Downtown Brooklyn Partnership Announces Participants in its 2021 Rehearsal Residency Initiative

After a successful launch in 2020, multi-disciplinary artists will use the public plazas of Downtown Brooklyn to rehearse and create through the Fall.

July 02, 2021

Downtown Brooklyn Partnership announced the latest round of participants in its Rehearsal Residency Initiative. The first cohort used Brooklyn Commons and Willoughby Plaza for rehearsals from April through July and the newest group will use the Plaza at 300 Ashland from July through October. Chosen artists use these public plazas to develop new work and perfect work in progress.

The nine participating artists and cultural organizations represent a diverse range of art forms and are at various stages of their careers. Jamel Gaines Creative Outlet will create a new multidisciplinary work reflecting on 2020, with meditations on the Black Lives Matter Movement while paying tribute to essential workers. Careitha Davis’ BodyRa Movement will use the space in advance of its Caribbean Soca dance performance as part of the Bare Feet Downtown Brooklyn series with Mickela Mallozzi. First time rehearsal residents, contemporary dance group Hivewild, will rehearse a new piece, a sigh of origin, that will be made into a dance film.

In response to the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on NYC’s performing arts community, DBP created the Downtown Brooklyn Rehearsal Residency Initiative in 2020 to provide free outdoor rehearsal space to artists and arts organizations. The program was the first opportunity that many groups had to rehearse together in months. The lineup of participating artists and projects feature multiple artistic disciplines, including music, performance art, dance, and film.

See the full list of recipients and their rehearsal projects here.

Downtown Brooklyn Rehearsal Residency at the Plaza at 300 Ashland, July 11 - October 7

Beatriz Castro is a Brooklyn-based dancer. She is interested in expanding her work, “Cuidado, Piso Mojado (Slippery When Wet)”, which explores the possibilities of the body as both content and container. The body as a fluid entity, contained physically and abstractly, and the body as a container of fluidity.

BodyRa Movement will rehearse for their outdoor Soca dance performance presented by Downtown Brooklyn Partnership as part of Bare Feet Downtown Brooklyn with Mickela Mallozzi. Representing Trinidad and Tobago, the company is led by Soca powerhouse Careitha Davis, who mixes traditional folklore with popular dance styles, bringing the dynamic Caribbean energy of carnival season to Downtown Brooklyn.

Chaery Moon will work on Project Algorithm, a deeper investigation of a previous contemporary ballet work, Algorithm: randomforest, a duet about AI creatures becoming more humanized. Five dancers will move around/between bodies to create relationships, pathways, and randomness.

Dancers Unlimited’s Edible Tales, in development during the pandemic, explores food-related topics and creates stories of space, time and people. Based on cultural and social research on food-related topics (ie. heritage, accessibility, food security, and cultural exchange), community engagement, and movement exploration, the debut of the new work is scheduled for November 2021. The performers include company dancers and NYC-based chefs, to share their food stories and guide us in cultural explorations at the rehearsals.

Hivewild’s a sigh of origin, directed and choreographed by Katherine Maxwell, invites viewers to consider how identity and perspective play into the role of the psyche. Defined by pivotal moments throughout a lifetime or perhaps an isolated year, dancers beg for the questions to be answered via movement - Who was I? Who am I now? It was presented as a work-in-progress at The Breslin restaurant at the Ace Hotel New York in November 2020 and will be developed into a 30-minute dance film.

Jamel Gaines Creative Outlet will use its residency to create a new work entitled Never Break, a multi-disciplinary dance that is a reflection on the year 2020. This work will take a look back at the Black Lives Matter Movement and will also pay tribute to essential workers who are tirelessly on the front lines of the pandemic.

JKing Dance Company (JKDC) will continue to develop Dear Friend…, a new work-in-progress which embodies an emphatic look at friendship, loyalty, dysphoria, and the overt aggression in girls. This visual enactment through dance has been inspired by conversations with and created to expose the stressors living inside our children.

Lavy engages with processes involving visibility of Queer identity curation, multi-spacial intersection, and interdisciplinary engagement, aiming to utilize modalities of physical embodiment, visual architecture, character development and text/vocal work. VErnaculAR is a new production that asks: how does one inform memory while also being informed by the memory that already exists when entering space? How do we exist in a multiplicity of identities, as our bodies engage with sensory stimuli?

Marija Krtolica is a Brooklyn based choreographer with a Ph.D. in dance. In the evening long work “Re-Inventing Love”, which will premiere in June 2022 at the Players theater, the artists collaboratively examine love as a truth procedure. With performers Julie Fotheringham, Michael Mangieri & Dustin Maxwell, musician Jason Ciaccio, and costume designer Yanis Grief.

Monét Movement Productions: The Collective, founded in May 2020, is a Brooklyn-based dance collective. Their rehearsal residency piece, Crack, will feature a trio that cracks the surface of what it means to create more space for the fusion of traditional (modern and contemporary) and non-traditional (Caribbean, African and Afro-Caribbean) dance forms.

NYC Ska Orchestra is an 18-piece big band consisting of a “who’s-who” of top New York musicians, playing original compositions and arrangements of popular songs across reggae, ska, rock steady, and jazz. This will be there first time rehearsing since pre-pandemic.

Project.KB will continue to share its creative process that focuses on sustainability with its community. The movement and narrative highlight how to reduce consumption and waste.

ZCO/DANCEPROJECT is a physically integrated dance company based in Brooklyn. ZCODP is committed to showing audiences what dance can be and who can do it. During the residency, they will rehearse Episodes of the Soul which reflect the inner demons, turmoil, joy and anger that we struggle with every day, especially during the pandemic.