afroFUTUREqu##r

​Curated by Thomas F. DeFrantz and niv Acosta
October 15 - 18, 2015

Performer, choreographer and scholar Thomas F. DeFrantz and dance artist niv Acosta present afroFUTUREqu##r: a weekend around Afro-futurism and utopian/dystopian visions of a queer Black tomorrow, with performances by Grisha Coleman, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, Niall Jones, Eto Otitigbe, among others, and the curators themselves.

SCHEDULE:

Thursday (aka “Thursgay”), Oct. 15 at 9 pm:
Niall Jones, Jonathan Gonzalez ​and Brother(hood) Dance!

Friday (aka “Frigay”), Oct. 16 at 8 pm:
Grisha Coleman and Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, followed by a dance party until 1 am

Saturday (aka “Saturgay”), Oct. 17:
There will be continuous activity in the space from 2 – 10 pm, hosted by
Cheeky LaShae, Interludes by RAKIA!, and with these featured performances:
2 pm: Thomas F. DeFrantz: where did I think I was going? [moving into signal]
5 pm: DGGD (Doggdays) – Christina Blue & Adam Boothman
8 pm: niv Acosta: /Theory-ography/, plus Eto Otitigbe and Grisha Coleman

Sunday (aka “Sungay”), Oct. 18 at 11 am:
Brunch panel: afroFUTUREqu##r: black art, white venues, and the new black presence in elite performance, with Malik Gaines and others. Featuring full delicious catered brunch.

Produced by Shireen Dickson and by SLIPPAGE: Performance|Culture|Technology (Thomas F. DeFrantz Artistic Director)

ABOUT THE CURATORS

THOMAS F. DEFRANTZ is Chair of African and African American Studies and Professor of Dance, and Theater Studies at Duke University. He is past-president of the Society of Dance History Scholars, an international organization that advances the field of dance studies through research, publication, performance, and outreach to audiences across the arts, humanities, and social sciences. He is also the director of SLIPPAGE: Performance, Culture, Technology, a research group that explores emerging technology in live performance applications. He convenes the working group Black Performance Theory and the Collegium for African Diaspora Dance. His books include the edited volume Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African American Dance (2002) and Dancing Revelations: Alvin Ailey’s Embodiment of African American Culture (2004) and Black Performance Theory co-edited with Anita Gonzalez. A director and writer, his creative works include CANE: A Responsive Environment Dancework that premiered at Duke in April 2013.

niv Acosta is a dance artist, educator, black Dominican, transexual, queer native New Yorker. He attended CalArts (Dance BFA) and has taught at N.Y.U Steinhardt, RISD, and Cooper Union. niv has shown his work at various events/spaces including Pieter Performance Space, Human Resources in Los Angeles, The Community Education Center, Studio 34, The Kimmel Center and Vox Populi in Philadelphia, New York Live Arts, The Kitchen, Studio Museum of Harlem, MOMA PS1, Abrons Art Center, The Tank, New Museum, Danspace Project, and at Brooklyn Arts Exchange. niv has collaborated with artists Malik Gaines, Alexandro Segade, Andrea Geyer, A.K. Burns, and Ralph Lemon. niv recently presented his current project, DISCOTROPIC (a culmination of research on science fiction, Astrophysics, disco ideology and the black american experience) as part of the 2015 New Museum Triennial ‘Surround Audience’.

SLIPPAGE: PERFORMANCE|CULTURE|TECHNOLOGY, the innovative performance research group led by Professor of African and African American Studies, DANCE, Theater Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies Arts Thomas F. DeFrantz, was founded in 2003 at MIT. The interdisciplinary group explores connections between performance and emergent technology in the service of theatrical storytelling.SLIPPAGE has received Creation Funding from the National Performance Network for the development of QUEER THEORY! AN ACADEMIC TRAVESTY (2006), commissioned by the Theater Offensive of Boston and the Flynn Center for the Arts in Burlington, VT. The work was subsequently toured to Los Angeles and Wellesley, MA. In 2004, SLIPPAGE presented Ennobling Nonna, (EN), a solo performance work devised by Maria Porter, a professor of acting at CW Post College. EN has been performed in Denmark, Peru, Cuba, Italy, and at several venues in the United States. SLIPPAGE premiered CANE, a responsive environment work, at Duke University in April, 2013. The group has several projects in development, including a wearable technology dance work THE HOUSE MUSIC PROJECT, developed in collaboration with researchers at the University of Texas, Dallas, and a residency at the Detroit Institute of the Arts in 2016. slippage.org.


FEATURED ARTISTS (in alphabetical order)

Brother(hood) Dance! is Orlando Hunter, Jr. and Ricarrdo Valentine. Orlando Hunter, Jr. is an international artist, who has performed in Trinidad and Tobago and Zimbabwe, Africa with Ananya Chatterjea. Recently he choreographed and danced in "Redbone: A Biomythography" that debuted at the Nuyorican Cafe and was performed at Wild Project Theater. Orlando Hunter's solo, Mutiny, was selected into New Waves! Institute 2015, Dancing While Black performance lab. Ricarrdo Valentine’s uses art as a vehicle for activism. He has presented his choreography at Bates Dance Festival, Brooklyn Museum, El Museo de Barro and LaGuardia Community College. Ricarrdo continues to collaborate and work with Christal Brown/INspirit, Edisa Weeks/Delirious Dance, Paloma McGregor, Dante Brown/Warehouse Dance, Malcolm Low/Formal Structure, Jill Sigman/Thinkdance, Ni'Ja Whitson, and Emily Berry/B3W.

Chris Blue and Adam Boothman are interdisciplinary artists from Washington D.C. who work under the alias DGGD (Doggdays). Together, the performative duo create a wide range of work incorporating influences of rap/hardcore punk with conceptual social critique. Comics, screenplays, performance happenings, and other media platforms are used to subvert impositions of black masculinity and the shaping of racial identity through personal experience. DGGD was formed in the winter of 2015.
Grisha Coleman is a New York City native; she works as a dancer, composer, and choreographer in performance and experiential media systems; she holds a position as Associate Professor of Movement, Computation and Digital Media at the School of Arts, Media and Engineering and School of Dance at Arizona State University. Her recent art and scholarly work, echo::system, a springboard for re-imagining the environment, environmental change, and environmental justice.

Niall Jones composes systems and images of labor that function excessively and surreptitiously to dislocate the body in performance.

Originally from Detroit, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko is a Nigerian American curator, producer, poet, and performance artist currently based in Brooklyn, New York. With his creative partner Kate Watson-Wallace, he co-directs anonymous bodies || art collective, a visual performance hub focusing on innovative approaches to curation, performance, and education. He is a Co-Curator of the 2015 Movement Research Spring Festival and the 2015 Dancing While Black performance series at BAAD in the Bronx; a 2014 American Express Leadership Academy alum, a contributing correspondent for Dance Journal (PHL), the Broad Street Review (PHL), and Critical Correspondence (NYC); a 2012 Live Arts Brewery Fellow as a part of the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival; a 2011 Fellow as a part of the DeVos Institute of Art Management at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; and an inaugural graduate of the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP) at Wesleyan University. Kosoko is a Founding Advisory Board Member of the Coalition for Diasporan Scholars Moving and has most recently been elected to the Executive Committee on the Board of Trustees at Dance/USA. He has sat on numerous funding and curatorial panels including The Map Fund, Baker Memorial Prize, the National Endowment for the Arts, Movement Research at Judson Church, and the Philadelphia Cultural Fund.

Eto Otitigbe’s polymedia interventions can be experienced as sculpture, performance and installation. He investigates issues of race, power and technology. He has had solo exhibitions at galleries in New York, NY; St. Louis, MO; and East Lansing, MI. His group shows include Bronx Calling: The Second AIM Biennial, organized by the Bronx Museum and Wave Hill. He has participated in the Bronx Museum’s Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) program, as well as in residencies at 701 CCA, Columbia, SC; Center for Book Arts, New York, NY; and Luminary Center for the Arts, St. Louis, MO. Otitigbe received a public commissions for FLOW at Randall’s Island Park and the Emerging Artist Fellowship at Socrates Sculpture Park. Otitigbe earned a BS in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an MS in product design from Stanford University and an MFA in creative practice at Transart Institute. [www.etootitigbe.com]