PlayThing is a debut of a brand new play, so new that the actors and actresses will have never seen the lines before the production. Watch your favorite comedians perform in a production as they learn their parts on the spot. This seems like it’s not a recipe for disaster!
The play is written by JASON WEITZMAN and what it’s called will be revealed later…….
ALSO there will be some comedy acts FROM
Philip Markle
AND COULD BE MORE!
Guy Gerber, returns to the US to bring his iconic RUMORS party straight from the Ibiza to the Big Apple for RUMORS NY on September 16th. Rumors will feature an extended set from Guy Gerber and is sure to draw its unique crowd of artisans, fashionistas, music heads and misfits. Daytime open air event produced by Teksupport.
Join us for the kick-off of the fall season of Sunday Service, our monthly performance series in our bar the Ready Room. Curator Alexis Convento invites Filipinx artists both from the homeland and the diaspora come together to reclaim, to decolonize, to (re)trace our roots.
“To decolonize is to tell and write one’s own story, that in the telling and writing others may be encouraged to tell their own.” —Leny Mendoza Strobel, “Coming Full Circle”
Artists:
Carlo Antonio Villanueva
Eli Tamondong
Goldie Poblador
Sugar Vendil
Jana Lynne Umipig
About the Curator
Alexis Convento is a Filipina-American producer, administrator and manager working within contemporary performance, and is founder and curator of the CURRENT SESSIONS, a platform for emerging and established movement-based artists. Her creative direction has led to sold out houses, close artist relationships, and the cultivation of new audiences with an enduring interest in connecting the performing arts, culture, and community. Additional curation includes La MaMa Moves!, Center for Performance Research’s Fall Movement, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, and Gowanus Art + Production’s FIRST LOOK, among others. Alexis holds a BFA in Dance from Fordham University with the Ailey School. Alexis’ work seeks to activate new conversations between genres which strengthen the relationship between art production and community, doing so through her own practice as well as her commercial efforts. She welcomes inquiries from individuals and organizations whose work also seeks to connect art, culture and the public.
About the Artists
Christina Poblador, sometimes known as “Goldie”, was born in the Philippines and received her MFA in Glass from the Rhode Island School of Design. She is an artist, a scientist, a feminist, and an alchemist. Her work channels narratives from Philippine culture and is inspired by nature and personal history. She brings a new awareness to what is and what can be the possibilities of ecofeminism, sensuality and the politics of immigration and race in a global world. work.goldieland.com
Carlo Antonio Villanueva is a Filipino-American dance artist from New Jersey, now living and working in New York. He often works with friend and collaborator Miriam Gabriel to make performances, and is also a member of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company. mimiandcarlo.com
Sugar Vendil is a New York-based pianist and multidisciplinary artist lauded for “leading the unlikely intersection of classical music and new fashion” (The New York Times). A second generation Filipino-American, Vendil grew up in El Sobrante, CA, a suburb in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her artistic practice is strongly focused on rigorous discipline as a musician and multidisciplinary performance that integrates music, movement, and fashion, and unconventional approaches to the piano. Vendil was a 2017 Summer Labs Artist in Residence at National Sawdust and a 2016 Fellow in the Target Margin Institute for Collaborative Theater Making. Other residencies include Earthdance (E|MERGE Multidisciplinary Residency), the A-Z West Wagon Station Encampment, and Arts Letters & Numbers. She is the founder of The Nouveau Classical Project (NCP), a music ensemble that collaborates with artists such as visual artists, dancers, and fashion designers for its performances. sugarvendil.com
Eli Tamondong is a hybrid artist practicing and performing under the moniker Projectile Imagery. They have been curated by Dance New Amsterdam, Dixon Place, Movement Research at Judson, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Chez Bushwick, Gibney Dance, New York Live Arts, New Dance Alliance; published in SLAG Mag and Polychrome Ink; and posted on Instagram (@projectileimagery). They have been a member of the Dance/NYC Junior Committee (2014-2017), a Chez Bushwick Artist-in-Residence (2014), and a New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks Artist (2015-16). Eli is studying Massage Therapy at the Swedish Institute. projectileimagery.me
Jana Lynne (JL) Umipig is a creator – a multidisciplinary artist who uses her talents and skills to create transformative artistic experiences. Her training is rooted in classical and physical theatre work, with formal training from New York University, The Claire Trevor School of the Arts at The University of California, Irvine and The Accademia Dell’ Arte in Arrezzo, Italy. Much of her career has been heavily rooted in collaborative based, applied and experimental theatre that focuses on human rights advocacy, art therapy/ healing connected to the development of her work around “For the Movement Theatre” and “Theatre as Spiritual Practice.” In particular, she seeks to elevate the narratives of Pilipina wom*n- as a reflection of her own life’s journey toward decolonizing, re-indigenizing and humanizing self. She draws her inspiration from being raised by strong wom*n in her family and by countless circles of sisterhodo that have lifted her throughout her lifetime including mentors and comrades from- The Center for Babaylan Studies, Damayan, Af3irm (Gabriela Network), Gabriela NYC, The El Puente Global Justice Institute, and Kababayan at UC Irvine. janalynnecreativeproductions.com
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.
We are very sad to inform you that Paul Kalkbrenner has postponed his NA tour due to illness. A new date will be announced very soon!
All tickets will be honored for our rescheduled show. However if this date does not work for you, you may request a refund.
Stay tuned, more news coming shortly!
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Paul Kalkbrenner brings Back To The Future to Knockdown Center for the very first time on September 22.
Paul Kalkbrenner recounts the history of Berlin techno with his new Back To the Future concept, which is based on his famous mix tape series, a trilogy that highlights his personal history of electronic music’s arrival to Germany during his teenage years.
Renewing and digitalising all of his old music collection to sound fresh and new, Kalkbrenner has given his early back catalogue a makeover with all tracks sounding delectably current. Rolling Stone magazine described it as a “Viral Techno history lesson”. Whilst Mixmag said that Back To The Future is “A Musical account of Germany’s pivotal dance music scene”.
This experience will take you on a historical journey, but this is in no way a retro or old school show by any means. This is a celebration of where this music originated and where it is heading moving forward, henceforth ‘Back To The Future’.
Defend + Restore is a community-centered daytime event focused on care, strengthening, and the sustainability of physical, mental, and emotional health. Join us to share skills and tactics of self-preservation in the wake of ongoing individual and collective traumas.
Free and donation-based workshops, trainings, and gatherings geared toward self-defense, intervention, strengthening, restoration, and care will be held in Knockdown Center’s backyard. In addition to scheduled events throughout the day, Defend + Restore includes an open-air marketplace featuring vendors who center health, well-being, homeopathic knowledge, and natural materials. Featuring naturally dyed goods by Jennie Maydew, hot sauce, condiments & concoctions by Process Park and more!!
All events are FREE unless otherwise noted!
Schedule:
2 – 4pm
Come early for bystander intervention training with Hollaback
Learn skills of nonviolent interventions to public harassment from cat calls to assault. Hollaback’s comprehensive training teaches you how to to assess your environment, deescalate harassment and find organic points of engagement.
RSVP Here
3 – 8pm
Open-Air Mini-Marketplace
Featuring vendors who center health, well-being, homeopathic knowledge, and natural materials.
3 – 5pm
Channeling Personal Power with Dyani Douze (sliding scale $20 – $40, cash only!)
QTPOC Reiki practitioner Dyani Douze offers 30 minute reiki sessions + Black Angel Card reading.
3 – 4pm
Self Defense workshop with POP Gym
All-ages introductory and accessible foundation to self defense from technique to theory!
RSVP Here
3 – 4pm
Knockdown Center Honey Tasting and Beekeeper Chats
Did you know that Knockdown Center keeps bees? Taste honey fresh from Knockdown’s rooftop hives! Learn about the wonders of the beehive as a fascinating model for collective decision-making. Did you know that 99% of honeybees are female? Beekeepers Caroline Paquita and Vanessa Thill will talk to you about nature’s oldest and sweetest matriarchy.
4 – 5pm
All-level Vinyasa Flow Yoga with Lauren Mulligan ($5-$10 suggested donation)
Donation based vinyasa flow for all levels with music!
RSVP Here
5 – 6pm
Self Defense workshop with POP Gym
All-ages introductory and accessible foundation to self defense from technique to theory!
RSVP Here
5 – 7pm
Oracle Card Readings with Yatta Zoker ($17 – $33 suggested donation!)
Yatta Zoker is a channel/diviner who uses a combination of Black Angel Cards, Tarot, and Life Purpose decks to give comprehensive readings that offer clarity and direction.
Readings are between 15 – 35 minutes and are by suggested donation of $33 for a full spread and $17 for a 3 card spread.
6 – 7pm
Body Technologies for Self-Care Workshop with Jaguar Mary (by donation)
Learn easy, ready-to-use strategies for your continued self-care with foundational practices and meditations that involve breath and movement.
RSVP Here
7 – 8pm
Gesturing Slowly Workshop with Camilo Godoy and Amanda Turner Pohan
Camilo Godoy and Amanda Turner Pohan will guide a slow meditation on physical greeting rituals, reflecting upon the ways in which our bodies are choreographed in society.
Spots still available to participate in the marketplace! To apply, please send information about yourself, organization/company, and what you offer to alexis@knockdowncenter.com.
Additional Details:
2pm
About Hollaback and Agunda Okeyo, Hollaback Facilitator
We at Hollaback are eager to share our bystander intervention training with a public invested in community building and culture change. Hollaback has worked for years on issues of sexual harassment and has long been at the forefront of nonviolent interventions to public harassment from cat calls to assault. At Defend + Restore at Knockdown Center we will facilitate a training that provides reflective strategies to assess your environment, deescalate harassment and find organic points of engagement including the 5 D’s of Bystander Intervention℠.
Agunda Okeyo is Hollaback!’s Bystander Intervention Program educator and trainer. She is a writer, producer, filmmaker and activist born in Nairobi and raised between New York City and the Kenyan capital. Okeyo understands and writes from a global perspective about race, gender, politics, culture, books, film, and comedy. She is published with Salon, The Daily Beast, Indiewire’s Women and Hollywood blog, For Harriet, O Magazine, Okay Africa, NBC and Women’s Media Center (WMC). A panoramic awareness has shaped her professional experience with organizations such as Duara Foundation, Demos: A Network for Ideas and Action, Re:Gender and Cultural Survival. She is lauded for her ongoing production at Caroline’s on Broadway called Sisters of Comedy. She has also produced comedy shows at Ginny’s Supper Club and Gotham Comedy Club. Okeyo has been featured as a rising producer and activist in Time Out New York, The New Yorker, Essence, The Root, Black Enterprise, The Hollywood Reporter, Forbes, NBC, Huffington Post and The New York Times. In 2016 she was named a Progressive Women’s Voices fellow with Women’s Media Center and joined the NYC board of Women, Action and the Media (WAM!NYC). Okeyo also serves as National Communications Chair for the March for Racial Justice in DC, NYC and nationwide this fall.
3pm – 5pm
About Channeling Personal Power and Dyani Douze
30 minute reiki sessions + Black Angel Card reading.
Dyani Douze is a QTPOC Reiki practitioner with a focus in working with anyone that yearns for self-expression and self-acceptance.
(Sliding Scale $20 – $40, cash only!)
3pm & 5pm
About Self-Defense workshops with POP Gym
Come by this FREE workshop to learn some introductory skills that will keep you feeling safe. We’ll be covering the basics: stretching, conditioning, technique, and theory, with the hope that participants will leave with some super useful foundations that will aid them in the day-to-day. Mix that in with some sweat and some movement, and you’ll have an accessible and confidence-boosting good time for all. Whether you are a beginner, or someone with experience, come work it out with us!
Open to all ages! We’ll be moving around, so participants should wear clothing in which they are comfortable stretching and sweating.
POP Gym is a new project, working towards opening a physical space in Brooklyn that offers free self-defense, fitness, and skill share classes 7 days a week. As we continue planning, we invite you to come by any of our events this summer! Our workshops have been described as, “fun”, “holistic” and “empowering”, and for any questions, comments, or inquiries for future workshops for you or your organizations, email us at info@popgym.org
4pm
About Vinyasa Flow Yoga with Lauren Mulligan
Lauren is a trained trauma-informed vinyasa instructor with focus on working with LGBTQIA +GNC and female-identified people. She believes that yoga as an intentional practice of self-care is deeply radical. Yogic philosophy counters contemporary dualistic ideology in favor of one of connection and interconnectedness. Living under capitalist heteropatriachal imperialist conditions means that each of us experience fracturing of the self and separation from others; this is how oppressive structures maintain their power. When we choose to come to our mats, we allow our bodies and minds to enter a space that does not endorse dualism, but rather focuses on synchronization of breath with movement, body with mind, self with other.
This class will be an all-level vinyasa flow class. No experience necessary, beginners and experienced practitioners alike are welcome to come share the space. Moving into our bodies, especially for those of us who occupy bodies that are policed in myriad ways is a step towards healing. This class is donation-based, if you have the means please consider donating, if monetary funds are not available to you at this time, please do come anyway, we want you in this space!
($5 – $10 suggested donation)
6pm
About Body Technologies for Self-Care and Jaguar Mary
Self-care is paramount during times of stress. Finding peace of mind while navigating the whirlwind of city life means that practicing self care is essential. And, since we live in a society that demands our attention and participation in ways we may find challenging at times, it helps if the tools we use are easily applicable and immediately effective. In this self-care workshop, we’ll work with the material that we all share and know; our own bodies. The Body contains an abundance of accessible technologies that can shift us to feeling strong and clear when our minds are disheartened and distracted. These technologies work and can be applied regardless of religious/spiritual beliefs, flexibility, or financial status. During the hour, Jaguar Mary will share some foundational practices and meditations that will involve breath, movement and group communication. You’ll have fun and leave the workshop with some easy, ready-to-use strategies for your continued self-care practice.
Jaguar Mary is a teacher, performance artist, filmmaker and glossolalia vocalist. She started chanting mantras at the age of eleven as a young buddhist practitioner. She created Sacred Circularties, a movement-based meditation experience that took place for six years in Sedona, Arizona and Bali, Indonesia. Jaguar Mary is here for the journey and continues to share and learn spirit and movement-focused experiences through her art and connection with community. Currently, she is a member of the Performance and Performance Studies MFA cohort at Pratt Institute.
7pm
About Gesturing Slowly
Camilo Godoy and Amanda Turner Pohan will guide a slow meditation on physical greeting rituals. This workshop will focus on the communicative function and sensory capabilities of these rituals to reflect upon the ways in which our bodies are choreographed in society. This workshop gently invites you to explore your body and its relationship to others.
Image Credit: Stephanie Acosta
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 season curators include: Alexis Convento, Jonathan Gonzalez, J. Soto, and Camilo Godoy. Each month’s artist lineup to be announced soon.
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 Fall 2017 Schedule:
September 10, 7pm: Curator Alexis Convento
October 1, 7pm: Curator Jonathan Gonzalez
November 5, 7pm: Curator J. Soto
December 3, 7pm: Curator Camilo Godoy
About the Curators
Alexis Convento is a Filipina-American producer, administrator and manager working within contemporary performance, and is founder and curator of the CURRENT SESSIONS, a platform for emerging and established movement-based artists. Her creative direction has led to sold out houses, close artist relationships, and the cultivation of new audiences with an enduring interest in connecting the performing arts, culture, and community. Additional curation includes La MaMa Moves!, Center for Performance Research’s Fall Movement, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, and Gowanus Art + Production’s FIRST LOOK, among others. Alexis holds a BFA in Dance from Fordham University with the Ailey School. Alexis’ work seeks to activate new conversations between genres which strengthen the relationship between art production and community, doing so through her own practice as well as her commercial efforts. She welcomes inquiries from individuals and organizations whose work also seeks to connect art, culture and the public.
Jonathan Gonzalez is a choreographer and Bessie-nominated performer based in his native New York City. He has been a New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks Artist in collaboration with EmmaGrace Skove-Epes, BAX/Dancing While Black Fellow under the direction of Paloma McGregor, Diebold Award recipient for Distinction in Choreography & Performance, Rema Hort Mann Foundation nominee, as well as a POSSE Leadership and Bessie Schonberg Scholar; he is currently a BAX/SUBMERGE! artist. He has performed in the works of Ligia Lewis, Cynthia Oliver, Isabel Lewis, Alex Baczyinski-Jenkins, Phillip Howe, Ni’Ja Whitson, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, Grisha Coleman, among others. He is a graduate of Trinity College, Trinity Laban Conservatoire, and holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College.
J. Soto is a queer brown transgender interdisciplinary artist, writer, and arts organizer. He has curated and performed work for The National Queer Arts Festival (San Francisco), Links Hall (Chicago), as well as Vox Populi (Philadelphia) among others nationally. His collaborative writing project, “Ya Presente Ayer” can be found in Support Networks, Chicago Social Practice History Series (University of Chicago Press). His organizing projects include the Latinx Artists Retreat (LXAR), which he recently launched with a group of Latinx artists and administrators and the Latinx Artist Visibility Award (LAVA) for Ox-Bow School of Art in partnership with The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is also a recent Fellow of the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures Advocacy Leadership Institute (ALI). His recent writing can be found in Original Plumbing and Apogee Journal: Queer History, Queer Now Folio. He is currently Programs Coordinator for Equity & Inclusion Initiatives at Movement Research and Production & Access Coordinator at Eyebeam.
Camilo Godoy is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice is concerned with the construction of political meanings and histories. His work engages with conceptual and choreographic strategies to negotiate questions that confront the politics of citizenship, imperialism and sexuality. Godoy analyzes and challenges past and present historical moments to imagine different subversive ways of being. He was born in Bogotá, Colombia and is based in New York, United States. He is a graduate of The New School with a BFA from Parsons School of Design, 2012; and a BA from Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, 2013. Godoy is currently a resident at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) and was a 2015-2017 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence; 2014 Keyholder Resident, Lower East Side Printshop; 2014 Hemispheric New York Emerging Performers Program Fellow, The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, NYU; and 2012 Fellow, Queer Art Mentorship. His work has been presented at venues such as Center for Performance Research, New York; Judson Church, New York; La Mama Galleria, New York; Donaufestival, Krems; and Mousonturm, Frankfurt, among others.
Due to unforeseen circumstances, this event has been relocated to 217 Nostrand Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11205. All tickets will be honored, we apologize for any inconvenience. Please check the Facebook event for further updates.
&ME
Adam Port
