![]() Performance Space New York (formerly Performance Space 122 or P.S. 122) is housed in an old public elementary school in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan | |
![]() | |
Address | 150 First Avenue |
---|---|
Location | New York City |
Coordinates | 40°43′42″N73°59′04″W / 40.728285°N 73.984581°W |
Opened | 1980 (as presentation venue) |
Website | |
performancespacenewyork |
Performance Space New York, formerly known as Performance Space 122 or P.S. 122, [1] is a non-profit arts organization founded in 1980 in the East Village of Manhattan in an abandoned public school building. [2]
The former elementary school, Public School 122, was abandoned and in disrepair, until a group of visual artists began to use the old classrooms for studios. In 1979, choreographer Charles Moulton began holding rehearsals and workshops in the second-floor cafeteria and invited fellow performers Charles Dennis, John Bernd, and Peter Rose to collaborate in the administration and use of the space. Tim Miller, John Bernd's lover, later joined the four in launching P.S. 122. [3]
One of the space's earliest offerings created by the founders and choreographer Stephanie Skura was Open Movement, a weekly, non-performative, improvisational dance event. [4] Early participants in Open Movement included artists Ishmael Houston-Jones, Yvonne Meier, Jennifer Monson, Yoshiko Chuma, Jennifer Miller, Jeremy Nelson, and Christopher Knowles, among other dance and performance artists. P.S. 122 began presenting shows in 1980 with the first "Avant-Garde-Arama," a multidisciplinary showcase, and published its first complete calendar of performances, classes, and workshops. The first full-length public play or performance presented in P.S. 122 in October 1980 was a play by Robin Epstein [5] and Dorothy Cantwell's experimental women's theater company, More Fire! Productions.
Mark Russell was hired as the artistic director in 1983 to curate and focus the overall programming, expanding it from a rental house into a year-round presenting facility. P.S. 122 doubled its programming in 1986 when it converted the old gym on the first floor into a performance space to be used for extended runs of small theater groups and as a site for community meetings. Russell departed in 2004. Vallejo Gantner succeeded him in the position with the 2005–2006 season through 2017 and notably created Performance Space 122's annual winter series, the COIL Festival. [6] [7]
In 2005, P.S. 122 was among 406 New York City arts and social service institutions to receive part of a $20 million grant from the Carnegie Corporation, made possible through a donation by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. [8] [9]
In 2011, funding from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs initiated an extensive $37 million renovation of the First Avenue building that houses P.S. 122 and four other organizations. [10] [11] During the six-year process, P. S. 122 held programming at partner venues across New York City, including Danspace Project, The Chocolate Factory, Abrons Arts Center, The Invisible Dog Art Center, and La MaMa ETC, operating from administrative office spaces based in Brooklyn. P.S. 122's revamped spaces reopened in January 2018 with the premiere of “Visions of Beauty” by choreographer Heather Kravas, held as part of the 2018 COIL Festival. [12]
In 2017, former MoMA PS1 curator Jenny Schlenzka was named Gantner's successor as executive artistic director, becoming the first female director in the organization's history. [13] Coinciding with the reopening of its building, the organization announced its new name, Performance Space New York. The updated name is meant to signal "an ambition to be relevant and accessible to all of New York,” in Schlenzka's words, and to actively collaborate with the local community in its programs. Schlenzka's first full season of programming began in February–June 2018 with a series of performances, discussions, film screenings, and other presentations specifically themed around the East Village. The series included up-and-coming performers and collectives representative of the area today while paying homage to Performance Space New York's past. [12] Performance Space New York's new logo and identity were created by German visual artist Sarah Ortmeyer.
![]() | This article contains content that is written like an advertisement .(December 2020) |
Since its renovation in 2011, Performance Space New York now has two interdisciplinary theater spaces that showcase dance performances, performance art, art exhibitions, music performances, and film screenings. [14]
Performance Space New York supports two ongoing artist awards, The Spalding Gray Award and The Ethyl Eichelberger Award.
The Spalding Gray Award, named after the groundbreaking monologist Spalding Gray (1941–2004), is sponsored by a consortium that includes Kathleen Russo, Gray's widow; Performance Space New York; the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh; and On the Boards in Seattle. The award comes with a $20,000 commission to create new work and provides for a full production of that work presented by each organization. Past recipients include Tim Etchells, Richard Maxwell, Rabih Mroué, Young Jean Lee, National Theater of the United States of America, Radiohole, and Heather Woodbury.
The Ethyl Eichelberger Award, named for the flamboyant, trailblazing performer Ethyl Eichelberger (1945–1990), is awarded to an artist who "exemplifies Ethyl's larger-than-life style and generosity of spirit; who embodies Ethyl's multi-talented artistic virtuosity, bridging worlds and inspiring those around them." Recipients include Dane Terry, Mike Iveson, Taylor Mac, Julie Atlas Muz, Justin Vivian Bond, Jennifer Miller, Vaginal Davis, John Kelly, and Peggy Shaw.
Ethyl Eichelberger was an Obie award-winning American drag performer, playwright, and actor. He became an influential figure in experimental theater and writing, and wrote nearly forty plays portraying women such as Jocasta, Medea, Nefertiti, Clytemnestra, and Lucrezia Borgia. He became more widely known as a commercial actor in the 1980s.
Jennifer Miller is an American circus entertainer, writer, and professor at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. She has lived with a beard for most of her life. She is a juggler and fire eater. Miller lives in New York City.
MoMA PS1 is a contemporary art institution located in Court Square in the Long Island City neighborhood in the borough of Queens, New York City, United States. In addition to its exhibitions, the institution organizes the Sunday Sessions performance series, the Warm Up summer music series, and the Young Architects Program with the Museum of Modern Art. MoMA PS1 has been affiliated with the Museum of Modern Art since January 2000 and, as of 2013, attracts about 200,000 visitors a year.
Rebecca Moore is an American musician, actress and animal rights activist. Notable for her participation at a very young age in performance art and experimental theater productions, and for her own music, she is also known to some as a muse of the singer Jeff Buckley. She is the daughter of Peter Moore, a photographer of experimental art and artists in NYC and his wife, Barbara, an art historian. After slightly over two decades of work devoted to experimental art, music and activist realms in NYC (1984–2007) Moore went to work in areas of animal rescue & care and animal rights advocacy.
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT) is a modern dance company based in New York City. It was founded in 1958 by choreographer and dancer Alvin Ailey. It is made up of 32 dancers, led by artistic director Robert Battle and associate artistic director Matthew Rushing.
Dixon Place is a theater organization in New York City dedicated to the development of works-in-progress from a broad range of performers and artists. It exists to serve the creative needs of artists—emerging, mid-career and established—who are creating new work in theater, dance, music, literature, puppetry, performance, variety and visual arts.
The Jack H. Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, generally known as NYU Skirball, is an 850-seat theater at 566 LaGuardia Place in Manhattan, New York, owned by New York University. It was named after philanthropist Jack H. Skirball. The theatre was completed in October 2003 and cost approximately $40 million. The architect was Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo and Associates. The institution typically presents two seasons of curated public performances, talks, and events per year.
Alanna Heiss is the Founder and Director of Clocktower Productions, a non profit arts organization, online radio station, and program partnership with six cultural institutions in three boroughs in New York. She founded The Institute for Art and Urban Resources, Inc. in 1971, an organization focused on using abandoned and underutilized New York City buildings for art exhibitions and artists' studios, of which P.S.1 was a part. She served as the director of P.S.1 and its later incarnation, the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center from its founding in 1976 until her retirement in 2008. She is recognized as one of the originators of the alternative space movement.
Black-Eyed Susan is an American actress based in New York City, New York.
Aki Sasamoto is a New York-based artist working in performance and installation. Sasamoto has collaborated with visual artists, musicians, choreographers, dancers, mathematicians and scholars, and is co-founder of the nonprofit interdisciplinary arts organization Culture Push. She was appointed as Assistant Professor in Sculpture at the Yale School of Art in July 2018.
An Octoroon is a play written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. It is an adaptation of Dion Boucicault's The Octoroon, which premiered in 1859. Jacobs-Jenkins reframes Boucicault's play using its original characters and plot, speaking much of Boucicault's dialogue, and critiques its portrayal of race using Brechtian devices. Jacobs-Jenkins considers An Octoroon and his other works Appropriate and Neighbors linked in the exploration of theatre, genre, and how theatre interacts with questions of identity, along with how these questions transform as a part of life. In a 2018 poll by critics from The New York Times, the work was ranked the second-greatest American play of the past 25 years.
Trajal Harrell is an American dancer and choreographer. Best known for a series entitled Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church, Harrell "confronts the history, construction, and interpretation of contemporary dance."
Karen Bernard is an American choreographer and performance artist. Bernard is the Founder and executive director of New Dance Alliance in New York City. Karen Bernard creates nuanced, movement-based work that explores divergent themes surrounding the female body—from motherhood to sex goddess to murder victim. Using sampled dance styles and episodic scenes, Bernard pits everyday life and current events against perceptions of the feminine mystique and aging. The work is developed in the context of location and an intuitive fusion of costuming, sporadic sound scores, video, and minimal sets. Unpredictable choices from the mundane to the extravagant translate into a form that compels my audiences to look at their own experiences from alternative perspectives which, in turn, can alter their actions and reactions.
Muna Tseng is a Chinese-American dancer, choreographer, author and lecturer. She has lived in New York since 1978 and in 1984 founded Muna Tseng Dance Projects in New York City. She created over 40 dance productions and performed in over 30 cities and festivals in 15 countries. Since 1990 she has been the director and executrix of her late brother Tseng Kwong Chi's photography archive. She has served for several years on the 'Current Practice' subcommittee for the annual Bessie Awards, also known as the New York Dance and Performance Awards.
Joya Powell, also known as Joya Powell-Goldstein, is a Bessie Award-winning choreographer, educator, and activist. As the founding artistic director of Movement of the People Dance Company, she is known for creating politically scorching dance-theatre that confronts issues of race and justice.
Lola Pashalinski is an American theatre artist known for her work as a founding member of Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theatrical Company.
John Kelly is an American performance artist, visual artist and writer.
Ryan Ponder McNamara is an American artist known for fusing dance, theater, and history into situation-specific, collaborative performances. McNamara has held performances and exhibitions at Art Basel, The High Line, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, The Whitney Museum, MoMA P.S.1, and The Kitchen amongst other places.
Mariana Valencia is an American contemporary multidisciplinary artist. She was honoured as the "Outstanding Breakout Choreographer" at the 2018 Bessie Awards.
Jenny Schlenzka is a Berlin-born curator of time-based art, currently serving as Executive Artistic Director at Performance Space New York. Schlenzka was the first full-time curator dedicated to performance art at The Museum of Modern Art and established the Sunday Sessions program at MoMA PS1. In March 2023, she was selected to become the next director of Berlin's Martin-Gropius-Bau; her term will begin in September 2023.
Notes
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)