Bill Chats Program

BILL CHATS

with Charlotte Brathwaite, Janani Balasubramanian, Justin Hicks, and Sunder Ganglani Virtual Presentation NOV 11, 6PM (EST)

BILL CHATS with Charlotte Brathwaite, Janani Balasubramanian, Justin Hicks, and Sunder Ganglani Presented in partnership with The Fisher Center at Bard As part of the ongoing Bill Chats series, Bill T. Jones will be in conversation with the creative team behind The Future is Present: A Casting the Vote Project, a high impact, liberatory media project that engages a core group of black and indigenous youth activists and art makers to imagine us into a better world. The Future is Present (TFP) is a seven-week performance and action laboratory that centers the voices and vision of Black and Indigenous young people, and builds concentric circles of solidarity around their demands on our collective future. These demands will be amplified through a series of rigorous, joyful, and high-distribution artistic interventions.

The Future is Present: A Casting the Vote Project is a co-production of The Fisher Center at Bard, the Bard Theater & Performance Program, and Casting the Vote. Co-commissioned by Live Arts Bard and New York Live Arts.

FUNDING Bill Chats received lead support from New York Live Arts’ Partners for New Performance.

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BIOGRAPHIES Charlotte Brathwaite’s genredefying works illuminate the realities and the dreams of the marginalized and center unheard, unseen, and overlooked stories.

Dealing with subject matter from the historical past to the present and the distant future, her work brings to light issues of social justice, race, sex, power and the complexities of the human condition. Current projects include Chapter & Verse: The Gospel of James Baldwin created with Meshell Ndegeocello is active September – December 2020 with new content each month via print, video and a toll free hotline; The Future is Present (TFP), a collaborative performance laboratory that amplifies the life-affirming demands of young black and indigenous activists. Future projects include: Omar, an opera composed by Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Ables inspired by the life of Omar Ibn Said, and Forgotten Paradise: Grazettes Sun, a feature-length film and traveling installation on historical trauma and the legacy of the transAtlantic slave trade. Awards: Princess Grace, Creative Capital, United States Artist, Map Fund.

Associate Professor Theater Arts, MIT. charlottebrathwaite.com Janani Balasubramanian is an artist and creative researcher working at the intersection of contemporary art, science, and social practice. Janani’s work has been presented at over 160 across North America and Europe, including The Public Theater, MOMA, Andy Warhol Museum, Red Bull Arts, Ace Hotel, Brooklyn Museum, High Line, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They have been an Innovator-inResidence at Colorado College, Brooklyn College/Tow Foundation artist resident, artist-in-residence at the University of Colorado, Sundance Institute fellow, MAP Fund grantee, a Pioneer Works Narrative Arts Fellow, and Van Lier Fellow at the Public Theater.

Janani is currently a Hemispheric Institute fellow at NYU; a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow; artist-inresidence in the brown dwarf astrophysics group at the American Museum of Natural History; the 2020-2021 visiting artist at Stanford University’s Institute for Diversity in the Arts and Information Theory group;

OF BEAUTY and most recently W. David Hancock’s MASTER. After attending the Yale School of Drama Ganglani has gone on Justin Hicks is a multidisciplinary to work with artists including artist, and Drama Deskvisual artists Izhar Patkin, Wardell nominated composer who Milan, and Ak Jansen; composer/ investigates identity and value. musicians Wayne Shorter, Hicks has worked as a writer, and Esperanza Spalding, Rhiannon performer with various artists including Steffani Jemison, Abigail Giddens, Justin Hicks, and Nathalie Joachim; and directors DeVille, Charlotte Brathwaite, Charlotte Brathwaite, and Lileana Hilton Als, Meshell Ndegeocello, Blain-Cruz. His work focuses on Cauleen Smith, Helga Davis, Lynn the interaction between audience Nottage, and Ayesha Jordan. His work has been featured at Lincoln and performance, and crafts environments that encourage Center for the Performing Arts, intimacy and exchange Ganglani The Public Theater, LaMama, also sits on the board of The Stop festival Steirischer Herbst, Shopping Choir, with whom he Western Front Society, The Whitney Museum of American Art, screams and sings on the street.

Nottingham Contemporary, and The John F. Kennedy Center for the BARD FISHER CENTER The Fisher Center develops, Performing Arts among others. produces, and presents justinhicksmusic.persona.co performing arts across disciplines Sunder Ganglani is respected for through new productions and context-rich programs that his collaborative practice across challenge and inspire. As a premier disciplines that brings particular attention to the social dimensions professional performing arts center and a hub for research of contemporary performance. and education, the Fisher Center As Co-producing Artistic Director supports artists, students, and at The Foundry Theatre in New audiences in the development York City, Sunder commissioned, and examination of artistic ideas, developed, and produced offering perspectives from the new works including Ariana past and present, as well as Reines’ TELEPHONE, Claudia visions of the future. The Fisher Rankine’s THE PROVENANCE and an inaugural Collider fellow at Lincoln Center.

Center demonstrates Bard’s commitment to the performing arts as a cultural and educational necessity. Home is the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, designed by Frank Gehry and located on the campus of Bard College in New York’s Hudson Valley. The Fisher Center offers outstanding programs to many communities, including the students and faculty of Bard College, and audiences in the Hudson Valley, New York City, across the country, and around the world. Building on a 159year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. fishercenter.bard.edu

LIVE ARTS CONTRIBUTORS New York Live Arts is deeply grateful to all the individuals listed below for their vital gifts to New York Live Arts over the last year: $500,000 and higher Anonymous Slobodan Randjelović & Jon Stryker

Deborah Ronnen Temple St. Clair & Paul Engler Billie Tsien & Tod Williams

$100,000-$499,999 Booth Ferris Foundation Ruth & Stephen Hendel Ellen M. Poss

$1,000 - $4,999 Gerald Appelstein Robby Browne Charlotte & Charles Buchanan Jeannie Colbert Elizabeth Diller Philip Gallo Morton Glickman Michael & Deborah Goldberg Deborah Hellman & Derek Brown Judith and Steven Gluckstern Michael Keegan James Krents Kyung-Lim Lee Turrell & James A. Turrell Glenn Ligon Robert Longo Anna Maltby & Akshay Patil Tommy McCall & Victor Zonana Nancy Meyer & Marc Weiss Susan Micari Helen Mills & Gary Tannenbaum Pat Minard Thomas Nichols & Daniel Chadburn Anonymous Mark O’Donnell PR Consulting Inc. Rita Salzman Amy Schulman Cindy Sherman Catharine R. Stimpson Kristalina & Jack Taylor Kate Whitney & Franklin Thomas Bruce & Megumi Williams Timothy Wu &Eric Murphy

$50,000 - $99,999 Jane Bovingdon Semel & Terry Semel Zoe Eskin Eleanor Friedman Helen & Peter Haje Suzanne Karpas Alex Katz Foundation Barbara & Alan D. Marks Matthew Putman $25,000 - $49,999 Anonymous Patricia Blanchet David Dechman & Michele Mercure Adam Flatto Alexes Hazen James C. Hormel & Michael P. Nguyen In Loving Memory of Linda Grass Shapiro Charla Jones Lorraine Gallard & Richard H. Levy Amy Newman & Bud Shulman Diana Wege $10,000 - $24,999 Bloomberg Philanthropies The Brant Foundation, Inc. Claire Danes & Hugh Dancy Colleen Keegan Jonathan D. Lewis & Mark Zitelli Julie Orlando Pace Prints Phillips Andrea Rosen Alanna Rutherford Ruby Shang Nina & Gabe Stricker Pat Stryker $5,000 - $9,999 Zaire Baptiste & Voodo Fé Agnes Gund Bill T. Jones & Bjorn Amelan Jeffrey B. & Wendy Liszt

$500 - $999 Irene Barth Kathleen Chalfant Sheron Davis & Nat Lipstadt Maribeth Gainard & Hal Goltz Sharon Gerstel Jamie & Jeffrey Harris The Marshall Frankel Foundation Jan Paschal Gifts and commitments between 9/30/2019-9/30/20

Institutional support provided by: Con Edison Ford Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation The Harkness Foundation for Dance Alice Lawrence Foundation Samuel M. Levy Family Foundation The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Mertz Gilmore Foundation Metropolitan Capital Bancorp Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation National Performance Network New England Foundation for the Arts New York Community Trust Rockefeller Brothers Fund Jerome Robbins Foundation The Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation The Scherman Foundation The Shubert Foundation Stavros Niarchos Foundation Theatre Development Fund In-kind support generously provided by LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust Public support provided by the following government agencies: The National Endowment for the Arts Humanities New York New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature