SLC Performance Lab

The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. During the course, visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab are interviewed after leading a workshop with the students. Grad Lab is one of the core components of the program where graduate students work with guest artists and develop group-generated performance experiments.

Tei is interviewed by Marisa Conroy (SLC23) and Kenneth Keng (SLC23).

Tei Blow is a performer, educator, and media designer based in New York. Blow’s work incorporates photography, video, and sound culled from found materials and mass media. He has performed and designed for The Laboratory of Dmitry Krymov, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Jodi Melnick, Ann Liv Young, Big Dance Theater, and David Neumann/Advanced Beginner Group.

He also performs as Frustrator on Enemies List Recordings. Blow’s work has been featured at Hartford Stage, Dance Theater Workshop, PS122/PSNY, Lincoln Center Festival, The Kitchen, BAM, The Public Theater, The Broad Stage, MCA Chicago, MFA Boston, Kate Werble Gallery, Baryshnikov Arts Center, The Wadsworth Atheneum, and at theaters around the world. He is the recipient of a 2015 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Sound Design for David Neumann/Advanced Beginner Group’s I Understand Everything Better. Blow is one half of Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble, whose ongoing multipart series The Art of Luv is a recipient of the Creative Capital and Franklin Furnace Awards.

Photo: Maria Baranova

The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. During the course, visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab are interviewed after leading a workshop with the students. Grad Lab is one of the core components of the program where graduate students work with guest artists and develop group-generated performance experiments.

Machine was interviewed by Andrew Del Vecchio (SLC22) and Alex Guhde (SLC23).

MACHINE DAZZLE has been dazzling stages via costumes, sets, and performances since his arrival in New York in 1994. Credits include Julie Atlas Muz’s I Am The Moon And and You Are The Man On Me (2004), Big Art Group’s House Of No More (2006), Justin Vivian Bond’s Lustre (2008) and Re:Galli Blonde (2011), Chris Tanner’s Football Head (2014), Soomi Kim’s Change (2015), Pig Iron Theater’s I Promised Myself To Live Faster (2015), Bombay Ricky (Prototype Festival 2016), Opera Philadelphia’s Dito and Aeneus (2017) and Spiegleworld’s Opium (Las Vegas 2018). With Taylor Mac, Machine has collaborated on several projects including The Lily’s Revenge (2009), Walk Across America For Mother Earth (2012) and the Pulitzer Prize-Nominated A 24-Decade History of Popular Music (2016-Present). Conceptualist-as-artist meets DIY meets “glitter rhymes with litter,” Machine was a co-recipient the 2017Bessie Award for Outstanding Visual Design and the winner of a 2017 Henry Hewes Design Award.

The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. During the course, visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab are interviewed after leading a workshop with the students. Grad Lab is one of the core components of the program where graduate students work with guest artists and develop group-generated performance experiments.

Miguel was interviewed by Andrew Del Vecchio (SLC22) and Jillian Jetton (SLC23).

Miguel Gutierrez is a choreographer, composer, performer, singer, writer, educator and arts advocate who has lived in New York for over twenty years. He is fascinated by the time-based nature of performance and how it creates an ideal frame for phenomenological questions around presence and meaning-making. His work proposes an immersive state, for performer and audience alike, where attention itself becomes an elastic material. He believes in an approach to art making that is fierce, fragile, empathetic, political, and irreverent.

In recent years he has been occupied with thinking about how he negotiates his queer Latinx identity within the traditions of the white avant-garde. This led to This Bridge Called My Ass, a piece that bends tropes of Latinidad to identify new relationships to content and form. The piece premiered in 2019 at The Chocolate Factory as part of American Realness Festival and tours throughout 2019 and 2020 to a host of venues. He has been presented in more than 60 cities around the world, in venues such as at Centre National de Danse, Centre Pompidou, Festival Universitario, ImPulsTanz, Fringe Arts, Walker Art Center, TBA/PICA, MCA Chicago, Live Arts Bard, American Realness, and the 2014 Whitney Biennial. He has received support from Creative Capital, MAP, National Dance Project, National Performance Network, and Jerome Foundation. He has received fellowships from New York Foundation for the Arts, the Tides Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, United States Artists, an award from Foundation for Contemporary Art, a 2016 Franky Award from Prelude Festival and four Bessies. He is a 2016 Doris Duke Artist.

Other recent work includes Cela nous concerne tous (This concerns all of us), a commission for Ballet de Lorraine inspired by the May '68 French protests. With Ishmael Houston-Jones he co-directed Variations on Themes from Lost and Found: Scenes from a Life and other works by John Bernd, which received a 2017 Bessie for Outstanding Revival.

He has been an artist in residence at MANCC, LMCC, Centre Choréographique National de Montpellier, Centre National du Danse Pantin, Baryshnikov Art Center, and Gibney. He has created music for several of his works, for Antonio Ramos’ work, and with Colin Self for Jen Rosenblit and Simone Aughterlony. He performs with Nick Hallett as Nudity in Dance. He also currently performs a music project called SADONNA: sad versions of upbeat Madonna songs.

His book WHEN YOU RISE UP is available from 53rd State Press. His essays have been published in A Life in Dance (ed. Rebecca Stenn and Fran Kirmser), In Terms of Performance: A Keywords Anthology (ed. Shannon Jackson and Paula Marincola) and his essay “Does Abstraction Belong To White People” is one of the most viewed essays on BOMB’s website.

https://www.miguelgutierrez.org/

photo by Marley Trigg Stewart

The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. Each month a visiting artist to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab is interviewed. Grad Lab is one of the core components of the program where graduate students work with guest artists and develop group-generated performance pieces monthly.

Jaami was interviewed by Chanel Blanchett (SLC21) and Ricky Brown (SLC22).

Jaamil Olawale Kosoko is a Nigerian American performance artist, poet, and curator originally from Detroit, MI. He is a 2019 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Choreography, 2019 NPN Development Fund Award, a 2017-19 Princeton Arts Fellow, 2019 Red Bull Writing Fellow, 2018 NEFA NDP Production Grant recipient, and a 2017 Cave Canem Poetry Fellow. His creative practice draws from Black study, queer theories of the body, weaving together visual performance, lecture, ritual, and spiritual practice. His most recent works, Séancers (2017) and the Bessie nominated #negrophobia (2015), have toured internationally appearing in major festivals including: Tanz im August (Berlin), Moving in November (Finland), Within Practice (Sweden), TakeMeSomewhere (UK), Brighton Festival (UK), Oslo Teaterfestival (Norway), and Zürich MOVES! (Switzerland) among others. He is the author of two chapbooks and his poems and essays have been included in The American Poetry Review, The Dunes Review, The Broad Street Review, among others. Visit jaamil.com for more information. IG@jaamil_means_beauty

Photo by Aisha Nailah

Noel Allain is the Co-Founder / Artistic Director of Bushwick Star. Noel is a graduate of Skidmore College and the Juilliard School's Drama Division. As an actor, he has performed in various theater, television, and film productions in and out of New York City.

The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. Each month a visiting artist to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab is interviewed. Grad Lab is one of the core components of the program where graduate students work with guest artists and develop group-generated performance pieces monthly.

Noel was interviewed by Michelle Cowles (SLC 22)

The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. Each month a visiting artist to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab is interviewed. Grad Lab is one of the core components of the program where graduate students work with guest artists and develop group-generated performance pieces monthly.

Caleb Hammons is interviewed by Kyrie Ellison (SLC21) and Andrew Del Vecchio (SLC22).

CALEB HAMMONS is a Tony and Obie Award-winning cultural producer and curator of performance working in Brooklyn and the Hudson Valley. Currently the Director of Artistic Planning and Producing at the Fisher Center at Bard, he facilitates Live Arts Bard, a professional commissioning, residency, and presenting initiative focusing on contemporary practices in the performing arts, produces an extensive portfolio of dance, theater, live music, and transdisciplinary performance projects, and co-curates the Bard SummerScape Spiegeltent. Prior to his time at Bard he was the Producer at Soho Rep in NYC and was the first Producing Director of Young Jean Lee's Theater Company from 2008 to 2011. He is the Co-Curator of the acclaimed Brooklyn-based performance series CATCH. Caleb holds a BFA from the NYU/Tisch Experimental Theatre Wing and was a member of the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance’s inaugural class at Wesleyan University.

Photo is by Maria Baranova

The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. Each month a visiting artist to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab is interviewed. Grad Lab is one of the core components of the program where graduate students work with guest artists and develop group-generated performance pieces monthly.

Jibz Cameron is interviewed by Sarah Sterling (SLC 21) and Andrew Del Vecchio (SLC 22.

Jibz Cameron is a performance, recording, and video artist as well as an actor. Cameron also produces work as Dynasty Handbag, an alter ego created in 2001. Her performance art has been called "Outrageously smart, grotesque and innovative" by The New Yorker and referred to as "[...] one of the most insanely funny, tone-perfect pieces of performance art I have seen in years" by Jennifer Dunning in The New York Times.

She has taught at universities as a visiting professor at California Institute of the Arts and an adjunct professor at Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. Her performances and video works have been presented at prestigious venues and festivals including the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, The Kitchen, Redcat Theatre, Brooklyn Academy of Music, The New Museum in New York, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Joe's Pub, Performa, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Centre Pompidou, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, SXSW and many more.

Jibz Cameron currently resides in Los Angeles. She hosts and produces Weirdo Night at Zebulon Cafe Concert. A 4-camera recorded version of Weirdo Night was selected for the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. http://www.dynastyhandbag.com

The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. Each month a visiting artist to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab is interviewed. Grad Lab is one of the program's core components, where graduate students work with guest artists and develop group-generated performance pieces monthly.

Tina Satter is interviewed by Amelia Bethel (SLC21) and Amanda Card(SLC21).

Tina Satter is a playwright and director based in New York City. She is the founder and artistic director of the theater company Half Straddle. A collection of three of her plays, "Seagull (Thinking of you) with Away Uniform and FAMILY," was published in 2014. Her show's text, "Ghost Rings," was published in 2017 by 53rd State Press and a vinyl album of the show's songs. She has received the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award (2016) and a Doris Doris Duke Artist Impact Award in 2014. Satter has created 10 shows with Half Straddle, and the company's shows and videos have toured to over 20 countries in the U.S., Europe, Australia, and Asia. She made her Off-Broadway debut as a conceiver and director in fall 2019 with IS THIS A ROOM at the Vineyard Theatre, for which she won an Obie Award.

The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. Each month a visiting artist to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab is interviewed. Grad Lab is one of the core components of the program where graduate students work with guest artists and develop group generated performance pieces monthly.

Alice Yuan Zhang is interviewed by Karen Loewy Movilla (‘21) and Chanel Smith (‘21).

Alice Yuan Zhang is an artist, designer, and program organizer working across the IRL and URL. Her projects often take on a playful and collaborative approach, using mixed reality technologies to invite public empathy into ecological and social futuring. She is the co-organizer of virtual care lab, a series of experiments in remote togetherness. Alice holds a B.S. in Business Administration from University of California, Berkeley and is influenced by object-oriented ontology, interspecies collaborations, Eastern philosophy, and magical realism. www.aliceyuanzhang.com

The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. Each month we interview visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab, one of the core classes of the program where grads work with guest artists and develop group generated performance pieces monthly.

Emily Johnson is interviewed by Yuexing (Star) Sun (SLC21) and Emily Aviles (SLC21).

Emily Johnson is an artist who makes body-based work. She is a land and water protector and an activist for justice, sovereignty and well-being. A Bessie Award-winning choreographer, Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of the Doris Duke Artist Award, she is based in New York City. Originally from Alaska, Emily is of the Yup’ik Nation, and since 1998 has created work that considers the experience of sensing and seeing performance. Her dances function as portals and installations, engaging audiences within and through space, time, and environment—interacting with a place's architecture, peoples, history and role in community. Emily is trying to make a world where performance is part of life; where performance is an integral connection to each other, our environment, our stories, our past, present and future.

* Note: There is an accidental citation in this podcast stating that Leanne Simpson wrote Emergent Strategy, which is incorrect. adrienne maree brown is the author of Emergent Strategy, though Leanne Simpson's book As We Have Always Done, is highly recommended as well

Photo by Tracy Rector and Melissa Ponder