The Unarrival Experiments #4
By Ni’Ja Whitson
The Unarrival Experiments #4 is a ritual digging into the “vaporous body” via relationships between astronomy, cosmology, time, Blackness, and premature death. As a solo iteration of the evening-length installation performance in process, Whitson engages the work of Heidegger’s On Time and Being with their forthcoming manuscript These Walking Glories.
Ni’Ja Whitson (MFA) is a gender nonconforming/Trans interdisciplinary artist, performer, and writer who has been referred to as “majestic” by the New York Times, and received a Brooklyn Magazine 2017 “culture influencer” recognition. Whitson engages a nexus of postmodern and African Diasporic practices intersecting gender, sexuality, race, and spirit.
Whitson is a 2018 Camargo Fellow, a 2017 Bessie Award Winner, 2017-2018 Jerome Foundation Artist in Residence at Abrons Art Center, 2018 Dance in Process Artist in Residence with Gibney Dance, and 2017 Hedgebrook Fellow. Whitson collaborates as a choreographer, performer, director, and dramaturg with notables in experimental and conventional theatre, dance, visual art, and music including Douglas Ewart, Sharon Bridgforth, Dianne McIntyre, Charlotte Brathwaite, Regina Taylor, Daniel Alexander Jones, Baba Israel, Byron Au Yong and Aaron Jafferis. Recent commissions include EMPAC, Cornell Council for the Arts Biennial, BAM Next Wave Art, American Realness Festival, with financial support from the Mertz Gilmore Foundation and Jerome Foundation Individual Artist Grant. Ni’Ja Whitson is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of California at Riverside and is the founder/artistic director of The NWA Project. www.nijawhitson.com
La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival
La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival continues to support La MaMa’s commitment to presenting diverse performance styles that challenge audience’s perception of dance by featuring performance/installations, experimental film screenings & public symposiums which address dance artists’ engagement with the current political climate, as well as honoring diasporic histories and legacy, ancestral inspirations and inter-generational dialogue.