home.
By Nia & Ness
November 22 - 23, 2019: Performance
November 24: Workshop
The body is our home, and for a black, lesbian couple living and loving in NYC the body is always on display. In this new dance-poetry piece, Nia & Ness make visible the impact of external violence and the love that drives them forward.
On Sunday the duo will conduct an in-depth artist talk after a performance of their complementary work, 'blind spot.' Workshop attendees will be encouraged to actively engage and think about their own lives as artistic source material.
Created by: Nia & Ness
Lighting Design: Manny Rivera
Composer & Sound Design: Garrett Miller
Performance Dates & Times
November 22nd at 7:30pm
November 23rd at 7:30pm
Workshop Dates & Times
November 24th at 2:00pm
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Nia & Ness are an out black, lesbian, dancer-poet performance art duo and couple. The duo met in 2013 and founded their company in 2016. They have performed at multiple venues nationwide, sharing their work that aims at a deeper understanding of their co-reality through intense investigation of their individual identities. They have been keynote speakers at Brown University and City College, and performed their work at schools such as the University of California Riverside, NYU, Sarah Lawrence College, Harvard College, Bard College and more. They've also performed at Brooklyn Pride 2017 and Harlem Pride 2018; were recipients of the BAX Summer 2017 Space Grant; inaugural nominees for the Virginia Giordano Memorial Fund and were the winners of the 2017 National Women's Music Festival Emerging Artist Contest. Currently, Nia & Ness are on tour! To follow them on their journey, check them out on social media @niaandness.
Garrett Miller is a composer, producer and performer invested in questioning the nature of listening through the lens of vulnerability. How do we engage in listening and relating to sounds, and to each other? These questions are explored through combining the acoustical properties of sound, digital and analog synthesis, and the infinite number of ways these sounds can be engineered. The concept of vulnerability is explored through unaffected, to heavily manipulated, phone captured recordings of candid conversation and the environmental sounds a person is subjected to (or actively creates). This aims to expand the collaborative process of communication in a deeply personal manner. Garrett draws influence from a wide range of genres and eras and is inspired by the ideologies of John Cage and Pauline Oliveros. In our times of social and economic injustice we must remember to hold a ”continual alertness and an inclination to always be listening” -Oliveros.
Manny Rivera is a New York based, trans Salvadoran-Puerto Rican theatre maker and member of the performance art collective, A Beautiful Desperation. Manny is also this year's recipient of the NALAC Mentorship Award along with Virginia Grise. Other notable credits include sound design for Your Healing Is Killing Me (Cara Mía Theatre Co.), Desarrollo (Director/Sound Designer) for Playwrights' Week 2018 at the Lark, A Meditation on Tongues (Production Stage Manager) at Cornell University, and The Bag Lady Manifesta (Production Tour Manager).
Photo Credit: Meghan Grotty