May 9, 2013: Future Light: A Longtable Discussion on Possibilities Rooted in Afrofuturism led by Daniel Alexander Jones

Thursday, May 9, 2013 | 7pm | Hemispheric Institute

Future Light: A Longtable Discussion on Possibilities Rooted in Afrofuturism, led by Daniel Alexander Jones

Daniel Alexander Jones leads a conversation entitled “Future Light” that looks for productive strategies in new performance/live art that draw upon principles of Afrofuturism. Jones will be joined in conversation by Sylvan Oswald, Aimee Cox, Alondra Nelson, and Rhonda Ross.

Hemispheric Institute of Performance & Politics
20 Cooper Square, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10003

DANIEL ALEXANDER JONES is an award-winning performer, writer and director. American Theatre Magazine named him "one of fifteen artists whose work will be transforming American stages for decades to come." His unconventional body of work includes plays, performance pieces, and devised work. In collaboration with composer Bobby Halvorson, Daniel, as his "altar-ego" Jomama Jones has released the CDs Lone Star and Radiate; has performed in concert at Joe's Pub and Symphony Space; and sold out a theatrical run, directed by Kym Moore at Soho Rep. Jones received the prestigious Alpert Award in the Arts for Theatre in 2006. danielalexanderjones.typepad.com

Aimee Meredith Cox is an assistant professor of Performance and African and African American Studies at Fordham University. Her book, Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship (forthcoming Duke), is an ethnography based in PostIndustrial Detroit that explores the way young black women transform and reconfigure the spaces and institutions meant to reshape and transform them into certain types of respectable and obedient citizens. Aimee is also a former dancer with the Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble/Ailey II and founder of the youth-led arts activist BlackLight Project.

Alondra Nelson teaches sociology and gender studies at Columbia University. She is author of Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination, winner of four professional prizes, including the 2013 Mirra Komarovsky Book Award. She is also an editor of Genetics and the Unsettled Past: The Collision of DNA, Race, and History; Technicolor: Race, Technology, and Everyday Life; and “Afrofuturism,” a special issue of Social Text.

Rhonda Ross is an actress, singer, writer, director. Rob Lester of NiteLifeExchange says "If you want to understand electricity, get yourself a seat...anywhere Rhonda Ross performs." 2013 finds Rhonda actively penning a solo theater project entitled Relativity. Rhonda Ross is also the only child of singing legend, Diana Ross, and Motown-Founder, Berry Gordy. 

Sylvan Oswald is the author of the play SUN RA and a resident playwright at New Dramatists. He teaches playwriting at Barnard, Purchase College/SUNY, and Mount Holyoke. sylvanoswald.com

Free and open to the public, photo ID required to enter NYU building.

Presented as part of the Hemispheric New York Performance Network Artist in Residence program funded by the Rockefeller Foundation Cultural Innovation Fund.