The Department of Performing and Media Arts presents:

PENUMBRA

2026 ANNUAL SPRING DANCE PRESENTING SERIES
AN EVENING OF ORIGINAL DANCE WORK

Featuring choreography by
Babatunji Johnson
Danielle Russo

In Culmination of Yearlong Series: Dancing Home/Land

The Class of ’56 Flex Theatre, Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts
430 College Avenue
Friday, March 20, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, March 21, 7:30 p.m.

PENUMBRA presents two ensemble dance works that delve into the shadow self and the tensions between impulse, restraint, and the ego. Layers surface and recede as dancers move through the many selves they carry—some revealed, others concealed, held close or kept sacred as acts of survival during an era marked by fear, surveillance, and uncertainty. The evening draws on the psychoanalytic thought of Carl Jung, who understood the shadow as parts of the psyche that remain unseen or outside conscious awareness, alongside Sigmund Freud’s interplay between id and ego, where instinctual drives meet the forces that shape and restrain them. The title evokes the penumbra—the luminous edge of shadow—an image of the threshold where darkness thins and the possibility of light emerges, honoring the quiet persistence of our own. 

PENUMBRA is the culmination of DANCING HOME/LAND, which is a yearlong series of live performances and activations, guest artist residencies and symposia, and extra/curricular experiences that engages dance and performance artists, students, and communities in dialogue around memory, migration, and place—and where fantasy can serve as a site for reworlding belonging and futurity. Participating students are enrolled in PMA1611/Rehearsal & Performance, which is a project course designed to give Cornellians the experience of working with choreographers, companies, designers, and production staff in a professionally modelled setting.

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 expression. 

In the 2025-2026 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!

Society

Choreography by Babatunji Johnson 

Performance by 
Taylor Janeen Pryor
Jolene Conti
Shamarah Nesarajah
Antonella Dapozzo Oviedo
Julia Nwodeki
Dahlia Gilinsky
Shanika Thomas 

Costumes by Sarah Bernstein

seemingly perfect, radiant

Choreography by Danielle Russo 
with contributions from the Dancers

“You remember too much,” 
my mother said to me recently. 
“Why hold onto all that?” 

And I said, 
“Where can I put it down?” 

—Anne Carson, Plainwater (1995) 

“Perhaps home is not a place 
but simply an irrevocable condition.” 

—James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (1956) 

Performance by 
Taylor Janeen Pryor
Jolene Conti
Shamarah Nesarajah
Antonella Dapozzo Oviedo
Julia Nwodeki
Justin Junseok Lee
Amirah Ricks 

Dramaturgical Study by Jolene Conti 

Original Text by the Dancers 

Costumes by Sarah Bernstein 

Cinematography by Jeffrey Palmer 

Additional film work by 
Esther Brenner
Emily Lee
Mia Sofia Orengo

CREATIVE TEAM

Director and Choreographer: Danielle Russo 
Guest Movement Artist and Choreographer: Babatunji Johnson 
Stage Manager: Alexa Alfonsi 
Costume Design: Sarah Bernstein 
Costume Shop Supervisor: Lisa Boquist 
Technical Director: Alfred Bernstein 
Assistant Technical Director: Savannah Relos 
Head Electrician: Katt Hass 
Lighting Design: Conor Mulligan 
ALD/AHE/LX Board Op: Addison Heffernan 
Sound Design: Warren Cross 
Props and Paint Coordinator: Tim Ostrander 
Media Assist: Randy Hendrickson

PRODUCTION CREW

Production Manager: Andrew Deppen 
Cinematography: Jeffrey Palmer 
Scene Shop Work Study Students: Bailey Hecht, Benjamin Okoronkwo, Chloe Pankratz, Kate Turk, Nicholas York 
Costume First Hands: Ana Mocklar, Isabel Berkenblit, Julianna Cross, Alex de Smidt, Venicia Lamy 
Props and Paint Work Study Student: Sevara Khojamuratova 
PMA 1610 Production Technology Lab: Aaditya Bahl, Franklin Berry, David Gilmore, Astrid “AJ” James, Annabelle Newberger, Xavier Panky, Xiaoxi Xu 
PMA 2610 Production Crew Lab: Deck Crew: Dylan Biben, You Qing Crystal Chiu 
Sound Board Operator: Oscar Killmer

Babatunji Johnson is a dance artist, choreographer, and creative innovator based out of Oakland, CA. Though never formally trained as a child, Babatunji was always moving his body to the beat. At the age of 15, he discovered the art of hip hop. Following this epiphany of love, he grew up through his teens breaking and popping on street corners in Hilo, Hawai’i. After being “discovered” by a local dance instructor, he began his formal training at Center Stage Dance Alliance in various styles of dance, including ballet. This training would inevitably lead him to Lines Ballet’s Training Program, and from there, into LINES Ballet company. 

Over the past 10 years, Babatunji has developed a unique movement language, blending his background in ballet, contemporary, breaking, and hip hop. He has choreographed for Berkeley Ballet Theater, Boston Dance Theater, Post:ballet, Trolley Dance, SFDanceworks, ZiRu Dance, San Francisco Dance Film Festival, among other Bay Area companies. As a solo artist, Babatunji has performed internationally, collaborating with visual, sound, and technical artists of countless genres. His work has been seen at Museum of Dance, Lion’s Jaw performance + dance festival, København Danser, and SFJazz in collaboration with Terri Lyne Carrington. In 2015, he was awarded a Princess Grace Award, as well as a Chris Hellman Award for his outstanding achievements and promise in the world of dance. In 2022, Babatunji was featured in Dance Magazine’s “Dancer Spotlight - Making New Movement”.

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, Italy, 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), Independent Artists Initiative WUK (AT), Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation (US), Kaatsbaan (US), LEIMAY (US), Mana Contemporary (US), Nadine Laboratory for the Contemporary Arts (BE), New York Community Trust (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, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Harkness Foundation for Dance, One Brooklyn Fund, and most recently, NYSCI with NYSCA and NYS DanceForce. 

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. 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 with Amy and Jennifer Khoshbin, Moynihan Station, Place des Arts, and Solange Knowles’s Saint Heron. 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. Since arriving at Cornell, she has been supported by the Cornell Council for the Arts, Society for the Humanities, and Arthur C. and Molly Phelps Bean Faculty Fellowship. Currently, she is a Faculty Fellow in Engaged Learning with Cornell’s Einhorn Center for Community Engagement.

Thank you to PMA Chair Dr. Samantha N. Sheppard and the department’s tremendous staff and production team; to Associate Professor Jeffrey Palmer, Randy Hendrickson, and film students Esther Brenner, Emily Lee, and Mia Sofia Orengo. Thank you to the Ithaca College School of Music, Theatre, and Dance. 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.