Highlights from our May 19th Event
SharedSpace at the Mark Morris Dance Center provides an opportunity for dancers and choreographers of all genres to present a work-in-progress at an in-studio, informal showing open to the public, followed by feedback and conversation guided by an established artist in the dance field.
Our Spring Showing on May 19th, was facilitated by Marla Phelan, and featured work by Winston Dynamite Brown/The DynamitExperience, Peter Alfred Elizalde, Donald Lee, and Sumayyah Smith.
About the Artists
Sumayyah Smith
Joy: Release
Danced by: Summayah Smith
photo by: Rachel Lee
Sumayyah Smith is an interdisciplinary dance artist and emerging choreographer. She has trained in Europe and New York City, most recently as a student in the Gibney Professional Training Program, where she worked with renowned faculty in a multitude of dance techniques. Sumayyah’s work seeks to discover the body’s potential for movement through human anatomy and its connection to space. Her research is concerned with exploring ideas of polarity and duality, pace, and impact, creating a movement vocabulary of spirals, expansion, and sensory awareness. She views her choreographic process as a tool to showcase themes of human experience, from the complex and introspective to the silly and strange.
Peter Alfred Elizalde
the discotech is where i go to experience unmatched joy and profound sadness
Danced by: Peter Alfred Elizalde, Faxtra (Faride) Henaine Gutiérrez, Arzu Salman, MJ Markovitz
photo by: Michelle Mor
Peter Alfred Elizalde is a Filipino/a/x/? nonbinary dance artist, choreographer, and nightlife professional residing in Lenape-Canarsie land currently known as Brooklyn, NY. They currently dance on stages and not stages throughout the 5 boroughs and abroad and are excited to share their brand of queer magic and unfiltered emotion with you.
Rather than subscribing to a hyper-capitalist impulse of listing all of their achievements, they would like to share a wish with you: “I just wish for my art to bring us all closer together. I wish to build a world together where I no longer have to prove to you that I am a well-known somebody in order for us to connect as human beings. I wish to hear you and for you to hear me.”
Winston Dynamite Brown / The DynamitExperience
In Lieu of the Option
Danced by: Jordyn Cherry, Faustine Lavie, Kristi Ann Schopfer, Hannah Wagner, and understudy Sierra Sanders
photo by: Becca Vision
Winston Dynamite Brown is currently a member of the Camille A. Brown & Dancers company, most recently performing in Fire Shut In My Bones and ONEGIN at the Metropolitan Opera. Over his career Dynamite has had the pleasure of working with Taylor 2 and most recently, Pilobolus, Sean CurranCo., Opera Theater St. Louis, Kyle Abraham/ A.I.M, and Stephanie Batten Bland Co. to name a few. The DynamitExperience, a contemporary dance company founded in 2019 by Dynamite and partner, Latra Wilson, has been presented at The Mark O’Donnell Theater at The Actors Fund Theater, Manhattan Movement & Arts Center, Dance Adelphi, DanceWave, the SHED, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, YAGP, and Ailey/Fordham BFA concerts; and by FlightPath Dance Project, JACK, Dance Institute of Washington, and Voices and Visions of Ailey. TDE serves as a platform for creative investigations and community engagement; the company creates work with an aim to impact the local community, specifically those that generally do not see themselves represented on stage.
Donald Lee
Questionless Answer
Danced by: Donald Lee
Donald Lee is a multiply-marginalized amateur artist whose work centers on disability aesthetics. His creative instinct is impulsive and unrefined which adds an element of danger in his work. He is a company dancer of Heidi Latsky Dance and has worked with noted choreographer James Kinney spanning dance genres from modern to Broadway. He has been profiled by the New York Times and PBS. He has performed with Heidi Latsky Dance at the United Nation, Whitney, Vassar College, Little Island among other venues.