Correspondences
HERE and LEIMAY present Correspondences
supported by The Village Alliance, 51 Astor Place, and Café Royal Cultural Foundation
With Correspondences, multidisciplinary artist duo Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya offer multiple entry points for spectators to engage with questions of being, interdependence, and coexistence. The human body (performer and observer), machines, natural elements, and the urban square mingle in an entangled poetic microcosm while opening inquiries into animate life and environmental ethics. In the inaugural presentation of this multi-borough project, audiences can safely engage in Manhattan’s Astor Place installation over conversation, and bear witness to daily activation periods performed by members of the LEIMAY Ensemble.
Single bodies are enclosed inside transparent chambers partially filled with sand. Bodies are donned with gas masks as they try, time and again, to rise to standing. At intervals, machines attached to the chambers trigger a blast of sand causing the performers to lose their footing, sinking them back down into the ground. This seemingly perpetual eruption repeats throughout daily performance activation periods of Correspondences, both with and without performers.
October 1-4
Installation activation periods with performers: No ticket or RSVP is required.
Thursday 10/1: 8 pm
Friday 10/2: 12pm, 2pm, 4pm, 6pm, 8pm
Saturday 10/3: 12pm, 2pm, 4pm, 6pm, 8pm
Sunday 10/4: 12pm, 2pm, 4pm
Ancillary Actions:
Correspondences – The Audience Files
A growing oral and written interactive archive for audiences to engage with over conversation by sharing their responses to questions of being, interdependence, connectivity, and environmental ethics. QR codes located at various tables across the plaza guide audiences to participate both on-site and on-line. Correspondences – The Audience Files will be open to the public to engage for 30 days starting a week prior to the installation launch. (Launching September 21, 2020: correspondencesfiles.leimay.org)
Correspondences Talks
A conversation with guest activists, scholars, designers, and scientists to discuss what “decentering the human” means for them and how this action relates to issues of environmental ethics and social justice. (November 6, 2020)
Dancing for the Environment
In support of local and international, indigenous, and immigrant-led organizations working to create a more just world, from the Amazons to the Bronx to LEIMAY’s home neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to Correspondences inaugural site East Village, LEIMAY’s season of Movement Classes for All will culminate with a series of encore classes where 100% of proceeds will be donated to: Organización Nacional de los Pueblos Indígenas de la Amazonia Colombiana, Green Worker Cooperatives, El Puente, and the Loisaida Center. (October 6 and October 10, 2020: dancingfor.leimay.org)
Correspondences On-Demand
For a limited period of time, two different art films capturing the meditative nature of Correspondences will be available for on-demand access. (October 1 to November 30: ondemand.leimay.org)
LEIMAY Ensemble is a group of national and international dancers and performers who create body-centered works around the principle of LUDUS, a practice that explores methods to physically condition the body of the performers and develop a sensitivity to the “in-between space.” Founded in 2012 by Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya the group took form through the creation of the Becoming Series pentalogy. The group holds a regular practice at their studio in Brooklyn where they engage in the creation of new work as well as on teaching, training, research, and distillation of years of direct transmission of embodied knowledge by Japanese Butoh pioneers, Noguchi Taiso practitioners, and Experimental Theater innovators. The current members of the LEIMAY Ensemble are Masanori Asahara, Krystel Copper, Derek DiMartini, Andrea Jones, and Mario Galeano. www.leimay.org
Correspondences was first developed at LEIMAY’s studio in South Williamsburg, with in-progress performances at the Watermill Center in the summer of 2019.
LEIMAY would like to acknowledge the participation of the following performers in the initial development phase of Correspondences: Alessandro Anglani, Krystel Copper, Derek DiMartini, Nini Dongnier, Thanos Fryda, Andrea Jones, Suhwa Kim, and Sorin Prodea.
HERE and LEIMAY pay respect to the Lenape ancestors past, present, and future. We acknowledge that Correspondences is situated on Munsee Lenape homeland.
