Café La MaMa Live: Take 4

Yoshiko Chuma is a cutting-edge choreographer/ director/ Instigator / movement-explorer / performer who continues a lifetime obsession with the mythology of danger. Landing in New York in 1976, Chuma settled in lower downtown Manhattan, labelled as a dangerous place to be at the time. Devoid of the culture and inflation you see before you now, Yoshiko managed to begin her career in lower Manhattan, spanning an impressive 41 year career to date. Creating over 100 productions, including company works, commissions and site-specific events, Chuma is constantly challenging the notion of performance for both audience and participants. Crossing physical and metaphorical borders along the way, quite literally, Chuma has placed herself in dangers way for the sake of art.

Justin Hicks is a multidisciplinary artist and performer who uses music and sound to investigate identity and value. As a composer and performer, his work has been featured at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Performance Space New York, The Public Theater, JACK, Paisley Park, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Highline, The Institute for Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), and The John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, among many others. Hicks has collaborated with notable visual artists, musicians, and theater-makers including Abigail DeVille, Kaneza Schaal, Me’shell Ndegeocello, Cauleen Smith, Helga Davis, and is a member of The HawtPlates. In 2018, he was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for his work as the composer of Mlima’s Tale by Lynn Nottage (The Public Theater, dir. Jo Bonney). Hicks was born in Cincinnati, OH, and is based in the Bronx, NY. Photo by Robert Granoff

Dael Orlandersmith previously collaborated with the Goodman on STOOP STORIES during the 2009/2010 Season. Ms. Orlandersmith first performed STOOP STORIES in 2008 at The Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival and Apollo Theater’s Salon Series; Washington, DC’s Studio Theatre produced its world premiere in 2009. BLACK N’ BLUE BOYS/BROKEN MEN was developed as a co-commission between the Goodman and Berkeley Repertory Theatre, where it was staged in May 2012. In 2020 she will be performing the play the Kirk Douglas Theatre, Denver Arts festival and Spoleto festival In south Carolina .. She is working a new play Called New age for Milwaukee rep another play for the Goodman Theatre ..she is also currently working on a book of autofiction.

Nicky Paraiso is an actor, singer, musician, writer, curator, solo performance artist. He has been a fixture of the NY downtown performance scene for the last four decades. He is Director of Programming for The Club at La MaMa, and Curator for the annual La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival, celebrating its fifteenth year in May 2020. He has worked as a performer with vanguard artists Jeff Weiss & Richard C. Martinez, Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble, Yoshiko Chuma & The School of Hard Knocks, among many others. Nicky is the recipient of a 1987 Bessie Award for Performance, a 2012 BAX Arts & Artists in Progress Arts Management Award, a 2018 TCG Fox Fellowship for Resident Actors/Round 12, and the 2019 (NY Innovative Theatre) Ellen Stewart Award for Stewardship. Nicky’s most recent full-length performance, now my hand is ready for my heart: intimate histories, directed by John Jesurun, was presented at La MaMa in March 2019. Photo: Jackie Rudin

Pearse Redmond is a writer and radio host in New York.  His show Porkins Policy Radio is broadcast live every Tuesday from 3-5pm on Ochelli.com and his writing has appeared in The American Journal of Economics and Sociology and is currently working on a novel.  He is also the Front of House Supervisor at La MaMa. His work can be found at PorkinsPolicyReview.com

John Scott, Dublin born, apprenticed and danced with Dublin City Ballet. His company, Irish Modern Dance Theatre, has performed throughout Ireland and internationally at Theatre de la Ville Paris at Espace Pierre Cardin, Kennedy Center, Washington, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, New York Live Arts, La MaMa, Danspace Project at St Mark’s Church, PS 122, New York and Dance Base, Edinburgh, Les Hivernales, Avignon, Tanzmesse Dusseldorf, Forum Cultural Mundial, Brazil. John is also one of the subjects of Sadlers Wells’ 52 Portraits with Jonathan Burrows, Matteo Fargin and Hugo Glendinning. He is founder of ‘Dancer from the Dance’ festival of Irish choreography in New York and Dublin. He performs in Oona Doherty’s ‘Hard To Be Soft’ and has also performed in Meredith Monk’s Quarry (Spoleto Festival) and for Yoshiko Chuma, Sarah Rudner, Anna Sokolow and Thomas Lehmen. Photo by Chris Nash

Paz Tanjuaquio is a choreographer, performer, and visual artist, based in NYC since 1990. Her work has been presented by LaMaMa Moves!, Wassaic Projects, Harkness Dance Festival at 92Y, Fisher Landau Center for Art, Danspace Project, among others; nationally, San Diego Trolley Dances, ADF Int’l Screen Dance; internationally, at Le Commun, Bâtiment d’Art Contemporain in Geneva, Switzerland and at residencies in Cambodia, Japan, Korea, and the Philippines, her birthplace. Awards for her choreography include NEA, Dance/NYC’s Dance Advancement Fund, made possible by the Ford Foundation, NYFA Build and QCA. As a dancer, she has performed with Molissa Fenley, Nicky Paraiso, Dean Moss, George Emilio Sanchez, Carl Hancock Rux, Marlies Yearby, among others. She is a member of the NYS DanceForce and serves on the Steering Committee of The Bessies/NY Dance & Performance Awards. She received her MFA in Dance at NYU Tisch School of the Arts; BA in Visual Arts at UC San Diego. In 2000, she co-founded TOPAZ ARTS, Inc. with Todd B. Richmond – a creative development space for contemporary performance & visual arts. www.topazarts.org

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