MOVING PEOPLE: Nicky Paraiso on Curating the La MaMa Moves! Festival, His Mentor Jeff Weiss, and The Best Way to Spend A Day in New York

my mother making me play the latest classical piano piece I just learned for relatives visiting our house in Flushing. Or maybe it was trying to sing and dance all the roles and characters to the West Side Story “Quintet” in our living room (when no one was watching!).

I was a freshman at Stuyvesant High watching the Royal Shakespeare Company perform Peter Brook’s ground-breaking production of Marat/Sade at the Martin Beck Theatre on Broadway and then later Brook’s celebrated version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at BAM (at 10 in the morning for school audiences) on spring break from Oberlin College in March 1971. I saw Midsummer one more time with fellow Oberlin students on a theater trip to London in January 1972 and clearly remember that when it was over and we walked out from the theater into the street, it started to snow.  

to move with intention, no matter how abstract the movement is

go to a museum in the morning and then go see a matinee of an Off-Broadway play and then enjoy a Downtown dance performance in the evening

Meredith Monk’s QUARRY 

it’s one of the great dance-theater pieces ever made. I got to play the role of the Dictator, which Ping Chong originated.

I would have to add performing in any play by Jeff Weiss, from Dark Twist (at La MaMa), And That's How the Rent Gets Paid Parts III and IV (at La MaMa and the Performing Garage) to Hot Keys (at Naked Angels and PS122).

Merce Cunningham, Meredith Monk, and Steve Paxton w/Nancy Stark Smith

the playwright & consummate actor/performer Jeff Weiss because Jeff is the embodiment of all he is as a performing artist: a writer, teacher, influence, and legendary practitioner of the act of acting

accessing the La MaMa website to order tickets and make reservations for live-streamed performances, LiveTalks, La MaMa Kids, and outdoor performances as well (on the second/final weekend of the Festival). All events and performances will be archived and accessible for viewing via Patreon through the end of the season on June 30.

viewing an artist’s work (ideally live and in-person) and falling in love with all the artists involved

these particular artists have all been working during the past pandemic year in both isolation and reflection: they have each been literally alone and reflecting upon their own individual existences and deciding that by taking action (performatively, psychically, politically), they each might (hopefully) make an impact on their community/communities as well

Pangea Restaurant at 178 Second Avenue (between 11th and 12th Streets)

the eyes and the arms and hands and fingers

Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together"

that the bare-bottom economics of living day-to-day gets more and more difficult. Maybe that never changes.

fiction  

poetry

twilight or dusk

there are so many expectations and hidden desires waiting possibly to happen as daylight fades and transforms into night

just say yes!

write every day and to speak another language (besides English) well

taking daily walks around downtown New York

Paris/Berlin