Past Events

  • Making Space at the Armory

    Symposium: Sound & Color

    January 14, 2023 - January 15, 2023

    Join a state-of-the-art conversation about how race matters in creative design for live performance in our current moment of creative, technological, and cultural unrest. Hosted by lighting designer Jane Cox, playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, set designer Mimi Lien, and sound designer and composer Mikaal Sulaiman, this interdisciplinary forum allows artists, intellectuals, and designers to explore lighting, sound, costume, and set design, as well as augmented reality, as sites of innovation, magic, and transformation.

  • Making Space at the Armory

    Salon: Juke Joint

    March 31, 2023 - April 1, 2023

    Join us for a two-day event spotlighting the history of the juke joint in Black American social history and its legacy in music and culture. Emerging during a time when Black Americans were barred from and unsafe in white establishments, juke joints offered a gathering place and secular cultural arena while building community around versatile and innovative Black musicians that ultimately serving as the fertile ground for the birth and spread of blues and rock and roll. Today, the juke joint is not only a location, but a cultural symbol that continues to inspire artists across media.

    Poet, writer, performer, and activist Pamela Sneed (Funeral Diva) celebrates the role of women and femme artists in the evolution and cultivation of blues and rock with her band through a tribute cabaret to the legendary female blues artist Big Mama Thornton on Friday evening. The first artist to record “Hound Dog” and composer of “Ball and Chain” later made famous by Janis Joplin, Big Mama Thornton got her start performing on the concert circuit in the segregated South and went on to become a Black feminist blues icon.

    On Saturday afternoon, singer-songwriter and playwright Stew (Passing Strange, Notes of a Native Song) premieres a new cabaret piece inspired by the symbiotic relationship with audience and performer that developed in the juke joint and is displayed in the call-and-response nature of Black music. Featuring new songs and texts drawn from his experiences as a Black artist in the punk clubs of his youth, on Broadway, and now in Ivy league universities, this happening puts the audience in the role of collaborator to the storyteller and explores the effect of race and class dynamic on that relationship.

    Following this performance, Stew and Sneed discuss the significance and legacy of the Juke Joint and how the rebel spirit of Black and female innovators lives on today at the intersection of political commentary, music, and cabaret culture in a conversation introduced by Curator of Public Programming Tavia Nyong’o.

  • Making Space at the Armory

    Hapo Na Zamani

    May 20, 2023

    Led by Black artists, activists, and intellectuals in the 1960s and 1970s, the Black Arts Movement helped to shape the ideologies of Black identity, political beliefs, and African American culture at that time and with impact that can still be felt today. Hapo Na Zamani reimagines a happening from that era for today, combining elements of painting, spoken word, music, movement, wonder, and surprise to blur the boundaries between life and art and invite attendees to not only witness but become a part of the art in action.

    Hosted by Carl Hancock Rux with musical direction by Vernon Reid, the evening centers around a set of concerts by the Grammy Award-winning musician and a band of renegade musicians from Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber inspired by the greats of the Black Arts Movement and honoring the musical legacy of the late writer and intellectual Greg Tate. Before and after seated performance times, audiences are invited to engage with screenings of interdisciplinary artist Stefanie Batten Bland‘s film Kolonial, as well as other activations and installations featuring Shantelle Courvoisier Jackson, Nona Hendryx, Somi, Wunmi, Carrie Mae Weems, Dianne Smith, and other surprise guests.

    Co-presented with Harlem Stage as part of their Black Arts Movement: Then and Now Conference, bringing elements of the past and present together to reflect, examine, and point to the full experience and legacy of this cultural movement.

  • Making Space at the Armory

    Salon: Hidden Conversations

    June 18, 2023

    In commemoration of Juneteenth, Park Avenue Armory partners with National Black Theatre (NBT) to uplift the work and impact of NBT founder Dr. Barbara Ann Teer as well as the ways she and many others serve as hidden architects of culture to help empower society, drive innovation, and foster community and social impact.

    Harlem Soapbox leads audiences on a journey into the music of the 1960’s and the Black Arts movement with a sonic mash-up of some of the songs that helped to power and inspire the social movements of that time. Archivist and filmmaker Steven Fullwood explores the crafting of the AfroFuture and National Black Theatre’s contribution to the theatrical and cultural canon with queen of funk Nona Hendryx and NBT CEO Sade Lythcott. And a second panel explores poet, playwright, and essayist June Jordan’s legacy and impact on architecture as it relates to the lives of Black families and communities as well as architectural, cultural, and civic renewal through built space with artist and cultural strategist Ebony Noelle Golden, writer and manager of McArthur Binion’s studio Camille Bacon, and poet Mahogany L. Browne.

    Additional activations offer a glimpse into new exhibitions and works in progress from National Black Theatre studio artists, including experimental theater maker nicHi douglas, dancer and writer Jerron Herman, director and producer Awoye Timpo, and original compositions by sound designers/composers Aaron Marcellus, Mikaal Sulaiman, Holland Andrews, JOJO ABOT, and Justin Hicks shared in a botanical meditative space. This happening also includes a live silent disco with DJ Stormin’ Norman; a selection of original films curated and commissioned by National Black Theatre, and a Trans Liberation pageant led and created by Qween Jean, costume designer and founder of Black Trans Liberation.

  • Making Space at the Armory

    Corpus Delicti

    October 7, 2023

    At a moment of maximum anxiety and backlash over the fundamental human rights to autonomy, expressivity, modification, and self-transformation of the body, this convening of artists, activists, and intellectuals imagines and enacts transgender art and music as a vehicle for dialogue across differences.

    This afternoon happening features a series of panel discussions exploring topics including an examination of trans life through the lens of time, and multigenerational voices telling their stories and exploring the creative projects that have been born out of trans life. Participants include: celebrated transgender trailblazer Kate Bornstein (any pronouns); visual and performance artist Cassils (they/them); GLITSINC Founder and Executive Director Ceyenne Doroshow (pronounced Kai-Ann, lady/she); internationally celebrated author, activist, and public speaker and Co-Founder Trans Student Educational Resources Eli Erlick (she/her); Faltas author and founder of Trans Equity Consulting Cecilia Gentili (she/her); psychoanalyst and internationally recognized expert on gender identity Griffin Hansbury (he/him); Abram J. Lewis (any pronouns), Co-Founder of the NYC Trans Oral History Project; genderless dragon Tiamat Legion Medusa (it/its); interdisciplinary artist Carlos Motta (he/him); trans Latina writer, artist, and organizer XCSN (Xiomara Sebastián Castro Niculescu) (she/her); trans health consultant and artist D’hana Perry (they/he); traveling artist and activist Early Shinada (they/them); academic and founder of the academic discipline of transgender studies Sandy Stone (she/her); Dao X. Tran (she/her), editor and Interim Co-Executive Director of oral history nonprofit Voices of Witness, that work to advance human rights; multidisciplinary artist Dorian Wood (she/they); Sierra Leonean-American vocalist, composer, and sound artist ricky sallay zoker aka YATTA (they/them); among others.

    Additional on-site activations include media and reading rooms, and a sound installation created by Aviva Silverman on behalf of the NYC Trans Oral History Project, a grass-roots, volunteer-based archive of over 200 interviews of trans New Yorkers. This thought-provoking salon serves as a hub of activity celebrating transgender liberation through intergenerational kinship—sharing stories of survival, joy, and the legacies of counter-cultural movement building.

    Presented in conjunction with Mutant;Destrudo, the Armory’s new commission by the multifaceted artist and creator Arca that continues her practice of addressing themes of psychosexuality, science fiction, and gender identity.

  • Making Space at the Armory

    Seasons of Dance

    December 3, 2023

    With diversity moving into the mainstream and modern dance at a crossroads, pioneering artistic directors, choreographers, and dancers gather to explore the intersection between creative vision and cultural context in the art form. Among this series of demonstrations and interactive conversations, Thomas F. DeFrantz moderates a consideration of the living legacy of Pina Bausch and a celebration of the diversity of contemporary dance flourishing in Africa today. He is joined by Germaine Acogny and Malou Airuado, dancers from the company of The Rite of Spring, and others.

    Presented in conjunction with the Armory’s presentation of The Rite of Spring/common ground[s], showcasing Pina Bausch’s seminal work as danced by a specially assembled company of 36 dancers from 14 African countries and a new companion piece by Germaine Acogny, the founder of the Senegalese company École des Sables, and Malou Ariaudo, who performed leading roles in many of Bausch’s early works as a member of Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch.