EVENTS CALENDAR
UPCOMING DATES
Just Art: Workshop Series – Poetry is not a Luxury
Three body and performance-based workshops with Dahlia Li and Jaamil Olawale Kosoko
Consortium for Faculty Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow Dahlia Li will host artist Jaamil Olawale Kosoko for three body and performance-based workshops drawing from their collaborative practice centering Black feminist poetics. Offered in conjunction with GSST 1: “Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Life Across Generations,” workshops explore productive frictions between personal feelings of sexuality, space, and gender as they meet social expectation, restriction, and possibility. Open to the public; no prior poetry or performance experience required.
February 19, 1:15 – 2:30 pm, IC Sproul 201 Dome Room
March 19, 1:15 – 2:30 pm, LPAC 003, Boyer Dance Studio
April 30, 1:15 – 2:30 pm, IC Sproul 201 Dome Room
For more information, email dli3@swarthmore.edu
Co-sponsored by the Clark Fund for Gender Discourse.
FUSEBOX April Salon | (chrysalis: activation 5) & we come to collect
Join us at dadaLab on April 17th at 7pm for a night of art, conversation, and inspiration!
The (chrysalis) Activations
The (chrysalis) Activations are a series of iterative, site-responsive performance experiments that function as a container for unapologetically practicing where I am within process.
Neither polished production nor fixed product, these activations are portals—unfolding in real time, in real bodies, with real stakes. Each iteration explores a constellation of themes—mourning, metamorphosis, memory, ritual, refusal—while centering process over perfection, presence over performance.
The series takes its name from the chrysalis: that liminal, suspended state between forms. Not caterpillar, not yet butterfly. Not what was, not yet what will be. It is a sacred in-between space—often invisible, often uncomfortable—where transformation takes place on a cellular level.
To activate is to stir, to wake, to invite the unknown.
To practice is to arrive, again and again, without apology.
This is the work of building stamina for change.
Through choreography, poetics, media, and rest, the activations ask:
What happens when we give ourselves permission to be unfinished?
What knowledge emerges in the mess, the pause, the undoing?
How do we prepare the body—and the audience—for what comes next?
Each chrysalis activation is a rehearsal for becoming, a public vulnerability, a love letter to what can only emerge in the in-between.
End of Dances at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, The New School
An experimental film project for New School students that explores new ways to express identity, memory, and transformation. The work will be shown at New York Live Arts as part of the New School’s Lang Dance Spring Production.
Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, The New School offers a distinctive undergraduate dance experience centered on recent developments in the field. Featuring works by jaamil olawale kosoko, Stacy Spence, and Katy Pyle, along with student-created work from Juliette Mapp's Performance Research: Improvisation Through Theory and Practice course.
Accessibility: Please let Eugene Lang College know when registering if you need any additional accommodation.
Voncena's Spell
Voncena’s Spell is a live artwork exploring the intersection of memory, memorial, and the speculative futures of post-mortal radical Black life. Part auto-fiction, part space maroon odyssey, the work uses embodied queer archival strategies to journey into the complex layers of Black existence, ecological grief, and blood memory. Set aboard the spacecraft Voncena, an alternative bio-intelligence—named after and embodying jaamil olawale kosoko’s deceased mother—awakens. Experiencing the ontological delay of a new anti-verse surrounding them, this genre-bending performance combines live feed media, choreography, and embodied poetics to immerse the audience in a complex physical narrative where personal and collective histories merge. Voncena's Spell represents the awakening of silenced histories portaling within a vessel toward a Black future beyond capture.
Note: Masks are required for the June 21st performance.
Accessibility
Abrons Arts Center’s Experimental Theater is a flexible seating space. Wheelchair and mobility device seating locations change from performance to performance. The Experimental Theater is accessed via an elevator.
we come to collect at The Flea Theater
Eyyyyyy, capitalism is trying to holler at you. Whatever will you say… Fuck around and find out over 90-ish minutes of comedic performance stylings that beg your engagement. An emerging vision instigated and performed by Jenn Kidwell and artistic collective the blackening, this workshop performance of we come to collect melds genres from stand up, to performance art, to carnival, and questions work-life’s inherent imbalance.
Come through, you cute little miracle, you.
MORE DETAILS - Tickets on sale soon!
Access: Elevator access to all spaces, gender-neutral restrooms, and 14 Listen Technologies Receivers available.
(chrysalis: activation 4)
The (chrysalis: activations) unfolds as a hybrid media performance project offering an intimate glimpse into the transformative limbo where what is seen and what vanishes intertwine. This live art experiment putting the artist’s creative laboratory on view. In collaboration with movement artist Song Aziza Tucker and lighting designer LD DeArmon, this work navigates the delicate thresholds of being and non-being, hypervisibility and erasure. The work explores themes of memory, Black futures, queer archival strategies, and ecological grief.
This peformance is 30 minutes long.
Tickets for this show are Pay What You Can, which means you are able to pick your price. Seating is General Admission and is not determined by the amount you choose to pay.
REST CRAFT CONJURE
Upcoming restshop REST CRAFT CONJURE is a 4-day Intensive with MFA candidates at Institut Chorégraphique International — Centre Chorégraphique National Montpellier Occitanie.
we come to collect residency at The Flea Theater
we come to collect (a flirtation, with capitalism) by the blackening is an anti-capitalist ritual comedy with original music in which performers and audience together explore value, labor, and currency. Woolly Mammoth and Eaton House are happy to offer this in-process performance free to audiences.
the blackening is jarvis benson, juliette jones, jenn kidwell, jaamil olawale kosoko, adam lazarus, jordan mccree, and ashlin parker.
Dramaturgies of Care at Bennington College
We all need more care. That much is clear. As it pertains to modern social justice and public action projects, the imperative to incorporate systems of care and healing into the greater conversation has increased dynamically. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and increased environmental issues due to climate change, it has become even more vital to consider holistic care models in this age of perpetual global crisis. But how do we practice care within contemporary community structures? How might we center technologies of rest in the face of calamity? This seminar examines how contemporary creative researchers and activists might consider dramaturgy as a radical care strategy within contemporary culture and public life.
(chrysalis: activation 3) at Maria Hernandez Park
A hybrid media performance work that examines concepts of metamorphosis, intergenerational knowledge, blood memory, negative space, and the environmental grief that lingers in the aftermath of the living gesture.
Residency, Subcircle with Jenn Kidwell for we come to collect
Residency at Subcircle (Biddeford, ME) with Jenn Kidwell for we come to collect
Rest in the Wake of Unrest at the Summer Love-In
An immersive restshop series centering the profound necessity of rest and restoration in times of social upheaval
(chrysalis: activation 2) at Summer Love-In
A hybrid media performance work that examines concepts of metamorphosis, intergenerational knowledge, blood memory, negative space, and the environmental grief that lingers in the aftermath of the living gesture.
Teaching at Institut Chorégraphique International — Centre Chorégraphique National Montpellier Occitanie
Teaching MFA candidates at Institut Chorégraphique International — Centre Chorégraphique National Montpellier Occitanie (Montpellier, France)
Dramaturgies of Care at Bennington College
Teaching Residency, Dramaturgies of Care at Bennington College (Bennington, VT)
The (chrysalis) Archives at River to River
The (chrysalis) Archives is an exhibition incorporating video installation, photographic imagery, sculpture, and performance in the Lower Gallery at The Arts Center at Governors Island. The exhibition will incorporate past works including the film Chameleon (A Visual Album), three-channel video and installation Syllabus for Black Love, as well as fabricated sculptural works and images. The multi-media installation will include a performance activation titled (chrysalis: activation 1)—a hybrid media performance work that integrates sculpture, moving image, original poetry, and emergent choreographic strategies prompted by the audience. The work examines concepts of metamorphosis, intergenerational knowledge, blood memory, negative space, and the environmental grief that lingers in the aftermath of the living gesture.
Gallery Hours 12 - 5 PM
Performance activation on June 9, 2024 at 6pm.
Rest, Craft, and Conjure: a restshop series (Sessions 5-6)
REST, CRAFT, and CONJURE is a virtual restshop series unfolding over the next three months. Centering themes of rest and restoration as a creative instrument for radical world building, exploring horizontality, the esoteric, and community archival methodologies, REST, CRAFT, CONJURE gifts critical time and space to its participants to deepen the reservoir of dreaming as a creative tool to allow the critical embodiments for healing, rest reparation, expanded visioning, and embodied self-care to emerge.
Session 5: Thursday, May 16, 2024 3-5pm ET
Session 6: Friday, May 17, 2024 3-5pm ET
Rest, Craft, Conjure at Black Hole Hollow
REST, CRAFT, CONJURE is a restshop. Centering themes of rest and restoration as a creative instrument for radical world building, exploring horizontality, the esoteric, and community archival methodologies, REST, CRAFT, CONJURE gifts critical time and space to its participants to deepen the reservoir of dreaming as a creative tool to allow the critical embodiments for healing, rest reparation, expanded visioning, and embodied self-care to emerge.
Black Hole Hollow, S. Arlington, VT
YOUR BANK OF INNATE POETIC KNOWLEDGE
12 - 2 PM PST | 3 - 5 PM EST | 8 - 10PM GMT
Through embodied poetic expression, meditation and guided rest, this virtual restshop offers participants a holistic approach to resource mapping the innate knowledge both in and around them.
Rest, Craft, and Conjure: a restshop series (Sessions 3-4)
REST, CRAFT, and CONJURE is a virtual restshop series unfolding over the next three months. Centering themes of rest and restoration as a creative instrument for radical world building, exploring horizontality, the esoteric, and community archival methodologies, REST, CRAFT, CONJURE gifts critical time and space to its participants to deepen the reservoir of dreaming as a creative tool to allow the critical embodiments for healing, rest reparation, expanded visioning, and embodied self-care to emerge.
Session 3: Thursday, April 18, 2024 3-5pm ET
Session 4: Friday, April 19, 2024 3-5pm ET
Rest, Craft, and Conjure: a restshop series (Sessions 1-2)
REST, CRAFT, and CONJURE is a virtual restshop series unfolding over the next three months. Centering themes of rest and restoration as a creative instrument for radical world building, exploring horizontality, the esoteric, and community archival methodologies, REST, CRAFT, CONJURE gifts critical time and space to its participants to deepen the reservoir of dreaming as a creative tool to allow the critical embodiments for healing, rest reparation, expanded visioning, and embodied self-care to emerge.
Session 1: Thursday, March 21, 2024 3-5pm ET
Session 2: Friday, March 22, 2024 3-5pm ET
Global Tactics in Hybrid Media and Performance Making
Princeton University, Global Tactics in Hybrid Media and Performance Making Seminar
50th Annual New Poetry Project Marathon Reading
1:00pm - 2:00pm at St. Mark's Church in NYC
Syllabus for Black Love
Syllabus for Black Love (Mentoring Residency) at Stockholm University of the Arts (Sweden)