Sundays on Broadway curator Cathy Weis with co-curators David Guzman and Zo Williams present an evening of performances by Jonathan Matthews-Guzman, Nailah Murray, Quiet Ambassador and Sakura Shimada.

Jonathan Matthews-Guzman’s What Will We Do? is a fully improvisational attempted recounting of plans for a previous piece by the same title. As this process unfolds, a musical selection from the work in question will be played at random, throwing a wrench of planned spontaneity into the remembrance. It is a seed for an ongoing series of multidisciplinary improvisational performances investigating setting intentions while honoring the mood the performer may or may not be in to realize them in the moment.

Nailah Murray will present a duet performed alongside Ricky Crews. Two solos defined by interruption and mirrored experience.

Quiet Ambassador is a sound and movement collective with dance artists Levi Gonzalez and Rachel Bernsen, and composer and vocalist Kyoko Kitamura. Together, they engage the synchrony and dyssynchrony of movement and sound as an integrated whole. As a trio, they prioritize listening, sonic and spatial connection, and mutual inspiration. They conjure both naturalistic and constructed environments as expressions of compositional ideas, reorienting our senses and the senses of the audience to imagined landscapes shaped by vibration, speech, and movement invention. They move the air.

This summer, Sakura Shimada encountered Amish and Mennonite people, bears, loons, mushrooms, and a Japanese wrestler, Mayu Iwatani. For some reason, she says, they led her to find resilience and a piece of love in her heart.

Sundays on Broadway
6:00 p.m. - doors open at 5:45 p.m.
WeisAcres, 537 Broadway #3
New York, NY 10012

All donations go to the performers.
$5-20 suggested.

Artists' bios:

Rachel Bernsen is a Brooklyn-based dance artist whose performance practice is rooted in collaboration, including her multi-year project, NOVEL FORMATS, a cycle of seven dances. She works regularly with saxophonist and composer Caroline Davis and with multimedia and sound artist Jean Carla Rodea. Past works include I Know You So Well, with writer Rachel Kauder Nalebuff and multiple works with visual artist Megan Craig. She co-founded the performance collective Masters of Ceremony (w/ Melanie Maar, Abraham Gomez-Delgado, Taylor Ho Bynum), and has performed with Yvonne Rainer and Emily Coates. Bernsen has worked with composer Anthony Braxton on multiple projects as movement director and performer, including his opera Trillium J. As a movement educator and Alexander Technique teacher she has taught most recently at Yale University, Dartmouth College, Bennington College, and ongoing at Movement Research.

Levi Gonzalez is a dance artist from Los Angeles and New York City. Through his work, he has consistently engaged in artistic inquiries around the sensorium, creative process, concepts of normativity, and international investigations of the body and its impact across cultures. He collaborates regularly with luciana achugar, and has performed with Donna Uchizono Company and Juliette Mapp, among many others. His choreographic work has been presented extensively in New York City as well as nationally and internationally in Denmark, Romania, Taiwan, and other locations. He has participated in multiple artistic exchange projects in Eastern Europe and South America, engaging with artists, writers, scholars and arts advocates throughout these regions. He served as the Director of Artist Programs for Movement Research from 2012 to 2016, and is currently on the dance faculty of Bennington College.

Kyoko Kitamura is a Brooklyn-based vocal improviser, composer and multidisciplinary artist. She co-leads the Siren Xypher Collective (with Melanie Dyer and Mara Rosenbloom), the quartet Geometry (with Taylor Ho Bynum, Joe Morris, and Tomeka Reid), and performs in William Parker’s PocketWatch. Kitamura is also a co-producer of the Brooklyn Free Spirit Festival. For over a decade, Kitamura collaborated extensively with Anthony Braxton, performing in his Trillium operas, directing the 11-hour recording GTM(Syntax)2017, and creating the acclaimed documentary Introduction to Syntactical Ghost Trance Music. Interdisciplinary vocal credits include Matthew Barney’s Secondary, Audra Wolowiec’s (waves) and AIR. An active educator, Kitamura has taught at Bennington College, Dartmouth College, and The New School.

Jonathan Matthews-Guzmán is a biracial, nonbinary, and neurodivergent performer, creator, and educator who seeks to use their multidisciplinary aesthetic toolbox to bridge their various hyphens. Hailing from Memphis, TN, Matthews-Guzmán came to New York to study at Tisch Dance where they also became a dance accompanist. They have collaborated with a wide array of ensembles, including Darrah Carr Dance, Valerie Green/Dance Entropy, ChristinaNoel & The Creature, and This is Not a Theatre Company, and formed a performance duo, called BREAKTIME, with classmate Holly Sass. They currently reside in Newburgh, NY, where they music direct at St. George's Episcopal Church and facilitate a weekly community movement practice. In the city, Matthews-Guzmán accompanies at NYU/Tisch, Barnard College, and the Ailey School, and, on occasion, can be found writing about performance for Eye on Dance and the Arts.

Nailah Murray is a Brooklyn-based dance artist. She trained in Capoeira Angola with her father, Contramestre Chicago, throughout her childhood and adolescence. This early introduction to movement drove her to explore technical dance training. Inspired by and in conversation with artists familiar with the urgency of making, Murray uses interdisciplinary modes and textiles to create dynamic physical spaces.

Sakura Shimada studied dance in New York City. She was a Movement Research Artist-in Residence in 2008-09. She has lived in Vermont since 2004, and has been traveling and co teaching with Daniel Lepkoff all over the world. She is a Feldenkrais practitioner.