The public opening of Dancing Platform Praying Grounds: Blackness, Churches, and Downtown Dance (Platform 2018) This opening event will take place in the historic Great Hall at The Cooper Union—the same auditorium where Abraham Lincoln made his famous speech against the expansion of slavery.
On this occasion Danspace celebrates the release of its 12th Platform catalogue with words, movement, and song featuring Platform 2018 curator, choreographer Reggie Wilson, Judy Hussie-Taylor (Danspace Project Executive Director & Chief Curator), Nell Gibson (longtime St. Mark’s Church parishioner, author, and civil rights activist), Raja Feather Kelly (Platform 2018 catalogue designer, choreographer, and performer with Fist & Heel Performance Group), Radhika Subramaniam (Director of The Sheila Johnson Center & Asst. Prof. of Art & Design History, Parsons/The New School), and Fist & Heel Performance Group dancers.
In the accompanying catalogue for Platform 2018, historical research, personal testimony, original artwork, interviews, and historic photographs uncover the intersecting ways places of worship have shaped religious, African Diasporic, and postmodern dance practices over past centuries.
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