HARLEM AIR SHAFT
An experimental multidisciplinary street performance exploring links between jazz and memory in Harlem
By Justin Randolph Thompson
In collaboration with Stefanie Nelson and Bradly Dever Treadaway
Featuring: James Brandon Lewis | Thomas Sayers Ellis | Kwami Coleman
Todd Bryant Weeks | Bianca Cosentino | Emily Tellier | Omari Wiles
With the participation of Tatjana Lightbourn, Rich Alston, Alex Vargas, and Derek Gazal
Thursday, June 24, 2021, 5:00 pm
126th and 125th Streets between 5th and Madison Avenue, Harlem, NYC
HARLEM AIR SHAFT is a multidisciplinary performance ritual examining the relationship between jazz and memory in the context of a Harlem streetscape, conceived by the award-winning multimedia artist Justin Randolph Thompson in collaboration with choreographer Stefanie Nelson and visual artist Bradly Dever Treadaway. The piece invites viewers to immerse themselves in an improvisation-driven performance featuring dancers, a musician, a jazz union representative, and a poet in perpetual motion. HARLEM AIR SHAFT disrupts everyday reality to remind viewers of the rich cultural heritage of the place, the economics of memory and the complex history of community, resilience, art, and healing. The 40-minute-long piece can be viewed at no charge on Thursday, June 24, 2021, starting at 5:00 pm and will be presented on the city blocks 126th and 125th Streets between 5th and Madison Avenue. For more information, visit https://www.sndancegroup.org/events/harlem-air-shaft-1.
Inspired by the tradition of DIY Harlem rent parties of the 1930s and 40s, HARLEM AIR SHAFT draws its title from a Duke Ellington composition, a sonic narration of an architectural space meant to bypass building codes that were designed to ensure adequate living conditions. The piece, focuses on the economics of jazz, and the capacity of historic sites to hold memory, enveloping a city block around 17 East 126st Street – famously known from Art Kane’s iconic jazz greats photo, A Great Day in Harlem – in a ritual procession weaved into the flow of everyday traffic. Featuring three dancers (Bianca Cosentino, Emily Tellier, and Omari Wiles, choreographed by Stefanie Nelson) with portable dance floors rhythmically driving the work in Morse code and a cast of other participants addressing the audience from moving cars through the speaker systems. Musicologist Kwami Coleman speaks to the comings and goings of jazz in Harlem; jazz union representative Todd Bryant Weeks talks about the economic hardship in the field through the language of the soapbox, poet Thomas Sayers Ellis delivers a meditation on the language and fleetingness of memory, while saxophonist James Brandon Lewis plays a solo meditation on Duke’s composition.
The creators of HARLEM AIR SHAFT are longtime collaborators working on infusing the overlapping of art, performance, economics, and community. Harlem has figured prominently in past collaborations as a site layered with tactics for self-sustained spiritual and economic practices. History is evoked through the collaboration as a means for seeking connection and healing in relation to inequities and economic realities that are tethered to the arts, made increasingly relevant by the aftermath of the recent pandemic.
Justin Randolph Thompson explains: “With HARLEM AIR SHAFT, I continue the work that started with Friskin’ the Whiskers – a performance project I initiated in 2014 which focuses on bringing together people connected to the jazz community to highlight the economic realities in which jazz musicians have to function. Jazz and economy have a long and complicated history where strategies for developing new systems of community support have always been prevalent. The pandemic made evident to all what many of us already knew. To me, the various forms of cultural production as represented by practitioners from different fields in this piece speaks to the constant need for reminding ourselves about art’s inherent social dimension.”
Stefanie Nelson adds: “I have a longstanding interest in the fleeting nature of memory, which I have been exploring in numerous projects with my dance ensemble. Justin, who has been my collaborator over the years, gave me an idea of presenting this concept in the context of jazz and the history of this unique neighborhood. We would like for this piece to inspire the memory of Harlem’s resilient past for a more hopeful, community-driven, creative future.”
A post-performance exhibition curated by Arden Sherman at the Hunter East Harlem Gallery is planned for 2022. The show will bring together video documents and objects from the performance along with an experimental documentary that will be an outgrowth of the performance – details to be announced.
HARLEM AIR SHAFT was made possible in part with funding from the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corporation administered by LMCC and in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Justin Randolph Thompson (Concept) is a new media artist, cultural facilitator, and educator. Living between Italy and the US since 1999, Thompson is Co-Founder and Director of Black History Month Florence, a multi-faceted exploration of African and African Diasporic cultures in the context of Italy founded in 2016. In2014, he founded Friskin’ the Whiskers, a jazz performance series focused on economics and community. Thompson is a recipient of a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, a Franklin Furnace Fund Award, a Visual Artist Grant from the Fundacion Marcelino Botin, two Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grants, a Jerome Fellowship from Franconia Sculpture Park, and an Emerging Artist Fellowship from Socrates Sculpture Park. His life and work seek to deepen the discussions around socio-cultural stratification and hierarchical organization by employing fleeting temporary communities as monuments and fostering projects that connect academic discourse, social activism, and DIY networking strategies in annual and biennial gatherings, sharing, and gestures of collectivity. http://www.justinrandolphthompson.com
Stefanie Nelson (Concept, Choreography) is the artistic director of Stefanie Nelson Dancegroup (SND), a New York City-based contemporary performance ensemble producing original work in close creative partnership with performers, visual artists, and composers. The company’s work is driven by a distinctly conceptual impetus and characterized by a visceral and strikingly visual approach. Nelson is the recipient of recent awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the New York Foundation for the Arts. Related to her work as AD of SND, she founded and directs Dance Italia, an internationally renowned summer training program heading into its 10th edition, and Motore592, a bold, new contemporary art space in Lucca, IT. www.sndancegroup.org
Bradly Dever Treadaway (Concept, Visuals) is a Brooklyn-based artist and teacher utilizing lens-based image making, moving images, sound, sculpture, installation, and performance to comment on the breakdown of intergenerational communication and broken familial links due to natural disaster, technological evolution, mental health challenges, societal shifts, and the continuance of interpersonal detachment occurring within American communities. His work is visualized through archival interventions, recontextualizing the archive to serve as form, medium, subject matter and concept, and elevated domestic rituals while questioning material significance within the photographic medium. Treadaway’s work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of Art, the Center for Photography at Woodstock, The International Center of Photography, and in many other venues in the U.S. and internationally and is a part of the permanent collection at numerous museums, including the Brooklyn Public Library and The Center for Photography at Woodstock and his film/video work has been screened at the international film festivals. Treadaway is a Fulbright Scholar to Italy and a Faculty member at The International Center of Photography in New York City where he has taught a range of courses including analog and digital photography, video, sound, installation, and archival interventions as the founding media. Additionally, he has taught a range of courses at Bard College, SUNY Purchase, Barnard College, and Louisiana State University. www.bradlydevertreadaway.com
James Brandon Lewis (Performer) is a critically acclaimed saxophonist and composer. Lewis has received accolades from New York Times, NPR, ASCAP Foundation, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Jazz great Sonny Rollins called Lewis a “Promising young player with the potential to do great things having listened to the Elders.” Most recently, he was voted Rising Star Tenor Saxophonist by Downbeat Magazine’s 2020 Critic’s Poll. James Brandon Lewis has released several critically acclaimed albums, leads numerous ensembles, and is the Co-Founder of American Book Award-winning poetry and music ensemble Heroes Are Gang Leaders. Lewis attended Howard University and received his M.F.A from the California Institute of the Arts. www.jblewis.com
Thomas Sayers Ellis (Performer) co-founded the literary group The Dark Room Collective (1989) and Heroes Are Gang Leaders (2014), a free jazz literary band of musicians and writers who were awarded the American Book Award for Oral Literature in 2018. He has taught at numerous universities and he is the author of The Maverick Room, Skin Inc.: Identity Repair Poems, The Corny Toys, the forthcoming Crank Shaped Notes (2021), and Mexico (2021), a book of photographs. His poems have appeared in Best American Poetry (1997, 2001, 2010, 2015); The Paris Review; Poetry; Grand Street, Tin House, and The Nation. In 2019, Manually Forcing All Modes of ReSKINstance Into Fo(lk)cus, a solo exhibition of photographs, was presented at Studio 81 in Mantova, Italy. Ellis was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry in 2015.
Kwami Coleman (Performer) is a pianist, composer, and musicologist specializing in improvised music. His research interests include experimental music history, jazz history, the history and music cultures of the African Diaspora, the political economy of music, music technology, aesthetics, and cultural studies. Coleman's current book project, in production, is titled Change: The "New Thing" and Modern Jazz. His 2017 debut album titled Local Music featured original music written for trio and field recordings. Coleman was a founding member of the Afro-Latin@ Forum, a non-profit organization devoted to the study and increased visibility of Latinos of African descent in the United States, now housed in NYU’s Steinhardt School. Coleman is the recipient of a 2020 Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship. http://kwamicoleman.com/
Todd Bryant Weeks (Performer) is a freelance writer, jazz historian, and labor activist. His first book, Luck's in My Corner: The Life and Music of Hot Lips Page (Routledge, 2008) received a 2009 Honorable Mention for Research in Recorded Jazz from the Association for Recorded Sound Collections, a national scholarly association. He has received two awards from the International Labor Communications Association for his regular reporting on jazz and labor issues in Allegro, the magazine of the American Federation of Musicians, Local 802, of which he is the Principal Business Representative for Jazz. Todd has been published in the Annual Review of Jazz Studies and wrote the chapter on jazz for Forever Harlem: Celebrating America's Most Diverse Community (Daily News, L.P. and Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce, 2006). He has lectured on jazz and other subjects while teaching with the acclaimed Bard Prison Initiative and has given presentations and talks at the Institute of Jazz Studies, the Louis Armstrong House Museum, and the National Jazz Museum in Harlem.
Bianca Cosentino (Dancer) was born in New Jersey and began her dance training in New York City in The Ailey School’s Junior Division. Later, she continued her studies in Italy and Germany with members of such internationally-acclaimed ensembles as Batsheva Dance Company, Kidd Pivot Dance Company, and Pina Bausch Wuppertal Dance Theater. She has performed with n Alvin Ailey’s Memoria" with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater during their 2019/2020 season, at the opening event of New York City's Hudson Yards alongside Grammy-nominated singer Andra Day, and in the 2019 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (as part of the Ailey School’s 60th anniversary celebration.) She has had the opportunity to work with choreographers such as Adam Barruch, Earl Mosley, Manuel Vignoulle, and Hope Boykin. She is a senior in the Ailey/Fordham BFA program with a double major in Economics and is currently pursuing her Master’s of Arts in Economics at Fordham University.
Emily Tellier (Dancer) (she/they) is a queer dance artist, educator, and visual artist originally from North Vancouver, currently residing in Brooklyn. She has performed in various festivals and venues, including Central Park’s Summerstage, Movement Research at Judson Church, 92nd St. Y, the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, at the New York City Center, the Ladies of Hip Hop Festival, and the Vancouver International Dance Festival, to name a few. Emily has worked with many companies in New York and Vancouver such as Stefanie Nelson Dancegroup, Movement of the People Dance Company, 277 Dance Project, Summation Dance, Thryn Saxon, Elisa Schreiber, and Heather Laura Gray. They can also be seen in Ingrid Michaelsonʼs music video for her platinum single Celebrate, choreographed by Stacey Tookey. Through their work as community action manager at Gibney, Emily shares dance and movement throughout New York City in schools and domestic violence shelters and works with programs such as Step It Up NYC, a youth initiative that uses dance to highlight social justice issues.
Omari Wiles (Dancer) began his training in various African dance forms at the age of six. He then joined his parents Marie Basse Wiles and Anthony Olukose Wiles, and by his teens, he took on the role of Assistant Director of the family company The Maimouna Ketia School of African Dance. Working with master African dancers, Omari's understanding of African cultures, rhythms, and dance has been his foundation, venturing further into his training. Omari studied other styles such as hip-hop, modern, house, and vogue. He has worked with Rashaad Newsome, Janet Jackson, Goldlink, Beyoncé, John Legend, Ephrat Ashire Dance, Jidenna, Maleek Berry, Jennifer Husdon, Gala, Forces, Naomi Campbell, and has been included in Dance Magazine Top 25 to Watch as well as mentioned in such publications as Korean and British editions of Vogue, The Observer, The New York Times and periodicals from The MET, The Guggenheim Museum, and the Joyce Theater. Omari is best known as Legendary Omari NiNa Oricci, Founder of The House of Nina Oricci, and Creative Director of Les Ballet Afrik.
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