JULY 5 Program:
Total run time: 90 min.

Oxana Chi & Layla Zami: I Step On Air (Dance-Live-Music-Theater)
A lively and meditative piece blending mesmerizing dance moves, socially-conscious spoken words, and atmospheric live-music (saxophone, kalimba, sounds). I Step On Air is dedicated to the Ghanian-German poet, activist and performer May Ayim, also known as the "Afro-German Audre Lorde."

Satoshi Haga & Rie Fukuzawa: binbinFactory (Dance)
A style synthesizing Western techniques of dance, mime, and drama, with Eastern forms including Japan's traditional, contemporary theater, and dance, as well as Tai Chi and Balinese dance.

Mooncake Collective: Double Yolk Moon (Experimental Theater)
Double Yolk Moon is an auto-ethnographic performance told in shadow, sound, and movement. Through their friendship, Bex Kwan and Sophia Mak unearth contradictions in their relationship to family mythologies, histories of foreignness, and kinship as queer Chinese people in the United States.

Kerry Downey + Kaveri Raina: K.2 (Exhibition in the theater gallery)
Co-curated by Anne Patsch.

About the artists:

MOONCAKE COLLECTIVE is a new experimental art collaboration between queer Chinese artists, cultural workers, organizers, and educators Mei Ann Teo, Sophia Mak and Bex Kwan. Bringing our experiences from divergent disciplines and media, we seek to create innovative work that breaks conventions of form in order to crack open untold stories from our community. Our performances are sites of tender resistance and rebellion. Performance and residency history includes BRIClab, Brooklyn Arts Exchange Space Grant, Trans Theatre Festival, Knockdown Center.
Websites: Mooncake Collective | Mei Ann Teo | Sophia Mak | Bex Kwan

BINBINFACTORY Satoshi Haga and Rie Fukuzawa have been collaborating as binbinFactory since 2010. Of the many aspects of culture, they are especially drawn to the storytelling traditions, both religious and secular, visual and kinetic. They have been presented by many venues including DanceNow (2010-2016)/ Dance Conversations at the Flea/ Downtown Dance Festival/ Movement Research at Judson Church/ The Pearl at the Schermerhorn Theater. Performance and grant history includes Jacob's Pillow, The Joyce Theater Foundation, e-Moves at Harlem Stage, DanceNow and various venues in Tokyo.
Web: binbinFactory

OXANA CHI is a German-Nigerian choreographer, dancer, filmmaker, curator, organizer, mentor and author. Listed in the A to Z of "People Who Power the Dance World" (The Dance Enthusiast, NYC, 2018), she draws inspiration from her travels to and study in 40+ countries in Asia, Europe, the Caribbean, Africa, the Pacific, and the Americas. Chi developed her own Fusion performing language, which blends such diverse styles as German expressionist dance, African Total theater, ballet and raks sharki. Performance and residency history includes Abrons Arts Center AIRspace Grant for Performing Artists, NYU Jack Crystal Theater, University of Toronto, Dixon Place, MR@Judson Church. She is currently Co-Curator of Dance at the International Human Rights Art Festival.
Web: Oxana Chi Dance Art

LAYLA ZAMI is an innovative artist and academic working at the intersection between memory, diaspora, gender and performance. As a Resident Artist with Oxana Chi Dance Art, she creates and performs live-music, spoken words, physical theater in dialogue with the choreography. Together with Oxana Chi, Layla Zami performed across NYC and across the globe. She was born in Paris, France, of Jewish-German-Russian and Afro-Indian-Caribbean descent. Based in Brooklyn, Dr. Zami is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Performance and Performance Studies MFA at Pratt Institute.
Web: Layla Zami

Oxana Chi and Layla Zami are a German-French duo collaborating since 2010 in the fields of performing arts, visual arts, higher education and event curation. They moved from Berlin, Germany to New York City and are appreciated internationally for their inspiring creativity and uplifting energy.

KERRY DOWNEY is an interdisciplinary artist and educator at MoMA in New York City. Downey’s work explores relationality through the multitude of ways we inhabit our bodies and access forms of power. Downey works primarily in video with a practice that includes printmaking, drawing, writing, and performance. They have exhibited at the Queens Museum, the Hessel Museum at Bard College, The Drawing Center, Cooper Cole, Toronto, and Taylor Macklin, Zurich. They recently had a solo and duo shows at Cave, Knockdown Center, and 20|20 Gallery. Downey is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Emerging Artist Grant and Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant. Their work has been in Artforum, The Brooklyn Rail, The Washington Post, and Lookie-Lookie. Downey holds a BA from Bard College and an MFA from Hunter College.
Web: Kerry Downey

KAVERI RAINA is a painter living and working in Brooklyn, NY. She was born and raised in New Delhi, India and moved to the States at the age of eleven. She received her MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2016 and her BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2011. Raina has received awards and fellowships including the James Nelson Raymond fellowship, Fred and Joanna Lazarus Scholarship, amongst others. She was recently nominated for the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors grant. Raina’s work has been exhibited in the US, India and Germany. Raina attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture summer of 2017.
Web: Kaveri Raina