Featured Artists
Downtown Dinner 2024
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company
Joey Arias
Sugar Hill Salon
Nattie Trogdon + Hollis Bartlett
Elisabeth Smolarz & Jan Wilker
YiuYiu 瑤瑤 of Chinatown Records 華埠錄音
Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Company
The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company was born in 1982 out of an 11-year collaboration between Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane (1948–1988). During this time, they redefined the duet form and foreshadowed issues of identity, form and social commentary that would change the face of American dance. The Company has performed worldwide in over 200 cities in 40 countries on every major continent and is recognized as one of the most innovative and powerful forces in the dance-theater world.
Joey Arias
Joey Arias is a legendary performance artist who has pushed the boundaries of music, fashion, art, and queer culture throughout a career that spans more than five decades. Arias has collaborated with some of the biggest names in entertainment, while always pushing to reinvent himself and remain ahead of the mainstream. He likes to, as he says, “keep it a little strange.” Arias has performed worldwide at venues including Carnegie Hall, The Freedom Theatre in London and on a transatlantic world tour into European cabaret clubs. On film, he has appeared in Big Top Pee Wee, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar. Television credits include the infamous Saturday Night Live episode with David Bowie and Klaus Nomi. Additionally, Arias has produced several of his own recordings including Arias on Holiday, Strange Fruit, Jazzo Lozo, God Shave the Queen and live recordings of StarLust in Berlin, Arias with a Twist and Bar D’o in New York.
Sugar Hill Salon
Sugar Hill Salon is one of the first chamber music series and artistic collectives that centers on black and brown woodwind artistry in classical music. We are a black and queer-owned organization that offers free public concerts in Harlem that showcase wind repertoire that lacks representation within "traditional" chamber programming along with uplifting black and brown musicians performing them. Through commissioning chamber works and monthly concerts featuring artists on the scene, Sugar Hill Salon is decolonizing classical music for a more equitable future for black and brown communities.
Nattie Trogdon + Hollis Bartlett
Nattie Trogdon + Hollis Bartlett are partners in both life and creative endeavors. They construct dance works, films and research based practices aimed to disrupt assumptions of performance and personhood. Their collaborations have been presented at Gibney, CPR, Coffey Street Studios, Snug Harbor, and the Future Dance Festival at the 92nd Street Y. Their site-specific work and films have been commissioned by the Brick Alley Block Party at Garner Arts Center and other festivals. They are alumni artists in residence at LMCC, Marble House, The Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Mna Contemporary. Currently they are adjunct faculty at SUNY Purchase and Montclair State, and co-lead the artist-run class platform skewl.
YiuYiu 瑤瑤 of Chinatown Records 華埠錄音
YiuYiu 瑶瑶 (aka Rochelle Hoi-Yiu Kwan) is a cultural organizer, artist, and oral history educator based on Lenape land in NYC's Manhattan Chinatown. She takes on her childhood name YiuYiu 瑶瑶 as a researcher and DJ for Chinatown Records 華埠錄音. Bringing together art and history, YiuYiu 瑶瑶 leads oral history projects and training with Think!Chinatown and other organizations.
Chinatown Records 華埠錄音 is a homegrown community effort celebrating the richness of music, memory, and history that comes with inherited family collections, spanning across Chinatown block parties, sonic family histories, living room listenings, and endless learning with family and neighbors.
Elisabeth Smolarz & Jan Walker of Ice Cream Window
Elisabeth Smolarz is a conceptual artist and curator living and working in Queens. Her photo and video works demonstrate how consciousness and perception are formed as a result of larger social structures. Smolarz is founder/director of Spectral Lines, an artist-run salon in Ridgewood, NY. In 2020, Smolarz founded Ice Cream Window, a seasonal ice cream shop at the Karlssonwilker design studio, adding a delicious dimension to the community she fosters.
Jan Wilker founded Karlssonwilker with Hjalti Karlsson in 2000. He serves as the President of AGI’s (Alliance Graphique Internationale) US Group and has taught at Cooper Union, the School of Visual Arts, and Parsons. His sought-after lectures and workshops have inspired designers around the world to improve their creative processes.