Danspace Project presents DraftWork: Wendell Gray II + Anna Sperber
Company:
Danspace Project
DraftWork: Wendell Gray II + Anna Sperber
Saturday, October 28 | 3PM
Danspace Project’s DraftWork series hosts free, informal showings of new works in varying stages of development.
Showings are followed by a reception, conversation, and Q&A between the artists and DraftWork curator, Ishmael Houston-Jones.
Wendell Gray II is a dance artist, choreographer, and educator currently based in Brooklyn, NY. His work has been presented at Coffey Street Studios, Kinosaito Arts Center, Gibney, University of the Arts, Movement Research at Judson Church, Center for Performance Research, Chez Bushwick, and Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance. Most recently, he presented “The People Show” as a part of Sighlines Dance Festival in late Spring 2023. Additionally, he was a STUFFED Artist in Residence in 2021 at Judson Church as well as a Work Up 6.0 Artist in 2020 at Gibney. Wendell has also set work on companies such as Michiyaya Dance, Pennsylvania Ballet II + Philadanco II, and Periapsis Music and Dance. As a performer, Wendell has worked with choreographers such as Tere O’Connor, Joanna Kotze, Pavel Zustiak, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, Maria Bauman, Jonah Bokaer, I-Ling Liu, Christal Brown, Esther Baker- Tarpaga, Janeill Cooper, and J Bouey. He is a BFA graduate of the University of the Arts (15’) under the direction of Donna Faye Burchfield was raised in Atlanta, GA. More info at wenings.com
Anna Sperber is a Brooklyn-based choreographer and performer. Her work has been described by The New York Times as “immediately compelling” and “wonderfully strange” with “moments of theatrical magic.” Sperber received a 2022 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” award for Outstanding Choreographer / Creator for Bow Echo (2021). Her work has been presented and commissioned by The Kitchen, The Joyce Theater UNLEASHED, The Chocolate Factory, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Roulette, Gibney Dance, and Dance Theater Workshop in New York City, as well as by the American Dance Festival in Durham, NC. Sperber has received fellowships and residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, Bogliasco Foundation in Bogliasco Italy, the Marble House Project, as a Schonberg Fellow at Dance The Yard, Center for Performance Research, Gibney Dance DiP (Dance in Process), Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council on Governors Island, and Movement Research. Her interdisciplinary collaborations with esteemed experimental composers and live musicians as well as visual designers are crucial to the integration of visual and sonic landscapes with the moving body in her work. Sperber was a co-founder of classclassclass, designed to nurture new dance teachers while offering reduced class rates, and was a co-curator of the 2008 Movement Research Spring Festival. She has taught as a guest artist at American Dance Festival, Movement Research, Gibney Dance, Hunter College, George Washington University, and Wayne State University. Sperber founded and ran BRAZIL, a studio and intimate performance space in Bushwick, Brooklyn from 2004 to 2014 and Sunset Space from 2019-2020.
Wendell Gray II. Photo: Malcolm-x Betts; Anna Sperber. Photo: Whitney Browne
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