ISHMAEL HOUSTON JONES + KEITH HENNESSEY
Closer, with music by jose e. abad
AUG 6 | 7:30 PM
12th Ave Arts Mainstage |1620 12th Ave, Seattle, WA 98122
Presented through the Seattle Festival of Dance + Improvisation
Closer | About The Work
An improvised performance by Ishmael Houston-Jones (NY) and Keith Hennessy (SF) with live sound by jose e. abad
Ishmael and Keith first collaborated in the mid-90s and have continued for 25 years a deep conversation about art, collaboration, improvisation, race, activism, sex, dance, history and futures. When they dance together, the conversation and research continues. Sometimes we fight, but there is always love. There will be questions, there will be answers, and much of the rest is unknown…
Keith and jose have been in collaboration on multiple performance, curation, and teaching projects since 2016 and together have worked with Ishmael in the TRY project since 2020. Our relationships to each other, to performing improvisation, and to the worlds around us are the content of the work.
ARTIST BIOS
ISHMALE HOUSTON JONES
KEITH HENNESSEY
SEATTLE FESTIVAL OF DANCE + IMPROVISATION
The Seattle Festival of Dance + Improvisation is a vibrant month-long immersion in the Seattle dance community, and a chance to explore with dance practitioners experimenting at the leading edge of dance technique, creative practices, and dance improvisation. Grounded in SFD+I’s nearly 30 years of community-building and intergenerational collaboration, this festival is a gateway for new dancers to connect with artists making work in the Seattle dance and improvisation community, and a chance for Seattle-based artists to train and research with internationally renowned artists.
During our Seattle Festival of Dance + Improvisation, Velocity also presents work by local and visiting faculty members. These presentations range from work-in-process sharings to larger scale productions, and are often one-night-only presentations. We also commission artists to work with participants to create new work that is shared during the festival.
PROGRAM SUPPORT
The Seattle Festival of Dance + Improvisation is made possible with generous support from the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, and the King County Festival and Events Fund. It is also supported by our community of individual donors, community partners, and arts advocates. If you would like to join this community of sponsors, please contact Erin O’Reilly at erin@velocitydancecenter.org.
ACCESSIBILITY INFORMATION
12th Ave Arts is fully accessible for wheelchairs and walkers. The lobby and bathrooms are at street level, and seating is available without the need for an elevator or stairs. The venue is also equipped with an Assistive Listening Device.
Ishmael Houston-Jones’ improvised dance and text work have been performed world-wide. Drawn to collaborations as a way to move beyond boundaries and the known, Houston-Jones celebrates the political aspect of cooperation. Houston-Jones and Fred Holland shared a 1984 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Cowboys, Dreams and Ladders, which reintroduced the erased narrative of the Black cowboy back into the mythology of the American west. He was awarded his second “Bessie” Award for the 2010 revival of THEM, his 1985/86 collaboration with writer Dennis Cooper and composer Chris Cochrane. In 2017 he received a third “Bessie” for Variations on Themes from Lost and Found: Scenes from a Life and other Works by John Bernd. In 2020 he received a fourth “Bessie” for Service to the Field of Dance. Houston-Jones is the DraftWork curator for works-in-progress at Danspace Project in New York. Also at Danspace, he curated Platform 2012: Parallels which focused on choreographers from the African diaspora and postmodernism and co-curated with Will Rawls Platform 2016: Lost & Found, Dance, New York, HIV/AIDS, Then and Now. He has received awards from The Herb Alpert Foundation, The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and United States Artists. Ishmael teaches at universities and independent studios including NYU, Bennington (formerly School of the Arts), Movement Research, TicTac (Brussels), MA exerce (Montpellier), and The Field Center.
Keith Hennessy, MFA, PhD, is a frolicker, imperfectionist, and witch working in the fields of contemporary dance, queer performance, affordable housing, sexual and political healing. Raised in Canada, he has lived in Yelamu/San Francisco since 1982. Hennessy’s work is interdisciplinary and experimental, motivated by anti-racist, queer-feminist, and anarchist movements. With a focus on the politics of relationship, Keith’s performance collaborators include Ishmael Houston-Jones, Sarah Crowell, Meg Stuart, Peaches, Snowflake Calvert, Jassem Hindi, Ida Hiršenfelder, and jose abad. Awards include Guggenheim and USArtist Fellowhips, NY Bessie, Bay Area Izzie’s, and more. Keith’s 2024-25 teaching includes Lviv CI Festival (Ukraine), Cornell Univ, La Manzana de Paxton (MX), ImPulsTanz (Vienna), Contact & Flow (MX), The Field Center, Forum Dança (Lisbon.) www.circozero.org
josé e. abad (they/them) is an Afro-Caribbean Filipinx interdisciplinary performance artist nesting in unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Territory (San Francisco). Their work is rooted in the embodied and sonic poetics of relations, collaboration, and improvisation, as tools of resistance and liberation across geopolitical borders. abad’s work centers QT/BIPOC experimental collective process-based practices of re-membering and be-coming to highlight the most intelligent technologies that exist in this world – our bodies, ancestral wisdom, and the environment. Their practice is shaped by mentorship and communing with artists including Alleluia Panis, Ishmael Houston Jones, Anne Bluethenthal, Joanna Haigood, Keith Hennessy, Beatrice Thomas, Jess Curtis, Sherwood Chen, Sara Shelton Mann, Meg Stuart, Florentina Holzinger, Brontez Purnell, and others. They are currently the Co-Director of Bridge Live Arts, a core company member of Bandaloop and the Black queer collective RUPTURE, AD of fugitivity labs, and have engaged in creative and pedagogical exchanges nationally and internationally in the Philippines, Palestine, Chilé, Mexico, and Europe.