Sundays on Broadway and guest curator Ishmael Houston-Jones present an evening of performances by Laurie Berg with Bessie McDonough-Thayer, Jessica Pretty, and Emily Wexler.

Dancers Laurie Berg and Bessie McDonough-Thayer will show material from their modular, inflatable duet. 

Jessica Pretty will show an excerpt from a work-in-progress that interrogates pleasure as a way of living past survival, of seeking other worlds and times and spaces for art. In this, Pretty questions “how we are constantly evaluating the stakes involved in our work-making process, the labor of being unapologetic, the labor of representation, the labor of (in)visibility, the labor of the solo black body, and how to queer our own possibilities and modes of migration.”

Clean Cut is a solo by Emily Wexler that considers breakage. The work includes a large paper floor and wall, scissors, a handmade paper dress, and much dancing. There will be silence and then music. Wexler will create the paper room, then deconstruct and remove it from the space.

 

All events begin at 6:00 pm. Doors open at 5:45 pm at WeisAcres, 537 Broadway, #3. There are no reservations. Seating is first come, first served. Keep in mind, this is a small space! Please arrive on time out of courtesy to the artists.

Beginning this season, we suggest a $10 contribution at the door. With this small contribution, we are able to continue bringing unique performances every Sunday and giving artists an intimate space to share their ideas.

Artists' Bios:

Laurie Berg makes work in a variety of forms including dance and performance, collage, and jewelry. She is a co-organizer of AUNTS, co-curated the Movement Research Spring Festival 2017, was the 2016 recipient of “The Tommy” Award and a 2016-17 LMCC Workspace Artist-In-Residence. Recent works include Terrifying Times Call For Terrifying Jewelry (Dixon Place 2017) The Mineralogy of Objects (Danspace Project, 2015/16) and The Afterlife (New York Live Arts 2013 and Joyce Unleashed at the Invisible Dog Art Center 2014). 

Bessie McDonough-Thayer is an independent dance artist living in Brooklyn. Her solo work has been shown at Roulette, Danspace Project's Food for Thought curated by Stacy Szymaszek, CPR New Voices in Live Performance Series, AUNTS, Movement Research at Judson Church, and BRINK at Dixon Place. Most recently, she was the recipient of a Movement Research GPS grant for a 2-week residency program at ZIL Culture Center in Moscow, Russia.

Jess Pretty is on a quest for pleasure that transcends time and the spaces she claims to reside in. on her quest for pleasure she makes dances, performs and collaborates with with other artists (larissa velez-jackson, will rawls, leslie cuyjet, dianne mcintyre, cynthia oliver, jennifer monson and niall jones) and teaches dance art based in new york city where she moved after receiving an mfa in dance and queer studies from the university of illinois at urbana champaign. her free time is filled curating methodologies for living past survival through being as unapologetically black as possible.

Emily Wexler is a Brooklyn based choreographer, dancer, writer, and teacher of experimental dance composition. Her work is devoted to helping people find ways to be wild and free. She works at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and the School of Visual Art in New York.

 

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Sundays on Broadway is made possible in part with public funds from Creative Engagement, supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and administered by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

Lower Manhattan Cultural Council empowers artists by providing them with networks, resources, and support, to create vibrant, sustainable communities in Lower Manhattan and beyond. LMCC.net