This event has been postponed to follow University policies that have been put in place in light of new developments related to the coronavirus.

Artist Jaamil Olawale Kosoko is at EMPAC for the world premiere of Chameleon: A Biomythography. The result of four technical development residencies at EMPAC, Chameleon is a multimedia live artwork that explores: “the fugitive realities and shapeshifting demands of surviving at the intersection of Blackness, gender fluidity, and queerness in contemporary America.” In this new work, the stage is saturated with melanated tones and pigments—intensified by Africanist texts and iconography from Luther Vandross to Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, where the term “biomythography” originates.

The stage becomes a site of ecstatic spiritual fantasy in which grief is punctuated by moments of beauty, care, and pleasure. The setting features live and recorded performers who embody, film, document, and re-embody sources of curated archival imagery. Drawing from an ongoing fascination with Black diasporic spiritual practice and by what the artist calls “erotic digitality,” Kosoko uses the apparatus of the theater to conjure an environment of disarming emotional complexity.

Choreographer Michelle Ellsworth has a prolific body of work that skirts the disciplinary perimeters of dance, theater, film, carpentry, web design, and more. She has a knack for mixing humor and candor to perform elaborate systems with physical materials like wood and gears. Her work cleaves—paradoxically meaning both “divide” and “adhere”—the body and technology.

Ellsworth and her technicians will work with the EMPAC team in an exploratory collaboration. Residencies immerse us in the creative process of artists we trust and whose work we cherish as they work with our team to discover new ideas and approaches.

As a part of this residency and to introduce the artist to EMPAC audiences, Ellsworth will be in conversation with curator Ashley Ferro-Murray at a work-in-progress event to contextualize her body of work and illuminate her creative process in developing the new project.

Work-in-progress events offer a window into the research, development, and production of new works by artists in residence at EMPAC. These free events open up a dialogue between our audiences, artists, and EMPAC staff.

Refreshments will be served.

Contemporary-dance choreographer Christopher K. Morgan is artistic director of his namesake Washington, DC–based dance company, as well as Executive Artistic Director of Dance Place in DC and Director of the Dance Omi International Dance Collective in Ghent, NY. For his last work, Pōhaku (2016), Morgan diverged from his principal roll as choreographer of a contemporary-dance ensemble to create a personal solo that addressed his indigenous Hawaiian heritage and separation from his ancestral land. In Pōhaku, the choreographer explored the aesthetic and social complexities between Morgan’s Western modern and Indigenous Hawaiian dance lineages. Now continuing similar investigations with his company, Morgan’s new work Native Intelligence / Innate Intelligence incorporates modern dance, hula, Hawaiian chant, and live music to examine the location and meaning of home and belonging.

Morgan is at EMPAC to develop and build the set for Native Intelligence / Innate Intelligence by collaborating with mixed-media sculpture artist Brenda Mallory. Mallory uses cloth, fibers, beeswax, and found objects together with what she identifies as “crude hardware” to create works that imply tenuous connections or evidence of repair.

While Morgan and Mallory will be at work with EMPAC’s crew to construct the set of Native Intelligence / Innate Intelligence during the days of this residency, Morgan’s company dancers will work in the studio at night to develop a movement vocabulary from the materials designed for the stage set. These explorations  between the sculptural materials of the set in relationship to movement are the focus of this event.

In addition to the work-in-progress event, Morgan will be hosting a workshop for students. Space is limited, please contact the box office for more information.

Work-in-progress events offer a window into the research, development, and production of new works by artists in residence at EMPAC. These free events open up a dialogue between our audiences, artists, and EMPAC staff.

A public reception will follow the performance. Refreshments will be served.

In dance, gravity is often associated with ascension and descension. Taiwanese choreographer and new-media artist Su Wen-Chi is collaborating with physicist Diego Blas to more accurately embody the principle of gravity in dance.

Su Wen-Chi is well versed at working with interactive media in live performance. Her large-scale solo WAVE (2011/2014), for example, included an 81-channel audio installation of individually motorized LED light boxes that were choreographed in concert with the dancer’s movements. Su is founder of YiLab, which is a group of artists integrating technology with the performing arts to expand their palette of performance.

She is in residence at EMPAC during the prototyping stages of the new work. The artist and three collaborators will explore how live interaction between a dancer, EMPAC’s Wave Field Synthesis Array, and light might open possibilities for illustrating the effects of gravity as floating and suspension in outer space. Along with her team from Taiwan, Su will work in the studio with local Hudson, NY–based choreographer Adam Weinert and will then present a work-in-progress event at the end of her residency. 

Work-in-progress events offer a window into the research, development, and production of new works by artists in residence at EMPAC. These free events open up a dialogue between our audiences, artists, and EMPAC staff.

The Unarrival Experiments – Unconcealment Ceremonies is a new live performance installation work by artist Ni’Ja Whitson that is designed to amplify the dark. In dialogue with Yorùbá Cosmology, Astrophysics, and research on the “blackest black,” the work centers the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy through a Black, Queer, and Transembodied lens. Dark matter and dark energy serve as portals to interrogating spaces of the unknown, yet that which have an unequivicated impact on the composition of the universe.

Spring 2023

Sage Ni’Ja Whitson is in residence at EMPAC for three weeks to work with architect Valery Augustin on designing a dome structure to aid in visualizing darkness while also allowing for the seamless integration of immersive VR, projection, and spatial audio.

Spring 2022

Artist Ni’Ja Whitson is at EMPAC to continue set, lighting, video, and Virtual Reality design for their upcoming EMPAC commission, The Unarrival Experiments — Unconcealment Ceremonies. Work includes developing a proof of concept for a performance dome.

Summer 2020

Whitson is in residence at EMPAC to design a performance dome that aids in visualizing darkness while also allowing for the seamless integration of immersive VR, projection, and spatial audio. The highly technical multimedia environment will cradle performers and audience members alike in embodied encounter, collectivity, invisibility, and cosmos.

Ellsworth and her technical collaborators will meet with EMPAC engineers to develop a new work. Ellsworth will present past works and share the process behind the new work in a work-in-progress event.

Choreographer Christopher K. Morgan is in residence with artistic collaborator Brenda Mallory to design and construct a set for the choreographer’s new work, Native Intelligence / Innate Intelligence. There will be a work-in-progress event at EMPAC before the work premieres at Dance Place in Washington, DC, in spring 2020.

Spring 2020

Choreographer and new-media artist Su Wen-Chi has returned with three collaborators to explore live interaction between a performer, EMPAC’s Wave Field Synthesis Array, and light. The artist will explore the concept of gravity and the residency will culminate in a work-in-progress event.

Fall 2019

Choreographer and new media artist Su Wen-Chi is in residence, attending the Spatial Audio Summer Seminar and meeting with Curator Ashley Ferro-Murray and production team members to discuss a potential production residency in January 2020.

>>returner<< is a performance work spanning theater and dance that illustrates different relationships between nature, people, and technology. Conceived by the Norwegian performance company Findlay//Sandsmark, led by Iver Findlay and Marit Sandsmark, the performance features motion-capture and animation technology, which interacts live with video and sound content. In addition to these digital media, the performers inhabit a world of natural stage elements including wooden sticks, a narrow wooden hallway, and a large cube that transforms over the course of the performance. What results is a performance environment in which audience expectations are both met and defied as the two performers play with perception and sensation. 

Findlay and Sandsmark are in residence at EMPAC with their company to further develop the project’s body-sensor and animation content. In its use of this technology, >>returner<< demonstrates a wariness of the inflexible binaries that one-to-one body-technology interactions engender: including presence/absence, natural/manufactured, and real/virtual. The performance weaves between and around these binaries to question them without dismantling them entirely—a nod to their unavoidable if not regrettable ubiquity in our daily lives. Attempting to avoid the trap of technophillic engagement, >>returner<< creates an at-times chilling piece of performance.

Choreographer Yanira Castro is in residence at EMPAC with sound collaborator Stephan Moore to explore possible uses of the Wave Field Synthesis (WFS) Array in participatory dance work.

Volunteer Day—Friday, December 6th at 2:30PM

EMPAC welcomes volunteers to assist the artists in the exploration of Wave Field Synthesis. Volunteers will be welcomed into the WFS Array to hear whispers and movement instructions that they can follow. As the bodies move through the space the sounds might follow them, or begin to sound different as others leave and enter the space.

At the end of participants’ time exploring the sounds, we will have a conversation with the artists about what people heard, perceived, and felt throughout their experience to consider the efficacy of using Wave Field Synthesis in live performance with audience members sharing a stage with performers.

How to Participate

If you are interested in participating, please meet in the EMPAC lobby at 2:30pm on Friday, December 6th.