Ayano Elson
Part Song/Immortal Life (2024)
Part Song/Immortal Life draws on the community-centered participatory design text A Pattern Language (Christopher Alexander, Murray Silverstein, and Sara Ishikawa 1977). “I am dancing in the tension between public site and individual desire,” Elson writes. Performers Amelia Heintzelman, Jade Manns, and evan ray suzuki; composer Matt Evans; and musicians Leo Chang, Tristan Kasten-Krause, and Zosha Warpeha treat the space as a site of surveillance—disappearing, disguising, revealing, and tracking the body within the architecture of the church and processing sensations of seduction, communion, speculation, and violence.
Danspace Project New York, NY
Split Bill with Wendell Gray II November 2024
Draftworks February 2024
PRESS:
Reflections: A Shared Evening with Ayano Elson + Wendell Gray II by Noa Rui-Piin Weiss for Danspace Project Journal
IMPRESSIONS: Danspace Project Presents “Ayano Elson + Wendell Gray II: A Shared Evening”by Catherine Train for The Dance Enthusiast
Shadows Later (2023)
Shadows Later mines and processes an archive of public artworks and private memories—each of which relates to the American modern dancer (broadly) and my collaborators and myself (narrowly). Shadows Later features my longtime collaborators Liz Charky (lighting), Matt Evans (music), Amelia Heintzelman (dance), Jade Manns (dance), and myself (dance).
Pageant Brooklyn, NY
October 2023
Poor Image (2023) - in progress
This new work by CPR 2022 Artist-in-Residence Ayano Elson investigates the roles of labor and power in contemporary American dance-making. Using improvisatory choreographic, musical, and text-based scores, Poor Image examines sites of conflict that emerge through the process of translation. The work envisions points at which reconstruction, desire, and loss become necessary to bring unseen, implicit material closer to the surface. Leveraging the collaborative environment of CPR, for this in-progress presentation, Elson and performers use control and instability as primary poles while experimenting within fixed patterns and a fixed space. Elson will be joined by Matt Evans, Savannah Gaillard, Amelia Heintzelman, and ensemble musicians Robby Bowen, Johann Diedrick, Charlie Gangemi, Max Levin, Jemila MacEwan, Hank Mason, Livvy Marcus, and Tommy Martinez.
Sunday Salon
Center for Performance Research Brooklyn NY
March 12, 2023