Once Upon a Time in a Place called NOWhere
By
keyes and the nogooddoers
Mar 27-29 + Apr 3-5 | 7:30 PM
12th Ave Arts Mainstage |1620 12th Ave, Seattle, WA 98122
Presented through Made in Seattle, Velocity’s Nationally Emerging Creative Incubator
*Individual tickets go on sale about 6 weeks prior to performances.
Seattle icon Keyes Wiley is back with an all new piece and a stellar cast of collaborators! Be sure not to miss this wildly inventive and emotively human work, presented on Capitol Hill in the spring of 2025. This piece is presented through Made In Seattle, Velocity’s Nationally Emerging Creative Incubator.
once upon a time in a place called nowhere | keyes and the nogooddoers
“I am creating a new group performance project Once Upon A Time in a Place Called NOWhere which will premiere at 12th Avenue Arts in March 2025. The project grew from my desire to lean into surrealism and the mundane as a reaction to our current world full of chaos and hyper stimulation.
The stage is set up like a studio apartment, and the starting premise is that I have invited 6 to 8 people over for a game night. Using creative tools like set installations that transform over time, performative scores that introduce chance and improvisation, and choreographed dance and spoken word, the games we play will attempt to save the world. Each game, like Jenga, Chess, and Spades represents a “conflict” or “social construct” and the object is to not lose any games because that could mean something catastrophic for the rest of the world.
As the performance progresses the stakes of these games slowly shift and escalate. The performers “win” and “lose,” and the effect of the real-time choices they make are embodied in their movements, amplified to represent the collective loss and grief we experience in isolation. Performers one-by-one join the audience, and the set gradually expands, physically implicating spectators in what’s happening onstage, touching on how we are all complicit in both local and global events whether we like it or not.
The premise of this show is inspired by my personal experiences, and a direct reflection of how my family would gather at my grandma’s home and compete with each other. Games acted as a buffer for larger communications and conversations. Levity never left the room no matter how complicated the conversations ended up being. This piece builds on this concept, using embodiment and games as a practice for collectively talking about hard things.
Once Upon A Time in a Place Called NOWhere is a mundane surrealist game night where the stakes are so high that losing could mean the end of the world. This work serves as a public intervention in a world parallel to our own.”
– Keyes Wiley
Artist bios
KEYES WILEY
Nia Amina Minor
Lore Aschoff
will courtney
Olivia Anderson
CAMERON DAY O’CONNELL
Ryan Vinson-Jacobs
EMMA LAWES
Nationally Emerging Creative Incubator
Velocity’s Nationally Emerging Creative Incubator, Made in Seattle, provides support to Seattle-based artists through early ideation, development, premiere, and national tour of the work. In this program, Velocity provides a seed commissioning fund, and encourages artists to schedule the development of their work over a few years with both creative and technical residencies alongside setting a full development and touring strategy that includes building relationships with national presenters and applying to both local and national creation and tour funding.
PROGRAM SUPPORT
Made in Seattle is a core residency program, and supported by the Raynier Foundation along with Velocity’s season sponsors and community of individual donors. Interested in joining the community of support to make the Bridge Project possible? Contact erin@velocitydancecenter.org to learn how you can be involved.
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.
Keyes Wiley (they/them) is a multi-hyphenated performing artist, dj, light and sound designer. They are currently a dance faculty member at Cornish College of the Arts, resident dj of the drag performance show TUSH and the artistic director of the performance group The NoGoodDoers. Not too long ago they were a Managing Artistic Director for the DIY performance space Studio Current. From 2010-2015 Keyes formed the dance co. The New Animals and was also a member of Lingo Productions directed by KT Niehoff before branching off into solo performance. Beyond that Keyes has performed/collaborated with Keith Hennessy (SF), Keyon Gaskin (PDX), Alice Gosti, Ben de la Creme, Jinx Monsoon and many others. More recently Keyes has and continues to perform in the works of dani tirrell, Kitten n Lou and will be touring with the drag queen Betty Wetter. Their work has been seen/presented at On the Boards, Velocity Dance Center, Inscape Arts, Bumbershoot, Co-, Washington Ensemble Theater, Seattle International Dance Festival, Gibney (NYC), Risk Reward (PDX) and others. Keyes’ considers themselves a natural born collaborator and thrives in rooms with artists who feel the same.
*Photo by Erin O’Reilly
Emma Lawes (she/her) is a dancer, educator and producer based between Los Angeles and Seattle. Currently, she is exploring her own solo work, teaching on faculty at Orange County School of the Arts and California School of the Arts SGV, and producing work with CO-. She has presented work at Base: Experimental Arts + Space, 10 Degrees Arts + Events, Mutuus Studio and Atwater Village Theater. She is a graduate of the University of the Arts with a BFA in Dance Performance under the direction of Donna Faye Burchfield.
Lore Aschoff is a human being who cares! Their background is a watercolor collage of dance, creative movement, performance art, political activism, and healing practices. They have had the joy of collaborating with Keyes in many iterations, including working together as former managing artistic directors of Studio Current in Seattle, WA. Other performance projects have included the Grief Girls and Lesbian Death Bed. Lore is currently in their last year of graduate school for Couple & Family Therapy. They strive toward personal and collective liberation from colonialism in all aspects of life.
Nia-Amina Minor (they/she) is a movement artist, choreographer, curator, and educator originally from Los Angeles. Her work focuses on the body and what it carries using physical and archival research to explore memory and history. She approaches her practice as an imaginative space grounded in rhythm where improvisation, Black vernacular movement, and choreography meet. Nia-Amina has received regional and national commissions for her choreographic and film work and has a working background as a performer and dramaturg. She is co-founder of Black Collectivity, a collaborative project that explores and celebrates memory and culture through embodied responses. As a performer Nia-Amina has worked with artists such as dani tirrell, Zoe Juniper, Will Rawls, Alice Gosti, Keyes Wiley, and Amy O’Neal. From 2016-2021 she was a Company Artist at Spectrum Dance Theater under the direction of Donald Byrd and in 2021 she was recognized as Dance Magazine’s 25 Artists to Watch. Nia-Amina has also provided dramaturgical assistance to choreographers Jade Solomon-Curtis (Keeper of Sadness 2023) and Donald Byrd (Grief 2022). As a curator, she has developed programming at On the Boards, Wa Na Wari, Velocity, and Base. From 2014-2016, she was a co-founder and curator of Los Angeles based collective, No)one Art House. As an educator, she has taught, guest lectured, and been a visiting artist at Cornish College, University of Minnesota, CalArts, University of Washington, Saddleback College, Cypress College, and UC Irvine. Nia-Amina received her MFA in Dance from UC Irvine and a BA from Stanford University and is based in Seattle.
Olivia Anderson (sher/her) recently graduated from the University of Washington’s dance program. Right now she is busy teaching dance, stage managing, and dancing around Seattle (dani tirrell and the Congregation, El Sueño, MALACARNE, Margaux Gex + Lael Battiste).
Ryan Rose Rubythroat Vinson-Jacobs (they/‘em/th’air) is a dad and husband, making worlds with th’air family, headquartered in Downtown Renton, Washington. They’ve rapped under the moniker sketch lightly, with the accompaniment of Devin Bews as BOON, and with Adam Prince as said the startling. They’ve performed with HATLO and Rosa Visser’s PE|Mo, Keyes’s New Animals, Via Vinson-Jacobs, and Lore Aschoff, as well as solo in a bunch of experiments, usually combining text and movement. They’re currently working on some new rap stuff, doing research for a solo show, and studying relational therapy.
Symone Sanz (she/her) is a dance artist versed in performance, improvisation, and choreography from Los Angeles. She holds a BFA in Dance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Since living in Seattle, she has enjoyed creating work with artists Heather Kravas, Cherdonna Shinatra, and zoe|juniper, among many others. She also teaches Dance Church® classes.
Symone supports the Seattle dance community through her work in arts administration, with a focus in marketing. She currently serves on the board for Velocity Dance Center.
*Photo by Leah Russel
Will Courtney (they/ them, he/ him, She her) has been performing as a part of Fox Whitney/ Gender Tender, which has recently evolved into a performance art band called Light aloud, since 2010. SHe is thrilled to be a part of NowHere and to share the outcome of this collaboration with all of you 🙂
Cameron Day O’Connell is a trans photographer and multimedia artist residing on Unceded Duwamish Land (Seattle, WA). They focus on capturing intimacy in motion, the metaphor of the queer figure in the environment, and golden moments in the light. They are a former birth and abortion doula, herbal medicine nerd, and a Gemini double Sagittarius. They are currently focusing on their upcoming solo show Surrender, a photographic exploration of queer intimacy that opens at Gallery 4Culture on April 4, 2024.