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!

This Bridge Called My Ass | Montpellier Danse , France

So thrilled to have shared our strange, loud, writhing, baby with new audiences at Montpellier Danse this summer! The incredible opportunity to translate the work in scale and to see it’s form on reapproach was such a gift. Tuçe Yasak (lights) and Sarah Lurie (tour/tech magician) created a world that expanded our plain without shifting our scope, I mean LOOK AT THAT LIGHT FEST, And getting to throw micro dance parties in the courtyard before the rest of the fest arrived was an added bonus. Continuously in gratitude to have built this work with Miguel Gutierrez and this full team of creators.

\\\ COMING SOON \\\ Touring continues this Fall and Winter so catch us, book us, check it!

This Bridge Called My Ass is touring these brown buns all over starting with

• TBA Festival (7-8, Portland) this September,

• San Fransisco in October - dates TBA

Keeping you warm in January 2020:

• Walker (16-18, Minneapolis) followed by the

• Wexner (24-26, Columbus)! So thrilled to keep connecting with these humans and sharing this strange unpacking with more audiences.

Antonym | Work-in-Progress Showing at Mabou Mines | NYC

Summer creates in slow but surely and with it new collaborations, projects and travels emerge from their wintery slumber. It’s only right that I find myself working with ideas of winter among many other’s in this early work in progress collaboration with composer and interdisciplinary artist Sugar Vendil on her residency work Antonym showing this week at Mabou Mines. I’m excited to be creating with such a force and featuried artists Hajnal Pivnick and Laura Cocks who bring the work to life.

I hope you’ll join us for one of the FREE showings below and if not I hope you’ll catch the premiere of the full work in the future. Check out Sugar and all they are up to HERE and more on our showings below!

+++++++++++++++++++++++

ANTONYM

Created by Sugar Vendil

featuring Hajnal Pivnick and Laura Cocks

along with video projections by Stephanie Acosta

and fashion looks by Mimi Prober

SHowings May 22 @ 7p + May 23 @7:30p w/talk back

ALL SHOWINGS FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Mabou Mines
150 First Avenue, Second Floor
New York, NY 10009

“Antonym” is an interdisciplinary piece that connects sound, movement, and projection design. There’s no antonym for nostalgia. “Antonym” (working title) attempts to construct the thing we don’t have a word for: if nostalgia is a yearning for the past, “Antonym” longs for forward motion and envisions the future as an escape from pain. Using field recordings of New York City throughout the year, the four seasons serve as a cyclical frame and context for memory. This performance will show the first completed movement I. Winter: Now, Then, and then. It features composer-pianist Sugar Vendil, violinist Hajnal Pivnik, flutist Laura Cocks, projection design by Stephanie Acosta, and costumes by fashion designer Mimi Prober.

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!

This Bridge Called My Ass | NY Times + Opening!!! - NY

It is unbelievable, that after what feels more like a lifetime than a year, 3 residencies, 2 countries, countless applications, successes, failures, we prepare to open and share what we have created with you. Continuing to collaborate with Miguel Gutierrez and this band of talented creators has come or created a moment of great searching and growth and I’m so very thankful this mad world is resisted in these rooms of mad love.

THIS BRIDGE CALLED MY ASS

Opens Jan 9th as part of American Realness 2019 at the Chocolate Factory

In This Bridge Called My Ass six Latinx performers – Alvaro Gonzalez, John Gutierrez, Miguel Gutierrez, Xandra Ibarra, Nibia Pastrana Santiago, and Evelyn Sanchez Narvaez – map an elusive choreography of obsessive and perverse action within an unstable terrain of bodies, materials and sound. A formal logic binds the group and propels them to create a constantly transforming world where their togetherness retains autonomy to complicate the idea of identity. Clichéd Latin-American songs and the form of the telenovela are exploited to show how familiar structures contain absurdity that reveal and celebrate difference.

Grab tickets HERE! <—-Update we are SOLD OUT but there will be a waitlist nightly beginning at 7:15 so be there early and get in! We have a limited and strict capacity so get on in here early all!

Nina Westervelt for The New York Times

And check us out in the SUNDAY NY TIMES where Gia Kourlas chatted with Miguel Gutierrez and I about our mad process and snuck in to see what we’ve been up to. It is always such a gift to be seen, and properly quoted no less.

N E W Z L E T T E R - This Saturday/Season/Beyond

N E W Z L E T T E R is OUT and you can read it HERE and subscribe HERE for next time!

or read below!

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November 08, 2018

This SATURDAY, this SEASON and the BEYOND from Acosta Studios

by Stephanie Acosta

Hi all! Connections, reinforcing, constructing, restoring, repairing, the work feels endless, and it is, the stuff of living with accountability, with engagement, with open eyes and arms and hearts, is HARD WORK and it is also WORTH IT.  Let's keep on keeping together.  

In love, revolution and solidarity, Stephanie 

F I R S T L Y  - as in THIS SATURDAY NY 
Workshop | Stephanie Acosta: Empathetic Landscape + Cosmic Bodies - Using imagined interiors in movement practice.

Saturday 2-4p | Recess 46 Washington Avenue, Brooklyn, NY | FREE + presented as part of "Camilo Godoy: Out of Control" 
Register FREE on Eventbrite or Facebook 

In the workshop we'll translate ideas thru multiple systems, including sensory + moving meditations, writing, and vocal engagement, testing and embodying specific approaches utilized in my score building. Thinking about how to engage interior curiosity, articulate the abstract and in the process engage in philosophical considerations of body, life and place-ness. The workshop is based on our rehearsal practice, and the current research project Good Day God Damn. 
All body types + experience levels are W E L C O M E! 

AND THEN...

 This electric evening includes live music, rituals, short film screening, along with a work-in-progress showing of The Judiths of Virtuous Dissent, a performance developed by Nessa Norich + her ensemble of interdisciplinary artists. Channeling the fullness of our grief, anger + love into a prismatic vision of a heroine who vanquished the forces of violence with the force of feeling. 

I am excited to be supporting the work of a dear one, and to be spending time supporting Well of Wills and these fierce femmes who are tackling the darkness with More Light! 

Candle Lighting + Performance | 7:30p
Celebration + Short Film screening + Live Art | 9p

Tickets are LIMITED so grab yours HERE 
RSVP- Facebook  #thejudithproject

AND THEN...

Can you believe it's the FINAL SUNDAY SERVICE of the SEASON?! Season 4 has been another inspired and surprising series with curators Pamela Liou, Julia Stanoli, and Zavé Martohardojo each bringing entirely new and beautiful ways to entangle our worlds, expand out listening, and shake out our feels. My gratitude abounds. 

THIS month brings us my brother in crime Miguel Gutierrez presenting four humans to embrace and engage ancestry,examing how we hold, tether, pull and make space for the past in our future as well as how the future might carry the past.
 
Featuring Bryanna Bradley, Camilo Godoy, Evelyn Sanchez Narvaez, + Xtian W. 

December 9th | 7pm
Knockdown Center
RSVP - Eventbrite | Facebook 

As always F R E E + as always Sunday Service is programmed by myself + the illustrious Alexis Wilkinson.  

And don't fret we will be back with news on Season 5 shortly, so stay tuned, year three is gonna be a blow-out! 


R E C E N T L Y 

Recently wrapped up a 10 day mini-residency at the Chocolate Factory, curated by Blaze Ferrer and generously hosted by all. Returning to our research we were able to more deeply develop and share this continuous expression and search for sanity. Joined once again by the graces of Leslie Cuyjet, Angie Pittman, Jessie Young, and Miriam Gabriel, with tech support from long time collaborator Rory Murphy, we were able to continue our writing, filming and movement development we hope to have a larger sharing of final works including a publication, new scripted and abstract video experiments and a final evening length journey through this landscape. Stay tuned!

Oh right, and just a little bleed in from my other life to tell you that I got to create a 7 screen video installation for the 30th anniversary tour for The Pixies which has been a real fun and strange and surprising experience. Highlighting the aesthetics of their vast ouvoir and expanding on interviews with Art Director Vaughan Oliver, I have enjoyed every minute of working with these long time loves, and can't wait to catch it live in Brooklyn next week! You should TOO! THE FUCKING PIXIES!  


L A S T L Y 

I have begun work on a new series that is not altogether new because few things are, but perhaps a return to some gnawing internal questions on autobiography, messy morphing identities and those who bare witness to our decay.  I hope to tell you more soon but for now, please know that I am out here working and thinking for and of you, and I am here if you need me, if I can be, and when I can't, I'll be in the studio. 

See you in the streets and stages and all the in between! 
 

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More Light! | Comin' at ya Dec 4th Brooklyn

Amidst volunteering, community support, personal practices, it's hard to know what you can do to feel whole or see the light. 🕯️ Nessa Norich and her crew of performance beings are putting this evening together, and I am not only THERE for it, I'm also a supporting producer. 🎂 Did I mention it's ON MY BIRTHDAY?!

So come learn about the rebellious Judith who cut off her oppressors head with a FUCKING KNIFE (#goals) or join us for rituals of light and joy, and for the freakin' dancing, because we can need/do that TOO! 🕯️Tickets in the comments! 🕯️ Snag one HERE and see you THERE!

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MORE LIGHT!

A Community Celebration at the Intersection of Art, Activism and Spirituality 

On December 4th, we find one another in the darkness, sharing the weight of our struggle and illuminating the light of our joy. Join community, artists and activists for More Light! A night of Community Celebration and Live Art.

The evening will be electric with live music, ritual, short film premiere, and the premiere work-in-progress of The Judiths of Virtuous Dissent*.

About The Judiths of Virtuous Dissent: 
Theater director, Nessa Norich and her ensemble of interdisciplinary artists channel the fullness of our grief, anger and love into a prismatic vision of a heroine who vanquishes the force of violence with the force of feeling. Judith is a mythological rebel who uses the oppressor’s knife to cut off his head. We parse through the realities of resistance through her story. 

About the night:
This event occurs during the festival of Hanukkah, a celebration of the miraculous continuity of light in times of darkness. In this spirit, we gather community to share an evening of music, art and meaningful connection. We invite you to release fear, and join us to gather energy for the fight for brighter futures.
Information for how to connect with local activist communities will be available as well. More Artist Contributors to be announced soon!

Doors | 7p
Candle Lighting + Work in Progress Performance of The Judiths of Virtuous Dissent* | 7:30p
Celebration + Short Film Screening + Live Art | 9:00p 
++Doors close 7:30p-8:30p for the performance

Where: Mister Rogers | 1409, 231 Rogers Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11225 

Advanced Tickets: $15 | 36 | 50
Tickets are limited, we recommend you reserve in advance! HERE!

$15 - Community Support
$36 - Project Champion 
$50 - Mega Supporter 

All additional support through our Project Champion ($36) and Mega Supporter ($50) ticket sales go towards future development and production of The Judiths of Virtuous Dissent,and we THANK YOU for your support! 
If you can not afford the suggested price, please email wellofwillscommunity@gmail.com to reserve entry! We want you there! 

*The Judiths of Virtuous Dissent is a full-length performance in development. It is part of a year-long, community devising and creation initiative called The Judith Project, which began with a series of workshops in summer 2018. Learn more about our process and follow our journey here: https://wellofwills.squarespace.com

We hope to celebrate with you on the 4th!

With love,
the Well of Wills Collective
insta: @wellofwillscollective
#thejudithproject

Aug 25 + 26 | Rockaways Beach Sessions X AUNTS | Deep Descent (Vid Installation(

Excited to be joining AUNTS this weekend at the ROCKAWAYS for Beach Sessions! I'll be sharing a video installation at The Castle on both days and hope to see you there!  More info below - Last days of summer, LET'S DO THIS!!!

++++ MORE INFO HERE! ++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ ++++

Beach Sessions presents
AUNTS @ Rockaway
Saturday/Sunday, August 25th/26th at The Castle at Rockaway
A group of over a dozen artists will transform the neighborhood and take over three diverse locations  - the beach, the boardwalk, and Rockaway’s architectural marvel, The Castle - for a two-day performance with multiple performers, open dance parties, multidisciplinary, body/non-body based, time orientated, finished/experimental/process art. Audiences will be able to join, follow, wander and experience as many as or as few performances as they choose, creating their own experiences through chance encounters.

Saturday, August 25 | 5:00pm - 9:00pm
AUNTS @ ROCKAWAY
Free and open to the public

Schedule:
5:00 pm: Biba Bell, Hustle on the sand | On the sand at B110th Street
5:30 pm: AUNTS Procession | B110th Street to The Castle
6:00 pm: Evening performances at The Castle | B117th Street and Newport Avenue

Featuring:
Stephanie Acosta <-- ME! 
Chris Braz
Justin Cabrillos
Jessica Cook
Tess Dworman
Lisa Fagan
Wojciech Gilewicz
Lily Gold + mary read
Jasmine Hearn
Zavé Martohardjono + J Dellecave
Katrina Reid
Karl Scholz
Tatyana Tenenbaum
Hilary Brown | HB² PROJECTS + Kristina Hay (Dance) with Lamy Istrefi Jr. (Music)

DJ set by Brother Nature and Baby Love

Sunday, August 26 | 2:00pm - 5:00pm
FLIP IT AND REVERSE IT

Schedule:
2:00 pm: Afternoon performances at The Castle | B117th Street and Newport Avenue
(Same program as August 25)
4:00 pm: AUNTS Procession | The Castle to B110th Street
4:30 pm: Biba Bell, Hustle on the sand | On the sand at B110th Street

Directions:

TO B110th STREET:
Train: Take the "Far Rockaway" bound A train to 105th street, walk to the beach (5-min. walk), and up to Beach 110 on the sand.
Ferry: Take the Rockaway-bound Ferry to B108th street, walk to the beach (10-min. walk), and up to Beach 110 on the sand.
Landmark: Beach 106th Street Food Concession on the Boardwalk

TO THE CASTLE:
Train: Take the "Far Rockaway" bound A train to 116th street, walk towards Beach Channel Drive to B117th St and Newport Avenue (5-min walk)
Ferry: Take the Rockaway-bound Ferry to B108th street and walk 10 minutes up Beach Channel Drive to B117th St and Newport Avenue, or you can hop on the free shuttle.

NEWSLETTER OUT NOW! AUG + SEPT 2018 is gonna be FIRE

Click HERE for more!  

Subscribe for future letters! 

SUNDAY SERVICE Season 4 ANNOUNCED!

Join us this fall for the return of Sunday Service, a free monthly series of live work across mediums in our bar, the Ready Room. The fall 2018 season curators include: Miguel Gutierrez, Pamela Liou, Zavé Martohardjono, and Julia Santoli. Each month’s artist lineup to be announced soon! 

Sunday Service Fall 2018 Schedule:
September 16, 7pm: Curator Pamela Liou
October 7, 7pm: Julia Santoli
November 4, 7pm: Zavé Martohardjono
December 9, 7pm: Curator Miguel Gutierrez

Sunday Service is programmed by myself and partner in curatorial-experiments Alexis Wilkinson. 

Chocolate Factory CREATIVE RESIDENCY in the Times!

Check out the great shout out to the upcoming Chocolate Factory Season including Creative Residencies curated by Blaze Ferrer including the return of GOOD DAY GOD DAMN!  

READ MORE HERE! 

And keep your eyes HERE for updates on dates and times! 

Sunday Service with Mariana Valencia | 06.03.2018 (Queens, NY)

For the final Sunday Service of the spring season, curated by Mariana Valencia, performance, film and sound artists explore notions of solid states. Featuring Ayano Elson, Jordan Lord, lily bo with Julia Santoli, and Jean Carla Rodea!

Sunday, June 3, 2018 | 7:00 pm | RSVP on fb HERE

They ask whether something that’s solid is something that can be pressed into, dislocated or broken— Are solid states reliable?  Through observations of shorelines, the stages of ice and wax they find sustenance in time as the symbology of open chests attune us to the other. Imagery, live performance and sound interpret these transitions that find a homes within flux.

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. 

Sunday Service with Janani Balasubramanian | 05.06.2018 (Queens, NY)

Balasubramanian brings together artists, astronomers, and artist-astronomers to show and tell stories of transformation. The evening becomes a great deal of magical fun. Featuring JP Ventura, Ellianan Schwab, Sophia Mak + Bex Kwan, Mark Popinchalk and Moiya McTier. A dataset becomes music; a telescope reading becomes Art Deco; dust becomes a system; a shift in planetary motion becomes a folk tale; a rock becomes a family.

Sunday, May 6, 2018 | 7:00pm RSVP on fb HERE 

“We were peering into this darkness, crisscrossed with voices, when the change took place: the only real, great change I’ve ever happened to witness, and compared to it the rest is nothing.”
—Italo Calvino, Cosmicomics

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. 

Sunday Service with Rena Anakwe | 04.08.2018 (Queens, NY)

The third season of Sunday Service returns curated by artist Rena Anakwe!  Tackling her interest in the ways we manifest healing, she brings us Sharon De La Cruz, Johann Diedrick, Delphine Fawundu, GENG, and Pamela Liou!  This Sunday Service offers a glimpse into the ways that five artists evoke their own healing and discovery through various forms of media, storytelling and ritual.

Sunday, April 8, 2018 | 7:00pm | RSVP on fb HERE

In order to rise
From its own ashes
A phoenix
First
Must
Burn.

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING, Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower”

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. 

GOOD DAY GOD DAMN at MAD March 24th

Saturday, March 24, 2018 | 7pm | $10/$5 | The Theater at MAD

Click here to purchase tickets

Good Day God Damn is a forty-minute performance and multimedia installation by At Play performing artist-in-residence Stephanie Acosta, featuring live performers Leslie Cuyjet and Angie Pittman and video created in collaboration with artists Mimi Gabriel and Jessie Young.

Developed through discursive research and rigorous ensemble work, Good Day God Damn employs video projection, sound, and live performance to consider the fractured American landscape, transforming MAD’s Theater in the process. Acosta and her community-turned-cabal of performers flow through domestic borders, mingle with the extraterrestrial, and unpack the limitations of land, drawing on cinematic thriller conventions in an exploration of terror, tectonic shifts, psychedelic self-harm, and toxic monuments.

This work-in-progress showing marks the culmination of Acosta’s At Play residency. It is the first in a multi-installment series the artist is developing that engages movement research and experimental film structures to tear through the personal in the terrain.