2018 MR Van Lier Emerging Artist of Color Fellows

Movement Research, in partnership with The Chocolate Factory, presents work by the 2018 Movement Research Van Lier Emerging Artist of Color Fellows J. Bouey and Ayano Elson.

Sunday, December 16, 2018
2:30pm, J. Bouey
6pm and 7pm, Ayano Elson

J. Bouey – 2:30pm

Chiron in Leo uses dance and movement-based performance as a practice of exploring what healing trauma is and asks if a fort could provide an imaginative space that both conjure up the memories locked away by trauma and safely supports the conjurer and the audience as they witness a struggle with the Chironian wound.

Ayano Elson – 6pm and 7pm

Artist Ayano Elson has spent the last year collaborating in the dance studio with performer Katie Dean and lighting designer Lillie De through the support of the Movement Research Van Lier Emerging Artist of Color Fellowship.

Inspired by a cluster of physical, aesthetic, and sociopolitical concerns, Double Moon is an investigation of silence, landscape, and the value and division of time. De, Dean, and Elson use the constituent parts of performance — time, bodies, color, and light — as materials to knit together dreamy spaces and to dissolve discrete images into a larger, atmospheric whole. This in-process showing resists linear motion, rejects cause–effect relationships, and creates shapes and surfaces that push back against patriarchal notions of action and climax.

The Fellowship is a year-long program for two NYC movement-based artists of color between 22 and 30 years of age. The fellowship provides creative research support, rehearsal space, mentorship, performance and related opportunities. Designed to support the artists’ individualized creative process, the fellowship uses the resources available to be responsive to each artist’s needs. In addition to providing resources and experiences during the year of their fellowship, the program facilitates support for laying groundwork for the artists’ future. Artists are selected through an open application and panel process. Past Van Lier Emerging Artist of Color Fellows include Fana Fraser (2017), Jasmine Hearn (2016), Shatelle Courvoisier Jackson (2016), and NIC Kay (2017).

The Movement Research Van Lier Emerging Artist of Color Fellowship is supported by New York Community Trust through the Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund.