FREE and open to the public.
Choreographer Reggie Wilson has been in residence at Lynden every summer since 2015. He periodically reimagines evening-length pieces (Moses(es), CITIZEN, POWER) as outdoor works that integrate a large intergenerational cast of local dancers and community members, some of whom have participated in all three performances. In non-performance years, he invites artists and scholars from a variety of fields to share his research residencies, thinking through his own work and contributing to the growth of the CALL & RESPONSE community.
This summer, in a new departure, we are hosting a two-week choreography institute, July 22-August 2, 2024, that builds on Wilson’s long investigation of site sensitivity, relationship with community, and outdoor performance at Lynden. We have invited three emerging choreographers to participate: Oluwadamilare (Dare) Ayorinde, Laila J. Franklin, and Tara Aisha Willis. Wilson is assisted by Fist & Heel performer Annie MingHao Wang. Our goal for the ChoreoLab is to bring each participant--their aesthetic and process--into relationship with Lynden: its grounds, sculpture collection, and resources--including its many publics and its community of artists.
We invite you to share a final, informal showing on August 2.
About the Artists
Reggie Wilson (Executive and Artistic Director, Choreographer, Performer) founded Fist & Heel Performance Group, in 1989. Wilson draws from the cultures of Africans in the Americas and combines them with post-modern elements and his own personal movement style to create what he often calls “post-African/Neo-HooDoo Modern dances.”
His work has been presented nationally and internationally at venues such as Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York Live Arts, and Summerstage (NYC), Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival (Lee, MA), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), UCLA Live, and Redcat (Los Angeles), VSA NM (New Mexico), Myrna Loy (Helena, MT), The Flynn (Burlington, VT), Contemporary Arts Center (New Orleans), Dance Umbrella (Austin, TX), Linkfest and Festival e'Nkundleni (Zimbabwe), Dance Factory (South Africa), Danças na Cidade (Portugal), Festival Kaay Fecc (Senegal), The Politics of Ecstasy, and Tanzkongress 2013 (Germany).
oluwadamilare (dare) ayorinde is a queer black nigerian movement-based artist. they love dance for its capacity to remember, create, and change individual and collective experience. they recognize the inherent power of movement and choice
this past may they graduated from the university of illinois, urbana-champaign with an mfa degree in dance because we just can't get enough. prior to that they were performing, creating work, and guest teaching throughout the tri-state area.
Annie MingHao Wang is a freelancer based in New York and a company member of Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group. She has performed twice at Lynden with Fist and Heel, In CITIZEN and in POWER, and during this residency she was the guest artist for our Wonder, Wander, Move day camp. She is a 2024 LMCC Manhattan Arts Grantee, a 2022-2024 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence, and a 2024 Marble House Project Artist-in-Residence. She has also been in residence at Leimay Foundation, BRIC, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Her work has been presented by Pioneers Go East as part of their Out-FRONT! festival, Movement Research @Judson, Leimay's OUTSIGHT series, Five Myles, Brooklyn's Center for Performance Research, the Exponential Festival, and BRIC. Annie also dances with Sugar Vendil, 水素co. (suisoco.), and Same As Sister.
Photo credit: Iki Nakagawa
Laila J. Franklin is a multidisciplinary dance artist based in Massachusett and Pawtucket land | Boston, Massachusetts, by way of Nocotchotonk and Piscataway land | Washington, DC. She is an alumni of the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, and went of the received a BFA from The Boston Conservatory and an MFA from the University of Iowa. She has been commissioned by Brown University and Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and presented through Public Space One, Loculus Collective’s Sideways Door Festival, School of Contemporary Dance and Thought, and Movement Research at The Judson Church. Her performance credits include projects with Miguel Gutierrez, Melinda Jean Myers, Stephanie Miracle, and Michael Figueroa. She was recently featured as one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” of 2024.
Photo credit: Cameron Kincheloe
Tara Aisha Willis, Ph.D. is a dancer, writer, and curator. She performed in a collaboration between Will Rawls and Claudia Rankine which traveled to Bard College, Danspace Project, Walker Art Center, REDCAT, MCA Chicago, and ICA Boston. She has also performed in works by artists such as Sandra Binion, Kim Brandt, Yanira Castro, Paulina Olowska, devynn emory, and Anna Sperber, and in the 2016 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award-winning performance by The Skeleton Architecture. Her choreographic work includes collaborations with sound artists Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste and Damon Locks, and a forthcoming project with dance artists Anna Martine Whitehead and Zachary Nicol. Her work has been shown at spaces like The Poetry Project, Links Hall, Movement Research at Judson Church, Center for Performance Research, Danspace Project DraftWorks, and Roulette Intermedium, and she has held residencies at Ragdale and Chez Bushwick.
Willis holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from NYU and her monograph in development, Indescribable Moves: Improvised Experiments in Dancing Blackness, explores contemporary practices of improvisation and experimentation in Black dance performances. She will be a 2024-25 Getty Research Institute Postdoctoral Fellow in the African American Art History Initiative and is currently Curator-in-Residence in Dance at The Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) | Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Previously, she has served as Lecturer in Theater and Performance Studies at University of Chicago, Curator of Performance at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and a programmer at Movement Research, as well as founding administrator of their Artists of Color Council. Her writing and editing appears in publications by Women & Performance, TDR/The Drama Review, The Black Scholar, Contact Quarterly, Movement Research Performance Journal, Center for Art Research and Alliances, Sixty Inches From Center, Performance Research, Brooklyn Rail, Center for Book Arts, Dancing While Black, Danspace Project, Wendy's Subway, Getty Research Institute/X Artists’ Books, and forthcoming from University of Illinois Press and Soberscove Press.
Photo credit: Ricardo Adame
The ChoreoLab was made possible, in part, with funds from the Chipstone Foundation, the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, and the Ruth Foundation for the Arts.
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Fee: $16/$12 members for one adult and one child.
