UPCOMING PERFORMANCES & TALKS
THE FUGITIVE FUTURES TOUR
2018
Jan 13-16| American Realness Séancers
Premiere at Abrons Arts Center,
New York, NY
Feb 22| CSUSM White State| Black Mind Film Screening & Discussion of #negrophobia with Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, Taisha Paggett, and Ni' Ja Whitson, Arts 101-Black Box Theater, San Marcos, CA 7PM FREE
Mar 14-15| Oslo Festival Séancers,
Oslo, Norway
Mar 21| Zurich Moves Séancers, Zurich, Switzerland
Mar 23-24|Poetry is not a luxury festival, Brussels, Belgium
Mar 30|Black Performance Event Panel with Nana Adusei-Poku, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, Will Rawls, and NIC, New York, 7PM
April 4|Knowing Dance More with Jaamil Olwale Kosoko, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA 11:30AM
April 7-8| Unfolding The Transgressive Body ( a reclamation of our time) Workshop, Philadelphia, PA
April 11| Crisis in the Gallery, DAS, Amsterdam University of the Arts- Séancers, Amsterdam, Netherlands
April 18-19| Mousonturm #negrophobia and Séancers, Frankfurt, Germany
May 2-5| Riverside Performance Residency with Ni'Ja Whitson, Riverside, CA
May 10-12| Séancers Premiere at FringeArts , Philadelphia, PA
PAST PERFORMANCES & TALKS
2017
Sept. 8-9 | Preview of Séancers at Bennington College, Bennington VT, 8PM
Sept. 29-30 | #negrophobia at Beursschouwburg, Brussels Belgium
Oct. 2 | Lewis Center for the Arts Program for Dance at Princeton University featuring Brenda Dixon Gottschild ( Reclamations! Lectures in Black Feminist Performance) with Jaamil Olawale Kosoko at Roberts Dance Studio in Wallace Dance Building at Lewis Arts complex, Princeton NJ, 7:30PM
Oct. 6 | Excerpt of Séancers and showing of White State| Black Mind film for The Black Extra/ordinary Keynote and Performance at Haverford College, Haverford PA, 8PM
Oct. 11 | Sorry I Missed Your Show: Fred Holland & Ishamel Houston-Jones Panel featuring Ishamel Houston-Jones with Jaamil Olawale Kosoko at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, New York NY, 6PM
Oct. 13 | Making Interventions Symposium Plenary Panelist and Guest Teacher Jaamil Olawale Kosoko at University of Maryland, College Park MD
Oct. 23 | Lewis Center for the Arts Program for Dance at Princeton University featuring Ebony Noelle Golden with Jaamil Olawale Kosoko at Roberts Dance Studio in Wallace Dance Building at Lewis Arts complex, Princeton NJ, 7:30PM
Oct. 27 | Examining Black Masculinity Panel featuring Nora Chipaumire and Cynthia Oliver with Jaamil Olawale Kosoko at BAM Fisher, Brooklyn NY, 6PM
Nov. 1-2 | #negrophobia at Spielart Festival, Munich Germany
Nov 6 | Lewis Center for the Arts Program for Dance at Princeton University featuring Autumn Knight with Jaamil Olawale Kosoko Roberts Dance Studio in Wallace Dance Building at Lewis Arts complex, Princeton NJ, 7:30PM
Nov. 11-12 | Unfolding The Trangressive Body (A Reclamation Of Our Time) Workshop at The Whole Shebang, Philadelphia PA, 10AM-3PM
Dec. 6-9 | World Premiere of Séancers at Abrons Arts Center, New York NY, 8PM
NEW WORK: SÉANCERS
What does it mean to defend the dead? To tend to the Black dead and dying: to tend to the Black person, to Black
people, always living in the push toward our death?
– Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being
Setting the fugitive experience afforded Black people on fire with majesty, opulence, and agency, Séancers is a nonlinear examination of how the American racialized body uses psychic, spiritual, and theoretical strategies to shape-shift through socio-politically charged fields of loss and oppression. The work collapses lyrical poetry, psychic movement forms and strategies of discursive performance to investigate concepts of grief, resurrection and paranormal activity. Interrogating issues related to American history and colonialism, Séancers journeys into the surreal and fantastical states of the Black imagination to traverse the “fatal” axis of abstraction, illegibility and gender complexity. The work locates itself inside the spiritual, emotional, and theoretical world via the live performances of sound artist Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste and experimental artist Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, with special guest theorists (séancers) who help frame the witnessing of each performance.
FUNDING AND RESIDENCY SUPPORT
Séancers is made possible through generous residency support from Abrons Arts Center, Bennington College, Casa Na Ilha Art Residence in Brazil, FringeArts, pOnderosa Movement and Discovery, and Haverford College with additional funding support from the Princeton Arts Fellowship, MAP Fund, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, and independent donors and friends of Jaamil Olawale Kosoko. Séancers was created with commission support from Abrons Arts Center and Danspace Project.
Séancers was highly successful with oversold shows at the New York Premiere at Abrons Arts Center and American Realness. Thank you for your support: Jennifer Chi, Beatrice Thomas, Ava Heller, Gillian Fallon, Ghan Patel, Anne Wilson, Talya Epstein, Emily Schapira, Apinel, Sara Smith, Michelle, Dnuskindoder, Celine Schein Das, Beatrice Basso, Walter Dundervill, Thomas Kriegsmann, Rosy Simas, Peggy Gould, Tiffany Rhynard, Karen Sheley, Juliana Mascelli, Tere O'Connor, Jacob Lim, Stefan Ellis, Lydia Bell, Andrew Brightman, Cdinucci0, Haowen Wang, Emily Marks, Sarah Grodsky, Mary G. Madigan, Kathleen Spehar, Daly Pie, Kevin Seaman, Michelle Daly, Allen Moon, Andre Perry, Rebecca Lazier, Reggie Vegan Ham and Cheese, Jared Taylor Williams, Denisa Musilova, BodyCartography Project, Kristel Faye Baldoz, Jasmine Hearn, Sarah Hromack, Omagbitse Omagbemi, The High Frontier, Juliana, Marilyn Bloodworth, Barbara Watson, Linda Marshall, Greta Hartenstein, Juliana, Adam Peditto, Mathew Pokolk, Barbara Watson, Ben, Michael Lonergan, Rob Krulak, Alex Romania, Melanie George, Talya Epstein, OE, Jessica Massart, and Nicholas Croft.
Consider donating to The Fugitive Futures Tour to keep this momentum going.
The Fugitive Futures Tour- Paypal or
The Fugitive Futures Tour-Venmo- Jaamil- Kosoko
OTHER WORKS
WHITE STATE | BLACK MIND
An Expectation of Violence
Dance New Amsterdam Presents LateNite other.explicit.bodies.
Revenge of the New Negro by Jaamil Olawale Kosoko
Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, originally from Detroit, MI is the Artistic Director of Kosoko Performance. He is a Bessie Award nominated Nigerian-American artist working within the creative spheres of poetry, performance, curation, community organizing, and education. He is a 2017 Princeton Arts Fellow, a 2017 Jerome Artists in Residence at Abrons Arts Center, a 2017 APAP Leadership Fellow, and a 2017 Cave Canem Poetry Fellow. He is a 2016 Gibney Dance boo-koo resident artist and a recipient of a 2017 and 2016 USArtists International Award from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation. His work has been presented throughout Europe and the United States. For several years he co-directed the art collective anonymous bodies with Kate Watson-Wallace.
He has created original roles in the performance works of visual artist Nick Cave, Pig Iron Theatre Company, Keely Garfield Dance, Miguel Gutierrez and The Powerful People, Headlong Dance Theater, among others. Kosoko’s poems, interviews, and essays can be found published in The American Poetry Review, Poems Against War, The Dunes Review, Silo, Detroit Research v2, Dance Journal (PHL), the Broad Street Review (PHL), Movement Research Performance Journal, and Critical Correspondence (NYC). He continues to guest teach, speak, lecture, and perform internationally. His newest work Séancers will begin touring throughout Europe in March 2018. Email studio@philadiction.org to learn more.
BIO
Jaamil Olawale Kosoko featured in The New York Times. Read the full article here.
‘a bold and bounding work… #negrophobia is a play that needs to be seen.’ —NEW YORK THEATER REVIEW
Mr. Kosoko transformed the concrete space into a tumultuous shrine to dead black men, including his brother, to whom the show is dedicated. —THE NEW YORK TIMES, SIOBHAN BURKE
“prolific Nigerian-American poet, curator, choreographer and performance artist’s new show explores the erotic fear associated with the black male body.” —LIZZIE SIMON, WALL STREET JOURNAL
“A foray into the dramatic and vulnerable elements of identity” —EFFIE BOWEN, INTERVIEW
“Jaamil Olawale Kosoko’s #negrophobia has many forms. It is an art installation, a practiced, choreographed performance, and a poetry reading. It is a personal story and a history lesson, told through the lens of internet culture. It might be consciousness-raising and Afrofuturist, but it might also be the negation of both.” —KATHERINE BERGSTROM, POINT OF CONTACT
PRESS & MEDIA
Collaborators:
Jaamil Olawale Kosoko - Artistic Director
Emily Reilly - Dramaturg and Publicity Consultant
Kimya Imani Jackson - Projects Manager
Alyssa Gersony - Performance Research Assistant
Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste - Performer | Sound Designer
Serena Wong - Lighting Designer
CONTACT
email the management team
studio@philadiction.org
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AMERICAN REALNESS
NY TIMES
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ENTHUSIAST
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