The “Black Black Black” Week
A Guest Curation by Beyond the Black Box

  • RUNTIME: 90 minutes with an intermission.

    Please note portions of tonights performance contain nudity, language and the use of water-based haze.

    blackinHD by Dorchel Haqq & Hakeem Olayinka
    duendita

    INTERMISSION

    found: MADAN SARA by Arielle François
    Lets Influence Pretending     by Claude Cj Johnson
    Work in Progress by Cemiyon Barber

  • RUNTIME: 90 minutes with an intermission.

    Please note portions of tonights performance contain strobe lighting and the use of water-based haze.

    I Believed It Too Kashia Kancey*
    *Tonight will be blackinHD by Dorchel Haqq & Hakeem Olayinka
    Chanel Stone *SATURDAY ONLY

    INTERMISSION

    found: MADAN SARA by Arielle François
    SORAYA Ashley Pierre-Louis
    Lamb
    Work in Progress by Cemiyon Barber

  • Beyond the Black Box (BBB) is an arts and cultural organization that amplifies black voices by building connections and educating people through experiences. We are a group of black dancers dedicated to celebrating, honoring, and healing the black dance community. We felt a lack of support and representation in the dance world when we were young, which motivated us to deliberately build the spaces our younger selves would thrive in. We encourage artists who uphold and advance the social and political principles of inclusiveness, fairness, and visibility. BBB celebrates and shares the accomplishments of our community by producing creative multidisciplinary works, such as live dance productions, community work, mentorship, and education that incorporate popular culture and are laced with enthusiasm.

Solo portrait of duendita smiling in a red tank top.

  • A manifestation of us

    Created and Performed:
    Dorchel Haqq and Hakeem Olayinka

    Costumes:
    Dorchel Haqq, Hakeem Olayinka, Chanel Stone’s Closet

    Sound and Set Design:
    Dorchel and Hakeem

    Dorchel Haqq, raised in Harlem, explores fantasy and abstracts the echo of transgenerational growth in her body of culture through film, sound exploration and object investigations.

    Hakeem Olayinka, a Nigerian – American artist from Washington DC paints portraits that are often mast or adorn in vibrant colors that create portals. Portals that allow an intimate conversation between the figures in these works and the audience.

    Dorchel and Hakeem combine their practices to create worlds that immerses viewers energetically and holistically.

    This performance will be different every night. We love our BBB fam. It takes a village<3.

    Photo courtesy of the artist.

  • Created by Claude Cj Johnson in collaboration with Jada Jenai

    Performance:
    Jada Jenai

    Music:
    "City Lights" by Austin Farewell"Periphery" by Emptyset"SpongeBob Tomfoolery"and original composition by Zach Berns

    A Chicago native, Claude Cj Johnson is a dancer, choreographer, and movement director. After finishing his studies at The Chicago Academy for the Arts and Suny Purchase College, where he was awarded the Adopt-A-Dancer Scholarship, Claude then became a full-time company dancer with A.I.M. by Kyle Abraham from 2017-2022 where he became a Princess Grace 2021 nominee. Claude has gotten the opportunity to perform works by Kyle Abraham, Merce Cunningham, Trisha Brown, Aszure Barton, Johannes Weiland, Doug Varone, Kevin Wynn, Nicole Von Arks, Keerati Junakunwiphat, Princess Madoki and many more. As a performer and black queer artist, Claude dances to translate the human experience to audiences to recognize the art form of dance as the best catalyst to motivate self-expression and social change. In any artistic space he believes his responsibility is to increase the knowledge and perspective of his community’s vast experience.

    Special thanks to Jada Jenai for being apart of this collaboration with me.You are such a stellar artist my dear, looking forward to more in the future.

    Photo by Art Davison.

  • found: MADAN SARA reinforces the significance of self, through the narrative of a Madan Sara, market woman from Port-Au-Prince Haiti.

    Created and performed by:
    Arielle François

    Produced by:
     LILLTH Music, LePoodle, and Rudy LaFrance

    Arielle François creates multimedia dance spectacula; using live audio-looping, projection mapping, film, and puppetry, in collaboration with her community, as a creative and critical study of Afro-American and Afro-Caribbean culture and dance. She works to create containers where Black woman can embrace their inherit abundance.

    A first generation Haitian originally from Kissimmee Florida, François investigates these dances through site specific performances, that often respond to their local ecosystem.

    They have created with Coca-Cola, Carlotta Guerrero, Monica Lopez De Victoria and Prada. Also, performed in films by Helen Piña and NOWNESS as well as music videos for John Legend and Saweetie. With their expansive concert dance repertoire, they have been awarded as one of the Merce Cunningham Trust Barbara Easley Awards Recipients for 2023. Arielle believes in the power of black joy and hope being at the center of her narratives and is really interested in exploring the mundane magic of Black women's life’s.

    Special thanks to Simone Leigh and Adele Myers and Dancers. The Perez Art Museum, Miami Dance Makers and The National Young Arts Foundation for facilitating this works initial installation.

    Photo courtesy of the artist.

  • A Work in Progress

    @cemiyon

  • I Believed It Too is a solo in progress about a woman trapped inside of a destructive false reality she is desperate to escape from. She’s experienced it so long that it seems real to her. During the solo she sheds a multitude of performative layers while facing several battles and illustrating numerous realities and characters that represent the world she’s trapped inside of.

    Created and performed by Kashia Kancey

    Sound Editor: Cristina Moya-Palacios

    Kashia Kancey is a Miami-born performer and choreographer, who earned her BFA in Dance from New World School of the Arts. Some of her choreographic history includes having work presented in The Carnival Studio Theater at the Adrienne Arsht Center, Movement Research at Judson Church, Dixon Place and CreateART Performance. Kashia has performed in spaces like Perez Art Museum Miami, South-Miami Dade Cultural Arts Center, Dance Place DC, the American Dance Festival, The Yard, and New York Live Arts. She has danced with Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre, Adele Myers and Dancers, and Abby Z and the New Utility. Kashia was most recently an apprentice with Urban Bush Women and is a company member with David Dorfman Dance. She is also a 2023 Gallim Moving Artist in Residence. Kashia is based in Brooklyn, NY, and continues to pursue her career as a performer and choreographer.

    Thank you to Chanel and the team at BBB and Triskelion Arts. Thank you to all my friends and loved ones who keep showing up for me and inspiring me to perform and make work.

    @kashiakancey

    Photo courtesy of the artist.

  • With initial inspiration stemming from Nicole Krauss’ short story Switzerland—a part of a larger book entitled To Be A Man – SORAYA aims to create a safe world/environment for the soloist to live and thrive inside. In this world, explorations within the in-between of “the beginning of [my] sense of self and the chaos of [my] strongest feelings” will take place, culminating in a found unassailable power, rooted in the erotic.

    Choreography & Performance by Ashley Pierre-Louis

    Music by Bibio & Rival Consoles

    Ashley Pierre-Louis is originally from Miami, FL. With education from New World School of the Arts and later from Florida State University, Pierre-Louis began to discover her passion for movement, the human form, and arts administration. Pierre-Louis is currently an artist and creator freelancing and exploring choreography in New York City. When making, she asks herself and audiences to imagine what our physical, emotional, and psychic expressions of what is deepest and strongest and richest within each of us is, and how we can share them collectively in order to create a sense of freedom in the mind and body. She currently works with Shamel Pitts’ multidisciplinary performance collective TRIBE as a performer, maker, and dramaturg, with Indigenous choreographer Emily Johnson in her newest multi-scalar creation, Being Future Being, and with Edisa Weeks’ DELIRIOUS Dances as a performer in 3 Rites: Life & Happiness. Pierre-Louis is also the Dream Partner/ Program Manager for Florida State University’s study domestic program, Arts in NYC.

    Special Thanks // Program notes: The creation and development of SORAYA is made possible in part by JACK, Baryshnikov Arts Center, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Special thanks to Shamel Pitts & TRIBE for your deeply rooted support in me & the continued development of this work.

    Thank you Chanel Stone, Beyond the Black Box, and Triskelion teams for inviting me to share this work with my NYC community!

    @ashleypierrelouis

    Photo courtesy of the artist.

  • Anna Wotring (Director of Production), a Pittsburgh native, is a community-minded dance artist, designer, and production stage manager committed to the practice of collaborative leadership. She currently works with Annie Heath, Lauren Horn, Jennifer Nugent and slowdanger as a technical design consultant, dancer, and production stage manager. Wotring obtained her BFA in Dance at the Five College Dance Department in Western Massachusetts. She has had the privilege of working with a multitude of dance organizations, including Alvin Ailey Studios, Attack Theater, Ballet Des Ameriques, BalletNext, Bill T Jones/Arnie Zane Company, the Dance Conservatory of Pittsburgh, Dance Place, H2O Contemporary Dance, Monica Bill Barnes and Company, New York Live Arts, the Pillow Project, Prayers of the People, RoseAnne Spradlin, Scapegoat Garden, Time Lapse Dance, and many others. Wotring is beyond excited to begin working and imagining with the Trisk team. @annaissupercool

We respectfully acknowledge that the work of Triskelion Arts is situated on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of Lenapehoking, the homeland of the Lenape peoples. We pay our respects to their land, water, and ancestors, past, present, and future. This acknowledgment demonstrates a commitment to the process of working to dismantle the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism and to learning to be better stewards of this land.

Next Up At Trisk…

STUART B MEYERS

THE DYBUKK PART 2, OR STILL BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

OCT 12-14, 2023

Trisk is turning 23 on SEPT 30!

For our 23rd birthday we want to celebrate with YOU!

We will be hanging out from 2pm onward, so come through any time. There will be cake, treats, and cocktails, with a special toast and surprises at 6pm.


Trisk Presents is brought to you in part by: