Shared Evening: Parijat Desai | Paz Tanjuaquio | Angie Pittman

Parijat Desai is an India-born, U.S.-raised choreographer who creates hybrids of contemporary and Indian classical dance, theater, and other movement forms yielding a “seamless blending of the new and old” (New York Times). An autodidact in Indian classical music, Parijat has collaborated with various musicians to create new compositions based on the classical tradition, including several leaders of the Brooklyn Raga Massive movement. Parijat also interfaces with architecture and public space to explore human/social issues through the performing body. Parijat is a 2016–17 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence, a 2013–14 Fulbright-Nehru Grant recipient, an artist-in-residence at Dance Center of Columbia College (2013), Tribeca Performing Arts Center (2010–2013), and Stanford University’s Institute for Diversity in the Arts (2009). Parijat is a recipient of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Creative Communities Grant, Asian American Arts Alliance SOAR Grant, Durfee Foundation’s Artist Fellowship, and Lester Horton Dance Award for Individual Performance. Parijat’s work has been presented at venues including Danspace Project, Asia Society, Queens Museum, and PioneerWorks (NYC); Skirball Cultural Center, California Plaza, and J. Paul Getty Center (LA); ODC Theater and Asian Art Museum (San Francisco); Northwestern University (Chicago); The Dance Centre (Vancouver); and National Centre for the Performing Arts (Mumbai).

Paz Tanjuaquio is a choreographer, performer, and visual artist, based in NYC since 1990. Her work has been presented by 92Y Harkness Dance Center, Fisher Landau Center for Art, La MaMa Moves, Danspace Project, PS 122, among others; nationally, at Operation Unite in Hudson NY, San Diego Trolley Dance, American Dance Festival Int’l Screen Dance; and internationally at residencies in Cambodia, Japan, Korea and her birthplace, the Philippines. Recent awards include Dance/NYC’s Dance Advancement Fund, made possible by the Ford Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and is a member of NYS DanceForce since 2008. Paz received her MFA in Dance from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and BA in Visual Arts from UC San Diego. As a dancer, she has performed for Dean Moss, Molissa Fenley, Carl Hancock Rux, Marlies Yearby, among others. In 2000, she co-founded TOPAZ ARTS, Inc. with Todd B. Richmond – a nonprofit organization and creative development center for contemporary dance and visual arts. www.topazarts.org

Todd B. Richmond, visual artist, composer and co-founder of TOPAZ ARTS, received his MFA at Otis College of Art & Design, and CalArts ; BA from City College of New York in Music & Audio Technology with Film Studies, where he received the ASCAP Foundation Warner/Chappell Award. As a visual artist, his large-scale paintings and installations have been shown in four solo exhibitions and numerous group shows in NYC & Los Angeles, and was artist assistant to Richard Artschwager from 1990-95. He has collaborated with Paz Tanjuaquio since 1994, forming TOPAZ ARTS, Inc. together in 2000. www.topazarts.org

George Emilio Sanchez is a writer, performance artist and educator. He has received two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships in Performance Art/Emergent Forms, a Rockefeller MAP Grant and is a Fulbright Scholar. As well as serving as chairperson at the City University of New York’s College of Staten Island Performing and Creative Arts Department, he also is the Performance Director of the Hemispheric Institute’s Emergenyc performance project that aims to explore the intersection of arts and activism.

Angie Pittman is a New York based Bessie award-winning dance artist, dance maker, and dance educator. Angie has performed her dances at Gibney Dance, BAAD!, Movement Research at Judson Church, Triskelion Arts, STooPS, The Domestic Performance Agency, The KnockDown Center, The Invisible Dog, Danspace Project, and Krannert Center for the Performing Arts (Illinois). Angie is currently working as a collaborator and dance artist with Ralph Lemon, Donna Uchizono Company, and Stephanie Acosta. Angie has had the pleasure of dancing in work by Tere O’Connor, Jennifer Monson, Anna Sperber, Kim Brandt, Tess Dworman, Antonio Ramos, Jasmine Hearn, and others. She holds a MFA in Dance and Choreography from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a graduate minor in African American Studies. She was a 2015 DanceWEB scholar for Impulstanz Dance Festival in Vienna, Austria and is a 2016-2018 Artist-in-Residence with Movement Research. Her work has also been supported by a residency at Tofte Lake Center. Angie’s work resides in a space that investigates how her body moves through ballad, groove, sparkle, spirit, spirituals, ancestry, vulnerability, and power.

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