Stephen Petronio Company

Acclaimed by audiences and critics alike, Stephen Petronio is widely regarded as one of the leading dance-makers of his generation. New music, visual art, and fashion collide in his dances, producing powerfully modern landscapes for the senses. Founded in 1984, Stephen Petronio Company has performed in 40 countries throughout the world, including numerous New York City engagements with 24 seasons at The Joyce Theater.

The 2014–2015 season marked the first incarnation of Bloodlines, a project of Stephen Petronio Company to honor and embody a lineage of American postmodern dance masters. Distinguished for creating original languages that exemplify the highest level of artistic excellence displayed through extreme physical and conceptual rigor, these artists have had a profound impact on Petronio’s own artistic path. To date, the Company has restaged eleven works by Merce Cunningham, Trisha Brown, Anna Halprin, Yvonne Rainer, Rudy Perez, and Steve Paxton, receiving two New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” award nominations for the 2017 Bloodlines season. The juxtapositions of Bloodlines repertory alongside Petronio’s works offers audiences an experiential insight into the evolution of this strand of creativity in American choreography. In the second iteration of Bloodlines(future), looking towards future generations of artists and heirs to the Bloodlines lineage and how these historical masters frame the future of modern dance, SPC commissioned Davalois Fearon, an SPC veteran, who created a work titled Finding Herstory. In 2020, SPC commissioned work from the emerging Johnnie Cruise Mercer, an artist whom Stephen has encouraged since his residency at the Petronio Residency Center in 2018.

In 2016, Stephen Petronio Company expanded its focus on American postmodern dance to explore the meaning of legacy and its impact on the future and sustainability of this most ephemeral art form. With an eye toward securing artists' consistent ability to create and explore, the Petronio Residency Center (PRC) has been established as a retreat center where research and the creative process will be paramount. The site of PRC is Crow’s Nest, a 175-acre property in Round Top, NY, 20 minutes from the burgeoning Catskill and Hudson, NY, art scenes. Paid artist residencies began in the summer of 2018, providing dedicated rehearsal space and resources to choreographers and their collaborators to develop new work in an environment unfettered by market constraints and away from the daily pressures of urban life. A dual format—both residency and retreat, unconstrained time and resources to make new work, with no deliverables required, and unfettered access to an extraordinary natural landscape—feels necessary now more than ever before. With support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, PRC most recently established a permanent conservation easement for 77 acres, designating this portion of the land, The Doris Duke Preserve at Round Top, Greene County, as a preserve in perpetuity, forever wild.

TheREDprojectNYC

Founded in 2015 by Company Director and Producer Johnnie Cruise Mercer, Creative Director Torian Ugworji, and Process Manager Shanice Mason, TheREDprojectNYC (TRPNYC) is a multidisciplinary ensemble of artists dedicated to the study of movement philosophy and its use towards building communal spaces for black/other process, documentation, and investigation. At its root, TRPNYC is a company comprised of five branches, The Movement Ensemble (a rotating team of movement, theater, and performance artists), The TRPNYC Band (a tribe of sound makers, instrumentalists, and music producers), Community w/TRPNYC (a curated set of happenings/events centered around communional healing, resting, and joy), TRPNYC’s Visual Makers (a collaborative group of media, film, and visual artists), and the TRPNYC Think-Making Lab (a series of process forward labs dedicated to learning and collaboration in partnership with other like minded institutions/organizations). 

Currently the company is working through a multi-year, multidisciplinary project titled A Process Anthology: The Decade from Hell and the Decade the Followed Suite. A ten-chaptered journey grounded by the ensemble's dedication to creating space for black process and imagination, the memoirs, happenings, and collaborations within this ritualistic project focuses on deconstructing the contemporary, retrospectively engaging shared memories from the years 2000-2020. The conclusion of A Process Anthology: The Decade from Hell and the Decade that Followed Suite, is marked by the creation of two collaborative EpicDocuWorks, both looking at the two decades intimately. The Decade from Hell… dives into 2000-2010 and will premiere in Spring 2023 (presented by Gibney). …and the Decade that Followed Suite will follow years later with a Summer 2026 premiere!