Jack Governors Island
artist residencies
Our friends at Beam Center have generously offered to share space with JACK on Governors Island this summer, giving us the chance to use a house on historic Colonel’s Row for artist residencies. We have invited to the island seven artists/ensembles from our previous Open Call — to help them deepen their craft, explore, experiment, and develop new work. Beginning June 15, these artists will have access to the house for one to three weeks, and will receive a $250 stipend per week of their residency.
Artists include Lia Bautista, Julia Cavagna, Kai Custodio, The Dragon Sisters, Shayna and Nava Dunkelman (NOMON), Iris McCloughan & Marcus Scott
These residencies are supported through the generosity of Jody Falco & Jeffrey Steinman
Lia Bautista
In collaboration with Movement Director Desiree Godsell, Multimedia Director Kilusan Bautisa, and Dramaturge LeAnne Russell
(Photo credit: Kilusan Bautista)
Lia Bautista is a choreographer and professional recording artist. Her choreography incorporates elements of comedy and theater while pulling inspiration from her formal training as a modern dancer. Her dance works have been showcased at Green Space, Triskelion Arts, Chez Bushwick and Bushwick Open Studios. Lia and long-time collaborator Desiree Godsell were selected by E-Moves to present their work as part of their Emerging Artists program in 2010. Bautista and Godsell are also the creators of the Pearl Mixed Media Dance Series, which presented over 100 dance and music artists in downtown Brooklyn at the Actors Fund Theater from 2010-2015. Lia’s music, which was recorded and performed under the moniker, Dulcinea Detwah, is heavily influenced by her hometown, Detroit. Bautista’s music projects have received funding from the Jerome Foundation and Brooklyn Arts Council. Now a mother of two, Bautista is excited to be reengaging with her artistic practice and collaborators.
“My residency will focus on the choreography and staging of my multi-media one-woman show, which revisits the past five years of my life: coping with the traumas associated with raising a special needs child; navigating the healthcare system; finding my identity as a mother and artist.”
Julia Cavagna
In collaboration with Komiko Paul and LIM
(Photo credit: Matt Licari)
Julia Cavagna is an Argentinian-born, Brooklyn-based actress, director, dramaturge, and teacher. Her work is in the frontier of movement, site-specific, classical and contemporary theater, new media and film. She is an active member of the New York theater scene. As a director, she released: O.Y.A., Prácticas Materiales, Sentimiento González is da Bomb! (Undiscovered Countries, Boog City) and MALALA (selected at NYC Indie Theatre Film Festival). In 2016 she was selected to be part of Patrice Chéreau’s Elektra (Metropolitan Opera and Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona). Since then, she works as a featured actress at the Metropolitan Opera. She's performed at St. Ann’s Warehouse, HERE Arts Center, Dixon Place and the Knockdown Center. International appearances include: Argentina, Puerto Rico, Brasil, Thailand, Japan, Scotland, and Spain. She co-founded: Lampazo Group, Las Pibas Theater Company, and THEATER TO THE PEOPLE (awarded with the 2019 and 2021 BAC Grant and 2020 Town Stages Fellowship).
“Prácticas Materiales is an ongoing investigation using aluminum foil: as soon as we touched it, we printed an unequivocal history on it. Its past is indelible and its looks are a sum of memories reflected. There I found an inquiry: How do we build our myths and heroes? The statue is there to reprimand us. Located in a public place to monitor the polis. All representation arises from a strange relationship with death.”
Kai Custodio
In collaboration with Voice Designer Carlita Gay and Movement Designer Nicole Mignano
(Photo credit: Trudy Giordano)
Kai Custodio (they/them) is a queer trans latinx multi-disciplinary artist and musician born and based in Brooklyn, NY. Their work interplays audio, video, animation, and performance through the use of digital tools and tangible instruments.
In unifying these elements, Kai's ambition is to gain a deeper relationship with their Andean, Borikén, Afro Indigenous ancestral roots. The spirit of their work is immensely connected to self-reclamation in order to heal a legacy of oppression and trauma. Moreover, they seek to fragment the ideas of social construct, patriarchy, latin tradition and colonial ideals. Their creative work encompasses 15+ years of collaborative work, touring, performing and composing music and art. They were an organizer and curator of an arts and music festival celebrating Indigenous People's Day in 2019 and have a competitive background in boxing and martial arts. You can find them on social media via IG: radar.dark
“My residency will support the conceptualization of my project, Unmasking the Vejigante — a ceremonial video and installation to invoke the presence of my Afro Latin Indigenous Ancestors. My objective is to transmute generational and present life trauma fueled by colonization and white body supremacy as coined by Resmaa Menakem.”
The Dragon Sisters
(Photo credit: Timothy Westbrook)
The Dragon Sisters, Issa & OD, are a multidisciplinary duo based in Brooklyn. They are equal parts hip hop, pop, and classical. Conceived in the dance theater world, they both attended SUNY Purchase, and went on to dance internationally with notable companies like The Martha Graham Dance Company, Gallim Dance, Bill T Jones, and Sleep No More. As a duo, Issa and OD have stormed stages across the country–at events and venues including Gibney, Saint Mark’s Church, The Box, Tribeca Performing Arts Center, the Park Avenue Armory, and Cape Dance Festival. Their creative collaborations have included projects with Darrell Throne, Angelo Vasta, Spencer Ludwig, Kala and the Lost Tribe and Ariana & the Rose. The Dragon Sisters’ work as musicians, creators and performers, has been featured in publications including Vogue, Elle Magazine, Vanity Fair, and Billboard.
Shayna and Nava Dunkelman (NOMON)
In collaboration with Videographer Sreejith Raman and Artistic Advisor Kimberly Suchy
(Photo credit: Kimberly Suchy)
Shayna and Nava Dunkelman are both musicians and percussionists, born and raised in Tokyo, Japan to an Indonesian mother and an American father. Nomon’s music is as visual as it is aural. The physicality of the performance has a choreographic quality as it is when immersed in playing percussion. The music lives in the intersection of electronic soundscapes and intricately composed percussion parts. In addition to solo performances, Shayna toured with Pulitzer Award-Winning and Grammy-nominated composer Du Yun, Balún, Emily Wells, Ali Sethi and Xiu Xiu, among others. Nava’s other projects are electro-percussion duo IMA and improvisational duo DunkelpeK. She has performed with Fred Frith, John Zorn, Meredith Monk, William Winant, Matmos, Pauchi Sasaki and many others.
“NOMON uses a Rorschach-like percussion set up to capture the naturally occurring mirror-image synchronization. Drawing on their passion for experimental, industrial, contemporary and electronic music, NOMON’s music is at times fierce, intense, serene and calm. ”
Iris McCloughan
(Photo creditL: Brendan Callahan)
Iris McCloughan is an artist, writer, and performer in Brooklyn. Their work explores the queer body: its physical, performative, and discursive constructions, and how its mutability can be a site of expansive possibility.
Their performance work has been presented in New York (JACK, Movement Research, The Poetry Project, The New Ohio, Ars Nova), Philadelphia (The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia Contemporary, FringeArts, ICA Philadelphia), Chicago (Links Hall), and Detroit (Public Pool). They have collaborated with many other artists including Eiko Otake, Doug LeCours, Avery Z. Nelson, Jaime Maseda, Mike Lala, and Pig Iron Theatre Company.
Iris was awarded the 2018 Stanley Kunitz Prize from American Poetry Review, and was named a finalist in nonfiction for Best of the Net 2020. They are the author of three chapbooks, including Triptych (2021, greying ghost) and Bones to Peaches (2021, Seven Kitchens Press). Their writing has appeared in jubilat, juked, and Gertrude, among many others.
“I will be working to extend a body of poems into performance. These poems, translations of the output of a neural network trained on Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, seek out the feminine subjectivities that haunt the edges of Proust’s text. I will use my residency to begin giving them voice and body”
Marcus Scott
Marcus Scott (he/him) is a playwright & journalist. Selected works: Fidelio (Libretto; Heartbeat Opera at Baruch Performing Arts Center, 2018; called “poignant” by NY Times), Sibling Rivalries (Long-listed for the 2020 Theatre503 International Playwriting Award; finalist for ATHE’s 2021 Judith Royer Excellence in Playwriting Award and the 2021 Seven Devils Playwrights Conference; semifinalist for 2021 Blue Ink Playwriting Award), Tumbleweed (Finalist for the 2017 BAPF; semi-finalist for the 2017/2018 New Dramatists Princess Grace Fellowship Award), Cherry Bomb (recipient of the 2017 Drama League First Stage Artist-In-Residence; 2017 Finalist for the Yale Institute for Music Theatre) and Sundown Town (Finalist for Abingdon Theatre Company’s Virtual Fall Festival Of Short Plays). He has been developed/presented at Joe's Pub, Feinstein's/54 Below, APAC, Dixon Place, Space on Ryder Farm, Symphony Space, NYC LGBT Center, Out of the Box Theatrics, Theatre West, New Circle Theatre Company, MicroTheater Miami, among others. His articles appeared in Time Out New York, American Theatre, Playbill, Elle, Out, Essence, among others. MFA: NYU Tisch.
“At the moment, I am working on multiple projects (a wrestling play about women wrestlers, a horror play about black conservatives, a musical about the black bourgeois), but the topics I am really exploring right now are about black excellence (its perks and its curses), purpose and ambition.”