A Yale Dance Lab 2021 Commission

After the pandemic necessitated rescheduling Ni’Ja Whitson’s spring 2020 residency, we situated their work in collaboration with Professor Tavia Nyong’o’s seminar on Black Queer Performance Studies.

A devised public performance that meditates on the magics of migrations, parades, processionals, marches, bodily interventions. Thinking on healing. Thinking on queer and trans holy play. Thinking on a world-making of something else.

The performance will premiere on April 24, 2021 at 3:30 pm EST via livestream on YouTube. Click on this link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAFPULCambTPmCa8Ys-s8Qg

Directed and Conceived by Ni’Ja Whitson, Yale artist in residence in collaboration with Tavia Nyong’o and Rhea Sakinah, Andrew Ntim, Emma Pernudi-Moon, Gundula Kreuzer, and Alex Fialho.

Marshals: Maxi Himpe, Natalie King, başak, Chayton Pabich Danyla, Pap Souleye Fall

Note:

This performance will include audio and video of rallies, marches, and speeches that address violence against Black people.
 
This project was co-commissioned by Emily Coates and the Yale Dance Lab and Professor Tavia Nyong’o’s Black Queer Performance Studies seminar.
 

Production and Technical Team:

Teaching Fellow: Alex Fialho

Yale Dance Lab Associate Producers: Jacob Santos and Natalie King

Yale Dance Lab Rehearsal Director and Public Relations: Gabrielle Niederhoffer

Streaming Technician: Will Wegner

Technology Assistant: Yasheen Gao

Production Advisor: Nathan Roberts

Additional gratitude to Ashley Teamer and Avery Youngblood

 
Bio:
Ni’Ja Whitson NY/LA, is a United States Artist Fellow, Creative Capital and two-time “Bessie”
Award winning, Queer Nonbinary Trans multidisciplinary artist and futurist, wound and word
worker, who has been referred to as “majestic” by The New York Times and recognized
by Brooklyn Magazine as a culture influencer. Whitson engages a critical intersection of a sacred
and conceptual transdiciplinarity in Black, Queer, and Trans-embodiedness, site, body, and
spirit. Whitson is an 18 th  St. Artist in Residence (Los Angeles), 2020 Center for Performance
Research technical resident, Hermitage Fellow, featured choreographer of the 2018 CCA
Biennial, 2018-2020 Urban Bush Women Choreographic Center Fellow, and invited presenter at
the 2019 Tanzkongress international festival.  Other recent awards include a 2018 Tarpaulin Sky
Book Prize Shortlist (The Unarrival Experiments), Jerome/Camargo Fellowship, Dance in
Process (DiP) Residency, Hedgebrook Fellowship, LMCC Process Space Residency, Bogliasco
Fellowship. Recent commissions include EMPAC, Danspace Project, BAM Next Wave Art,
American Realness Festival, California African American Museum. They are an Assistant
Professor of experimental choreography at UC Riverside and Artistic Director of The NWA
Project. www.nijawhitson.com