20th Anniversary Season
Curated by Nicky Paraiso
Guest Curators: Martita Abril, Blaze Ferrer, Adham Hafez
La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival
20th anniversary
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.
CREDITS
John Jasperse Company, Keith A. Thompson & danceTactics, Jesse Zaritt & Sara Shelton Mann, Megumi Eda, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd with Owen Prum, Hunter College & NYU Tisch Dance MFA Students, Guest Curators Martita Abril, Blaze Ferrer, Adham Hafez, and more to be announced.
BIOS
Nicky Paraiso is an actor, singer, musician, writer, curator, solo performance artist. He has been a fixture of the NY downtown performance scene for almost five decades. He is Director of Programming for The Club at La MaMa, and Curator for the annual La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival, which will celebrate its 20th season in April 2025. He has worked as a performer with vanguard artists Jeff Weiss & Carlos Ricardo Martinez, Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble, Yoshiko Chuma & The School of Hard Knocks. Nicky has also performed in the works of Anne Bogart, Laurie Carlos, Jessica Hagedorn, Robbie McCauley, Richard Elovich, Dan Froot, Fred Holland, Dan Hurlin, Christopher Williams, among many others. He has also performed with Ma-Yi Theatre Company & National Asian-American Theatre Company (NAATCO). Nicky is the recipient of a 1987 Bessie Award for his Collective Performance, the Lilah Kan Red Socks Award, a 2012 BAX Arts & Artists in Progress Arts Management Award, a 2018 TCG Fox Fellowship as an Actor of Distinguished Achievement, and the 2019 (NY Innovative Theatre) Ellen Stewart Award for Stewardship. Nicky is an acclaimed solo performance artist and has written & performed the following solo shows: Asian Boys directed by Laurie Carlos (Performance Space 122), Houses & Jewels directed by Laurie Carlos (DTW), and House/Boy directed by Ralph B. Pena (La MaMa, Dublin Theatre Festival, Singapore Performance Initiation Festival). Nicky’s most recent full-length performance, now my hand is ready for my heart: intimate histories, directed & designed by John Jesurun, premiered at La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theatre in March-April 2019, performing with choreographer/dancers Irene Hultman, Jon Kinzel, Vicky Shick, Paz Tanjuaquio. He was a Gala honoree at Movement Research in April 2016. Nicky is most recently a recipient of the 2024 Mabou Mines Ruth Maleczech Award aka RUTHIE.
The 20th season of the La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival (Spring 2025) is made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, the Harkness Foundation for Dance, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Jerome Robbins Foundation, and The Shubert Foundation.
Keith A. Thompson & danceTactics performance group
Love Alone Anthology Project
April 10-13, 2025
The Downstairs Theatre
Choreographed by Keith A. Thompson, the Love Alone Anthology Project (world-premiere) is inspired by the writings of AIDS activist & poet Paul Monette.
Shared Program: Hunter College MFA / NYU Tisch MFA
April 18-20, 2025
The Club
Hunter College MFA in Dance:
Francesca Dominguez’s The Nearly, Barely, Just
Maria Angela Talavera-Tejeda’s Por Debajo de la Rodilla
MFA in Dance: Interdisciplinary Research at New York University:
marion spencer’s SYMPHONY
Xin Ying’s Paper Dragon: Five Elements Matrix
