AUNTS FESTIVAL | June 16-21

I am so thrilled, excited, amped, all the energized vibes, to be a part of AUNTS FESTIVAL at Danspace Project this June!

Jess Pretty has taken up the mantle of lead AUNTIE and with her team of founding aunties, friendly aunties, foodie anties, production aunties, are launching the AUNTS way of holding artists and their creations across a whole week.

Including dance classes from CLASSCLASSCLASS and a stacked week of performances starting MONDAY June 16th it is a great time to come see works by incredible, mad, magical, absurd, intense, immense, creators.

Dance Parties follow every performance, and you won’t want to miss any of it. See you there!!!

Tickets + Schedule HERE

FOMO : DIPTYCH at Chocolate Factory Theatre | May 19, 20, 21

Thrilled to have joined this wild bunch as dramaturg and hope you will go check out the way it is DONE! This work is sincerely dreamy, deeply absurd, and necessary for all. GO GO GO!

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Notes on the show BELOW

Performances will take place at The Chocolate Factory Theater, 38-33 24th Street, Long Island City.

View the show program.

The chameleon’s eyes move independently of one another, offering an almost 360 view of its surroundings. Even when both eyes focus on the same object, they do so independently, making the chameleon’s vision a naturally occurring diptych. This remarkable ocular duet is the basis for Berg’s new work FOMO:DIPTYCH. A densely layered performance installation to study the diptych: as a form, a way of viewing, listening, feeling, and consuming. A place where missing something is guaranteed (and ok).

FOMO:DIPTYCH asks if performance – as an inherently ephemeral experience – can help us recognize our capacity to hold multiple perspectives at once, and when considered collectively, reveals the cacophonous jumble of inputs we piece together to make meaning. Our eyes move independently of the eyes of our neighbor, each of our brains collecting only the objects we choose to let in. And where we sit affects what we encounter.

FOMO:DIPTYCH invites the audience to observe the performance from two distinct vantage points: a white box art gallery (with bubbles and conceptual canapes) or a seat at the sports bar (with cheap beer and celebrity bartenders) both within the Chocolate Factory Theater’s new raw space.

created by Laurie Berg in collaboration with Matt Romein (technical design); Madison Krekel and Omar Zubair (sound); Jodi Bender, Ayano Elson, Marion Spencer, Laurie Berg and more (performance); Charlie Welch (sports bar); jess pretty (creative consultant); Shana Crawford (lighting); Shomit Barua (technical associate); and Myssi Robinson (trainview designer).

Podcast | Movers and Shapers

Excited to have had a chance to chat about dance, performance, curation and my art journey recently. Invite me on your podcast! Invite me to your panel, gallery, class, riot! I'm ready to chat about the work we make, how we all make it, and why.

Movers and Shapers A Dance Podcast no.85 hosted by the ever curious Erin Carlisle Norton. Here's me talking about my swirly trajectory, history, practice, peeves and the joy of multitasking. You can also hear it HERE

One of the really great things about Erin’s comprehensive archive is that we hear the lived experience not just the work, you hear artists speak to how the work got made, how the life in this work is being lived. Artists can forget to think of themselves or each other as three dimensional beings, which is wild to me because so much of my practice is those corners and creases where life and dreams meet. It was a pleasure to sit and chat with her. Check out the full archive and listen up!

Podcast | State of the Arts - talking DanceNYC 2019 Symposium

Listen to Remi Harris and I fall in love with Savona over dance and NYC’s wonders HERE or click below for our “lively” lovely chat! Talkin’ Dance/NYC Symposium 2019

Listen to "State of the Arts NYC 4/16/2019 with host Savona Bailey-McClain" on Spreaker.

More from the grand Savona Bailey-McClain’s State of the Arts NYC HERE

State of the Arts NYC is a weekly radio show where various sectors of NYC’s arts worlds converge to report and analyze the dynamic state of the arts and its participants. Hosted by Savona Bailey-McClain, long-time Executive Director of the West Harlem Art Fund (WHAF), she confronts, analyzes and celebrates victories, challenges and changes in the country’s dynamic creative capital. Reports from the field; from the far-flung fringes; from center stage and from behind the scenes—the host Savona Bailey-McClain draws on her 20 years’ in the trenches to bring you snapshot after snapshot in living color. State of the Arts NYC can be heard on iTunes, Radio Public, Youtube, Mixcloud and BRIC Radio.

And check her other magical works HERE or read an inspired interview with Savona HERE!

Sunday Service with Jess Pretty | 03.04.2018 (Queens, NY)

To kick off the spring season of Sunday Service, curator Jess Pretty invites artists to respond to the notion of critical desire and the exploration of radical thriving as a methodology for taking up spaces we claim to reside in. Featuring artists Trinity Dawn Bobo, Taylor Crichton, DJ JCLEF, Amanda Krische, and Evelyn Sanchez

Sunday, March 4th, 2018 | 7:00pm | RSVP on fb HERE

Jess Pretty states, “i’m interested in rigorously interrogating pleasure as a way of living past survival, seeking other worlds and times and spaces for art. other possibilities for our delicate bodies to be present in performance. questioning how are we constantly evaluating the stakes involved in our work-making process. the labor of being unapologetic. i desire work rooted in the fantastic that helps formulate how to queer our own possibilities and modes of migration.”

About Sunday Service
Taking place the first Sunday of each month, a guest curator is invited to organize a salon style evening of cross-disciplinary performances and presentations that brings together a multiplicity of views around a singular prompt, such as a question, theme, or formal structure. Sunday Service centers works in progress, interdisciplinary endeavors, and diversity in format showcased in a lo-fi environment to foster the testing of ideas and critical discourse amongst peers.

Sunday Service is programmed by Stephanie Acosta and Alexis Wilkinson, Knockdown Center’s Director of Exhibitions and Live Art.