Processions
Battery Park City
PAST EVENT
Miguel Gutierrez
June 13, 2021 at 7:30 pm
Teardrop Park
Registration at Teardrop Park South
Murray Street between River Terrance and North End Ave [map]
Okwui Okpokwasili with Emilý Æyer
June 20, 2021 at 7pm
Rockefeller Park
Registration at the Pavilion at the corner of Warren Street and River Terrace [map]
Observers welcome to Rockefeller Park to observe River to River Procession and Okwui Okpokwasili
The Illustrious Blacks
June 25, 2021 at 7 pm
Belvedere Plaza [map]
Presented in partnership with Battery Park City Authority and Movement Research
Processions is a series of three outdoor processionals in areas around Battery Park City engaging some of the most interesting choreographers in New York. This series, curated in collaboration with Movement Research, will include a time of transmission from the artist to the participants and an extended time for a procession that can be witnessed by the public.
Artists Miguel Gutierrez, Okwui Okpokwasili, and The Illustrious Blacks will lead the event.
Miguel Gutierrez is a choreographer, composer, performer, singer, writer, educator, and Feldenkrais Method practitioner based in Lenapehoking aka Brooklyn, NY. He’s been called the “love-child of Chita Rivera and Yvonne Rainer” by David Parker in Dance Magazine. His work has been presented in New York, across the country and internationally in over 60 cities. He is a 2014 Whitney Biennial Artist and a recipient of a 2016 Doris Duke Artist Award. Recent projects include This Bridge Called My Ass, a performance that bends tropes of Latinidad to identify new relationships to content and form, and SADONNA: The Brown Ambition Tour where he re-interprets Madonna’s upbeat songs as sad anthems. Currently he is working on wearing the masc_k, a new album of original music, THE THINGS YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE, an anthology of his writing, and Are You For Sale? a podcast which looks at the ethical entanglements in dance-making and philanthropy.
Okwui Okpokwasili is a writer, performer, and choreographer. In partnership with collaborator Peter Born, Okpokwasili creates multidisciplinary projects that are raw, intimate experiences. As a performer, Okpokwasili frequently collaborates with director and choreographer Ralph Lemon, including Come Home, Charley Patton (2006), for which she won a “Bessie" Award for Outstanding Performer; How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere? (2010), a duet performed at the Museum of Modern Art as part of On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century (2011), and Scaffold Room (2014). Okpokwasili has appeared as an actor in many productions including Richard Maxwell's Cowboys and Indians (1999), Richard Foreman's Maria del Bosco (2001), Kristin Marting's Sounding (2009), Joan Dark (2009), Young Jean Lee's Lear (2010), Nora Chipaumire's Miriam (2012), and Julie Taymor's A Midsummer Night's Dream (2013). Film credits include The Interpreter (2005), The Hoax (2006), I Am Legend (2007), Knut Åsdam's Abyss (2010), and Malorie's Final Score (2013).
EMILÝ ÆYER (they/it/E) - Brooklyn-based Southern bred vocalist, composer, and organizer Æyer’s most recent performances include Sitting on a Man’s Head in collaboration with Okwui Okpokwasili (2019), Stonewall 50 Texas Noise & Ambience (2019) at the Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston, Queering the Wheel at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (2019), Eternal 30 (2019), Everyone at Blaffer Museum (2019), Cell Lust | a body (2018) at the Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston, and many others. E studied classical voice for the majority of their life, their practice began to evolve in 2015, and is now experimental. E’s practice is focused on it’s background as a queer person from a deeply southern and often hostile landscape. Their original compositions have been featured in several short films with collaborators T. Lavois of Houston, TX (2015-2019), Maria Bang Espersen of Denmark (2019), and most recently Elana Mann of Los Angeles (2020-2021). Their film with Maria Bang Espersen, "A messy story about oak and," has been screened at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, QFest Houston 2019, the 58th annual Ann Arbor Film Festival, and the Danish National Autumn Exhibition: Kunstnernes Efterårsudstilling (KE19) at Den Frie Udstillingsbygning in Copenhagen. Their video collaboration with Elana Mann is currently on view at 18th Street Arts Center in LA until July 2, 2021.
Once upon a time in a galaxy not far away, there lived two kings. Each was the ruler of his own deliciously glorious planet. The first king, Manchildblack, was well known throughout the cosmos for his ethereal vocals, celestial sonics and earthy musical messages. The other king, Monstah Black, was a star in the solar system for his gravity defying performances, gender bending fashions and spacey disposition. One magical night, an inexplicable ultramagnetic pull forced the two planets to collide. A technicolored explosion occurred, turning night into day, with a feast of aural and visual delights. It was then that the universe was changed forever. Manchildblack and Monstah Black united and became The Illustrious Blacks.