molly Phelps Bean Faculty Fellowship.