Aunts: A Post-Post-Show Conversation with Lucy Sexton
“When you set out to make something new it’s because you don’t like the old thing. And when you do the new thing long enough… you end up becoming the old thing.” (AUNTS)
Following their performance at NYU Skirball on Friday, September 15, AUNTS organizers Laurie Berg, Liliana Dirks-Goodman, Ali Rosa-Salas, and Ash R.T. Yergens will join the Department of Performance Studies for a post-post-show conversation.
AUNTS was founded by Jmy James Kidd and Rebecca Brooks in 2005 and is currently organized by Laurie Berg and Liliana Dirks-Goodman. An underground platform for dance, AUNTS creates events in unconventional spaces with multiple performers, overlapping performances, open dance parties, multi-disciplinary, body/non-body based, time oriented, finished/experimental/unfinished/process art. Since 2005, AUNTS has organized approximately fifty events and hosted more than four hundred artists from multiple disciplines and at various points in their careers.
Lucy Sexton is a Brooklyn-born choreographer, director, and producer who works in the fields of dance, theater, and film. With Anne Iobst, she created the dance performance duo DANCENOISE. She continues to perform as The Factress and has also appeared in the work of many dance and theater artists over the past few decades. She directed the off-Broadway plays Spalding Gray; Stories Left to Telland Tom Murrin’s The Magical Ridiculous Journey of Alien Comic; and produced the Charles Atlas films The Legend of Leigh Boweryand TURNING with Antony and the Johnsons. Since 2009, she has served as the Executive Director of the NY Dance and Performance Awards, The Bessies.
Co-sponsored by NYU Skirball.
Co-organizer of AUNTS since 2009, Laurie Berg makes work in a variety of forms including dance and performance, collage, and jewelry. In addition to her choreographic work she engages with the dance community as a producer, curator and event organizer. She recently co-curated the Movement Research Spring Festival 2017, is the 2016 recipient of “The Tommy” Award and a 2016-17 LMCC Workspace Artist-In-Residence. Her jewelry, which plays with the juxtaposition of real and fake, new and old, precious and plastic, can be seen around the necks of many dance artists in NYC.
Liliana Dirks-Goodman is a New York based artist. She has a Bachelors and Masters degree in Architecture. She co-organizes AUNTS and makes installations and objects. These things have been seen and happened at the New Museum, chashama, Danspace Project, and Movement Research, among others. She has taught workshops at both the New Museum and Whitney Museum in New York City.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, Ali Rosa-Salas is a curator working across movement-based, sound, and visual art practices. She has organized exhibitions, public programs, and nightlife at Danspace Project, Knockdown Center, MoCADA, Weeksville Heritage Center, Secret Project Robot, among other New York City venues. Ali is excited to be the newly appointed Director of Performance Programs at Abrons Art Center.
Ashley R.T. Yergens is a byproduct of growing up on tater tots and WWE SmackDown. He's a 2016 boo-koo artist-in-residence at Gibney Dance, and a 2016-17 Fresh Tracks Artist at New York Live Arts. Please text your favorite emoji combination to him at (507)412-1381. You can find his naturally and artificially flavored musings on his Instagram: @buildamanworkshop.