I am honored to welcome internationally acclaimed choreographer Trajal Harrell to the Armory for the North American premiere of his multidisciplinary work Monkey Off My Back or The Cat’s Meow. An ideal creative match for the vast size and infinite possibilities of the Wade Thompson Drill Hall, Harrell’s inventive production builds on the form of a playful fashion show infused with historical and pop iconography speaking to the idea of freedom—from the pageantry of the New York ballroom scene and club culture to the bold abstractions of Mondrian to the Declaration of Independence. While the Drill Hall has a history of hosting fashion shows, this contemporary dance work in fashion show clothing will be a first for the Armory’s artistic programming—and, in true Armory style, promises an unconventional experience bringing together a range of genres and reference points. Harrell, together with his company of dancers from the Zürich Dance Ensemble, displays his signature blend of inspiration in movement and design from across the globe.
Monkey Off My Back or The Cat’s Meow furthers the mission of the Armory and the vision of our late Anita K. Hersh Artistic Director Pierre Audi—to bring our audiences relevant, unconventional, boundary breaking work that cannot be done anywhere else in New York.
Rebecca Robertson
Adam R. Flatto Founding President and Executive Producer
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE MONKEY OFF MY BACK OR THE CAT’S MEOW
SEPTEMBER 9 – 20, 2025 WADE THOMPSON DRILL HALL
Trajal Harrell Creation, Choreography, Direction
Trajal Harrell Costume Design
Stéfane Perraud Lighting Design
Trajal Harrell, Erik Flatmo Scenic Design
Trajal Harrell, Asma Maroof Sound Design
Laura Paetau, Tobias Staab Dramaturgy
Frances Chiaverini, Sultan Çoban, Vânia Doutel Vaz, Maria Ferreira Silva, Marie Goyette, Challenge Gumbodete, Trajal Harrell,
Tabita Johannes, New Kyd, Thibault Lac, Christopher Matthews, Jeremy Nedd, Nasheeka Nedsreal, Perle Palombe, Maximilian Reichert, Stephen Thompson, Songhay Toldon, Ondrej Vidlar Company
other happenings
Armory After Hours
Join us after evening performances when the bar will be open in one of our historic rooms for libations with the artists and fellow attendees.
Artist Talk: Trajal Harrell
Thursday, September 11, 2025 at 6:00pm
Guggenheim fellow and creator Trajal Harrell is joined by Curator in the Department of Media and Performance Art at The Museum of Modern Art Ana Janevski to examine the creative process and development behind his latest work.
Monkey Off My Back or The Cat’s Meow is made possible with support from Sarah Arison, Jody and John Arnhold, and the Harkness Foundation for Dance. Bloomberg Philanthropies is Park Avenue Armory’s 2025 Season Sponsor. Leadership support for the Armory’s artistic programming has been generously provided by the Anita K. Hersh Philanthropic Fund, Charina Endowment Fund, Donald A. Pels Charitable Trust, the Pinkerton Foundation, the Starr Foundation, and the Thompson Family Foundation. Major support was also provided by the Emily Davie and Joseph S. Kornfeld Foundation, the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Marc Haas Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, the SHS Foundation, and Wescustogo Foundation. Additional support has been provided by the Armory’s Artistic Council. Public support is provided by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature as well as the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council under the leadership of Speaker Adrienne Adams.
VIRAL JOYS
For Trajal Harrell, the theater is an unparalleled venue to contest and revalue culture, history, and community. Spanning three decades, Harrell’s repertoire remains deeply engaged with how performance spaces function as “théatrons,” or “gathering places,” where everyone in attendance performers and audiences become visible and recognizable to one another.
Haunted by memories of Covid closures, we are understandably more hesitant about the potential of live collective assembly. Crowds make us wary. Audiences have abandoned decorum. Yet, if we do convene, if the performance miraculously transports us, as it does with Monkey Off My Back or The Cat’s Meow, that joy, the “cat’s meow,” “the bees’ knees,” comes from the fleeting feeling of “communitas,” the delight of catching an energetic feeling, midwifed by the artist/convener, and shared with others in close proximity. Experiencing viral joy, not illness or incivility, might incrementally nudge us out of our default to “safe” or virtual space. Maybe that disinhibition begins when a performer meets our gaze. The utopian premise of Monkey might just be that the term congress strikes us differently, that coming together might diminish the intense polarization, stratification, and xenophobia that generates and sustains bad or ugly feelings.
But the stage of the théatron, one of the critical signature elements of a Trajal Harrell performance, has not always been synonymous with democracy, free expression, or openness to strangers. The théatron has also served as a prime mechanism to display the codes of exclusion. The théatron of Euripides and Sophocles was almost exclusively accessible only to those who occupied the enviable position of citizen, namely the freemen of Athens and beyond. The catwalks and runways of twentieth and twenty-first century fashion shows became the venues from which to disseminate reigning standards of beauty, conferring a god-like status on the models chosen to walk, and to the frontrow A-list celebrities invited to watch and be watched. Exclusivity generates envy; it also produces wild, aspirational desires that keep a 1.85 trillion-dollar global fashion industry humming.
Those exclusions, however, have been brilliantly challenged and contested in other theatrical spaces. Harrell’s first series of speculative choreographies considered the potential of another thrust stage, of Harlem Ballroom culture, where Black and Brown folk who have been historically disenfranchised because of race, class, sexuality, and gender identity gain prominence by dragging fashion and runway conventions through virtuosic voguing. Like Carnival, where the disenfranchised and oppressed affirm their understanding of power relations through costumed and performed mimicry, Ballroom culture exposed the fashion industry’s pronouncements and class-oriented conventions as performative inventions that become real through the economic engine of their public performance platform.
And a théatron can do more than expose who gathers and for what purpose. It can be a mechanism that binds us by experiencing others’ openness to new and emerging forms of expression, especially if what is seen might be beyond any singular viewer’s limit of knowing and perceiving. Over the past decade, Harrell’s choreographic research has considered the performative legacies of Butoh its histories, philosophies, and aesthetics, how its corporeal practices challenge body/mind dualism and disintegrates the idea of an autonomous human subject. Monkey galvanizes Butoh’s focus on performance as the liminal arbiter between cultures and life worlds, and between performer, image, and character. As Butoh co-founder Hijikata Tatsumi noted, “In Butoh, we shake hands with the dead who send us encouragement from beyond the body… Something can be born, can appear, living and dying at the same moment.”
One other cultural movement, the post-modern Judson Dance Theater, has fueled Harrell’s speculative forays in the historical imagination. Judson gave Harrell a model that insisted on accessibility and the dismantling of aesthetic and political hierarchies. Walking the stage in a Trajal Harrell performance means remembering Judson’s insistence of incorporating everyday actions, especially walking, as a challenge to the historical elitism and exclusions of concert dance. In Monkey, walking never ceases. Every Trajal Harrell performance strives to achieve what Judson, Ballroom, and Butoh accomplished, each in their own way. These cultural innovators galvanized and mobilized publics so that all in attendance might feel the radical thought inherent in the work. Throughout this endeavor, artists must continually risk being vulnerable because they perform as our surrogates, displaying the full dimension of how we need to feel ourselves singularly and collectively. In Monkey, we see that accomplished in every catwalk, all acts of hope, expressing that each of us, with our individual idiosyncrasies, can be recognized, seen, loved. Perversely, artists must struggle even more with risking risk, for public artistic expression is less free, more financially prohibitive. For Harrell to shake off that monkey, well, that IS the cat’s meow. In 2018, Harrell received an invitation from the Schauspielhaus Zürich to assemble and lead the Schauspielhaus Zürich Dance Ensemble, a role he occupied from 2019 to 2024. As a Haus director, the resources of the Schauspielhaus, one of the most respected German speaking theaters in Europe, relieved him of financial precarity, and he extended this opportunity to the group of dancers who have been his brilliant interpreters for many years.
Working through a set of choreographic procedures that catalyze the “historical imagination,” Harrell capitalized on Schauspielhaus Zürich’s storied history of supporting artists who as creators and “citizens of the world” have been sui generis and modeled a distinctive vision about living in their own restrictive times. The fullness and freedom of Monkey, conceived and created in the fall of 2021 and which premiered that December, eased a difficult transition back to live congregation. Schauspielhaus Zürich supported Harrell’s desire to risk making a work without a preconceived theme, starting only from his instinct and imagination, at the very moment when merely returning to the stage was still shaky and unsettled. And Monkey, like an earlier work in Trajal’s Porça Miseria trilogy, Maggie the Cat, has much to say about the riches and promises of American culture and politics, its founders, and the betrayal of democratic political ideals. Another fundamental operation in Harrell’s work is the labor of redress. Harrell insists that audiences take note of artists like Imani Uzuri, the vocalist and composer, whom he includes on the musical score of Monkey, and reminds you that the singer/songwriter and guitarist Joan Armatrading is a national treasure, just as much as the canonical composer Debussy. Harrell cycles through the generative approaches of both historical and contemporary artistic iconoclasts, quoting and playing with their signature contributions. Nothing is created from “whole cloth.” Pay attention to the choreography of sound and movement that sometimes operates to the point of indistinction. Like what was said about fashion designer Yves St. Laurent, that he “broke the rules to put together things that have nothing to do with one another,” that too holds true for Harrell.
This method, this performance, becomes a salve, as we approach the end of 2025. We hear the Declaration of Independence spoken in German accented English. The typewritten text of that document is offered to the audience both in German and in English. We hold a printed playlist. These texts become guides. Like placards on museum walls, they are tenders of a deeper and considered engagement
with the dance. The thrill of Monkey is juxtaposition of signature contributions from the most radical and visionary of twentieth and twenty-first century culture makers across the globe, among them: Piet Mondrian, Tatsumi Hijikata, the Houses of LaBeija and Ninja, Dominique Bagouet, Nina Simone, and Kazou Ohno. Each haunt Trajal Harrell; each lives within him.
The cat’s meow of this work is the realization of a modernist Mondrian floor, Harrell’s dream deferred for over a decade. The cat’s meow is that a theater might still be provide a place where one can shrug off the monkey and create an experience that models how we might thrive through the performative mobilization of bodies. The cat’s meow is catching the viral joy. As performative Trajal Harrell says to performative Anna Wintour, “If you live, sometimes you have to dance.”
Debra Levine is a writer, dramaturg, and performance studies scholar focusing on contemporary global performance. She has taught at NYU Abu Dhabi, was the Director of Studies for Theater, Dance & Media at Harvard, and currently teaches at NYU and Princeton.
ARTS EDUCATION AT THE ARMORY: TRANSCENDING ARTISTIC LIMITS AND RESOURCES THROUGH QUESTIONING
Park Avenue Armory’s Arts Education programs provide unique artistic engagements and educational programming free of charge to New York City public schools, offering opportunities for students to think creatively and trust their own aesthetic judgments, while encouraging the arts as an avenue for reflection, expression, criticality, and action.
Trajal Harrell’s Monkey Off My Back or The Cat’s Meow kicks off the Armory’s arts education programming for the 2025-2026 school year, engaging almost 500 New York City public high school students with its art forms and themes through the Armory’s Production-Based Programs. Students attend a student-only matinee, which includes a Q&A with Harrell and members of the company, and participate in teaching artist led in-school workshops, reflecting on their experience with Harrell’s vision and creating their own artistic responses. One workshop has students thinking expansively about what it means to be free and exploring dance and fashion as possible creative expressions of protest, while another uses the lens of theater to unpack the metaphors present in the production’s title.
Additionally, a group of 40 interns are engaging with the piece by embarking on a journey of artmaking through Armory Art Together, an art-commissioning program for high school and post-high school Youth Corps interns, the Armory’s paid and closely mentored internship program for students ages 16 to 25+. Inspired by both Monkey Off My Back or The Cat’s Meow and Caftan: Style as Liberation and Cultural Exchange as part of Making Space at the Armory, this semester’s Armory Art Together focuses on the journey of fashion choice and personal style as a spectacle that begins on the inside of the body and works its way outward. Over the three-week period Youth Corps interns move from building a personal embodiment warm-up to creating their own fierce runway tracks, culminating in a piece that showcases their outward style.
While there can always be another metaphorical monkey on your back, Harrell reminds this young audience that their natural inclination to ask why and to strive for independence puts them directly in line with the radical path of the artist to always question, to always evolve. The production’s use of multiple art forms—choreography, fashion, visuals, music—as well as the sampling of the Declaration of Independence offers a reminder to students to embrace their creativity in all its forms as a way to explore the outer boundaries of what it means to be truly free. May we all, young and old, heed this invitation to remain in motion in pursuit of our individual (and collective) cat’s meow.
Trajal Harrell gained international recognition for his first period of work, which addressed the historical links between the early postmodern dance and the voguing dance tradition. His audience and critical recognition grew further with his second period, which theoretically addressed the bifocal lens between butoh dance and early modern dance. He is considered one of the most important choreographers working in contemporary dance today. The artist puts the body at the center of his research exploring the ways in which it becomes a receptacle of memory, speculation, the past, presence, and historical figures who have inspired his work. Intertwining notions of time, the historical imagination, and transcultural references, his oeuvre reveals the multitude of layers that make up the richness of the histories of art and contemporary dance. His work is presented internationally in theaters, museums, festivals, and galleries. From 2013 to 2016, Harrell was Artist-in-Residence in Performance at MoMA. In 2017, his work was the subject of a major survey performance exhibition in London’s Barbican Centre Art Galleries. In 2023 Harrell created The Romeo for the Cour d’honneur for the 77th Festival d’Avignon. Later that year, Festival d’Automne in Paris dedicated a portrait to Harrell, presenting eight of his works. Harrell was awarded the Silver Lion of The Venice Biennale of Dance. Harrell was Artist Associate of the 2025 Holland Festival, holding the centerpiece projects of the festival. He is Founder and Artistic Director of Zürich Dance Ensemble.
STÉFANE PERRAUD LIGHTING DESIGN
A Paris-based artist with a multidisciplinary approach, Stéfane Perraud work explores the invisible and the intangible—ideas like hyper-objects, the infra-thin, and more recently, nuclear waste and deep time. He has long been fascinated by the unseen nature of radioactivity, linking it to questions of matter, energy, the mineral, and the living. Inspired by nuclear physics, geography, and both ancient and experimental techniques, he often collaborates with writers, musicians, artisans, and scientists. His work has been shown widely in France and internationally, including at Le Bal, Plateforme 10 in Lausanne, Les Abattoirs in Toulouse, and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Perraud has also taken part in art fairs like Drawing Now, Volta Basel, and Art Paris. A finalist for the COAL Prize and Vasarely Prize, he regularly collaborates with choreographers and directors, performing at venues such as MoMA, the Barbican in London, Festival d’Automne in Paris, and Schauspielhaus Zürich.
ERIK FLATMO SCENIC DESIGN
Erik Flatmo is a scenic designer whose work spans theater, dance, opera, fashion, and independent film. He has collaborated with choreographer Trajal Harrell for over two decades, presenting world premieres in theaters, galleries, and museums worldwide. In the US, Flatmo has designed for major regional theaters, including the American Conservatory Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Asolo Repertory Theatre, San Diego’s Old Globe, and San Francisco’s Magic Theatre, where he designed more than twenty original productions. He taught scenic design at Stanford University for fourteen years and has held teaching positions at Barnard College and the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University. He holds a BA in architecture from Columbia University, an MFA in design from the Yale School of Drama, and a certificate in scenography from POLI.design at the Politecnico di Milano, earned in 2020. His work blends architectural rigor with an imaginative, collaborative sensibility across disciplines.
ASMA MAROOF SOUND DESIGN
Asma Maroof is an electronic producer/composer and DJ (aka Asmara) who performs internationally in music, film, and art venues including the Sydney Opera House, Whitney Museum, Unsound Festival, and MTV VMAs. She has worked with many artists including M.I.A., Kelela, Tink, Fatima Al Qadiri, Venus X, and is a member of the musical group NGUZUNGUZU. Her soundtracks have graced Kenzo, Celine, and Louis Vuitton runway shows, as well as commercials for Nike, Mugler, and Telfar.
LAURA PAETAU DRAMATURGY
Laura Paetau works on queer-feminist and post-migrant topics and aesthetics. She studied sociology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and political science at Freie Universität Berlin, focusing on feminist theory. Her thesis, Feminisms and the New Political Generation , a study on feminist activism in Berlin, was published in 2009. She has taught feminist interventions in pop music and culture and conducted research at UC Berkeley on racism and belonging with john a. powell. From 2019 to 2024, Paetau worked as Resident and Freelance Dramaturg at Schauspielhaus Zürich, collaborating with directors Leonie Böhm, Nicolas Stemann, Suna Gürler, Trajal Harrell, Yana Ross, and Joana Tischkau. Together with Thelma Buabeng, she co-curated the comedy format Security. Since 2022, Paetau has been Co-Founder of Atelier Lapaetau, a transcultural lab for experimental art based between Bogotá and Berlin; it works collaboratively at the intersection of queer feminism and decoloniality across performance, visual arts, and experimental cinema.
TOBIAS STAAB DRAMATURGY
Tobias Staab is a freelance artist, dramaturge, and curator whose work moves between dance, music, film, and installation. He has collaborated with places like Münchner Kammerspiele, Schauspielhaus Zürich, and Opera Vlaanderen, and co-founded Ballet of Difference with choreographer Richard Siegal. Much of his work grows out of collaboration and explores big themes—identity, work, death— through unusual, cross-genre formats. His recent projects include the performance film Work (broadcast on ARTE), the international video installation Euphoria (with Julian Rosefeldt), and Autonomous Avatar, a motion-capture dance piece at Planetarium Bochum. In BARDO, a film and AR project, he looked at dying and the body through different cultural lenses. Staab also curates festivals and programs across electronic music, media art, and performance, including Ritournelle, Noise Signal Silence, and the DIVE Festival. Since 2023, he has been preparing to lead the International DANCE Festival in Munich, with his first edition launching in May 2025.
ABOUT THE COMPANY
FRANCES CHIAVERINI
Frances Chiaverini (Pittsburgh 1981) is a Juilliard alum, performer, director, and choreographer. She has worked most recently with Pierre Huyghe in Chile, Theater Neumarkt in Zurich, Bruch’- in Munich, and William Forsythe and Anne Imhof in Frankfurt. She was a Resident Fellow at NYU’s Center for Ballet and the Arts in 2020 and PACT Zollverein Choreographic Center in Essen, where she co-directed the creative platform WHISTLE advocating for dancers’ safety and wellness. Her work has been supported by Stadt Frankfurt am Main Kulturamt and M2ACT Migros Kulturprozent in Zurich, where she now lives with her five year old son.
SULTAN ÇOBAN
Sultan Çoban is an artist based in Basel, Zurich, and Amsterdam. Working across performance, directing, and installation, Çoban explores cultural identity, memory, and self-representation. Her works incorporate sound, live projections, and staging to capture and reconstruct moments. She holds a BA in Fine Arts from ZHdK and an MA from the Sandberg Instituut. Her work has been presented at Gessnerallee Zurich, the Swiss Art Awards, Kunsthaus Zürich, Les Urbaines Festival, Eye Filmmuseum Amsterdam, and the Istituto Svizzero in Rome. Çoban will be an artist-in-residence in Rome starting September 2025.
VÂNIA DOUTEL VAZ
Angolan-Portuguese performer/dance creator. Since 2018 has worked as a performer and rehearsal director with Trajal Harrell. In 2024-25 replaced Legia Lewis in solo A Plot | A Scandal. Studied with RAD, EDCN, Fórum Dança. Ex-member of CPBC, NDT II, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, PUNCHDRUNK. Past collaborations: Tânia Carvalho, Shannon Gillen, Adam Linder, Uri Aran. Directs movement for Zia Soares&Teatro Griot, Aurora Negra. Created and performed violetas (2025), O Elefante No Meio Da Sala (2022), video-performance ad aeternum (2020), durational pop-up performance Bureauc’Art (2019). Is in collaboration with Kiluanji Kia Henda in Coral dos Corpos sem Norte for BoCa Biennial.
MARIA FERREIRA SILVA
Maria Ferreira Silva is a Brussels-based Portuguese dance artist. She sees her artistic practice as a porous container shaped by her engagement with diverse practices, roles, contexts, and people. Her artistic journey began in Lisbon suburbia with teacher Fernanda Mafra, followed by ballet training at the national conservatory. She earned a BA from PARTS in Brussels (supported by F.C. Gulbenkian) and an MFA from Uniarts in Stockholm. Ferreira Silva currently presents her solo Wild Explosion of Radical Softness and dances with Trajal Harrell in The Köln Concert, Welcome to Asbestos Hall, and Monkey Off My Back or The Cat’s Meow
MARIE GOYETTE
Born in Québec, Canada, Marie Goyette studied piano at McGill and in London with Radu Lupu. She settled in Berlin in 1989, has moved away from traditional concert work and expanded her musical activities into the field of performance and radio art. She then branched into music theater and appeared in works from Heiner Goebbels, and David Marton. She has appeared in films directed by Wes Anderson, Caroline Link, and Timm Kröger. As a dancer, Marie Goyette has appeared in works by Jérôme Bel and Trajal Harrell.
CHALLENGE GUMBODETE
Challenge Gumbodete, dancer/performer/actor, was born in Shurugwi, Zimbabwe. He trained at the National Ballet of Zimbabwe, Ballet Theatre Afrikan in Johannesburg, and Danceworks Berlin. He has performed at Neumarkt Theatre in Zurich, Schauspielhaus Zürich, Oper Frankfurt, Semperoper Dresden, and others. He has collaborated with Trajal Harrell, Benny Claessens, Robyn Orlin, Michael Laub, and more. In addition to his stage work, he appears in international film and TV productions, including Berlin, I Love You (dir. Daniel Lwowski) and Babylon Berlin (dir. Tom Tykwer). He continues to explore interdisciplinary projects.
TABITA JOHANNES
Actress Tabita Johannes, born in Hamburg in 1988. Since 2019, she has been a permanent ensemble member at Schauspielhaus Zürich. Johannes loves stories by Spongebob and Virginie Despentes, enjoys both control and chaos, and most of all, adores her little dog, Babsi.
NEW KYD
New Kyd is a Zurich-based inter(-disciplinary) movement artist, DJ, and producer whose work traverses dance, sound, and visual media to explore identity, survival, and diasporic existence. With roots in modern dance and Yoruba heritage, their practice is an ongoing inquiry into the body’s capacity to hold memory, strategies of survival through resistance, and transformation. Through improvisation, somatic research, and abstract storytelling, Kyd crafts performances that challenge conventional narratives of visibility and belonging. Kyd is guided by the ethos of “Kill Your Darlings”—challenges artistic boundaries, carving space for marginalized narratives in contemporary performance.
THIBAULT LAC
Thibault Lac is a performer and choreographer based in Paris. A recurring presence in the work of Trajal Harrell, he has also performed with artists including Ligia Lewis, Noé Soulier, Daniel Linehan, Mathilde Monnier, Alexandra Bachzetsis, and Price, among others. In 2022, he appeared in Untitled (Go-Go Dancing Platform) by Felix Gonzalez-Torres at the Bourse de Commerce. Drawing from an archive of personal and collective mythologies across diverse performance genres, his choreographic practice explores notions of desire, spectacle and failure. Recent works include his solo Blue Roses and the duet Knight-Night, co-authored with Bryana Fritz, with whom he continues to collaborate on new work.
CHRISTOPHER MATTHEWS
Christopher Matthews is an award-winning American-born choreographer, performer, and visual artist working from London. Matthews holds a BFA from New York University Tisch School of the Arts and an MA in Choreography from Trinity Laban. His works have been presented internationally, including at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Sadler’s Wells, Art Night 2018, Impulstanz, Wellcome Photography Prize, Yorkshire Dance, Arbyte Gallery, ]performance space[, Chisenhale Dance Space, LimaZulu, MCLA Gallery 51, Villa Empain, Loop Video Art Festival, and was named a 2024 Blue Chip Finalist. He is a dancer in the Oscar-winning blockbuster Wicked directed by Jon Chu and the upcoming film The Magic Faraway Tree
JEREMY NEDD
Jeremy Nedd performed with Semperoper Dresden (2010-12) and Ballett Basel (2012-16), and was a guest artist at Schauspielhaus Zürich, collaborating with Trajal Harrell. His productions have been presented at Kaserne Basel, ROXY Birsfelden, Arsenic – Centre d’art scénique contemporain (Lausanne), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), and Münchner Kammerspiele, among others. In 2023, he was awarded the Swiss Performing Arts Awards. For several years, Nedd has collaborated with the South African Pantsula collective Impilo Mapantsula, co-creating three performances: The Ecstatic, how a falling star lit up the purple sky, and blue nile to the galaxy around olodumare.
NASHEEKA NEDSREAL
Nasheeka Nedsreal is a multidisciplinary artist, dancer, and choreographer whose work merges visual and performing arts. Exploring identity, improvisation, and play as liberation, her practice spans collage, sound, sculpture, video, fiber arts, and mask-making. She is a recent resident of Black Rock Senegal and earned the Berlin Ikaruspreis for her theater piece Flip Flop. Nedsreal’s work engages with community-building and speculative art forms, weaving Black futures and imaginations into surreal, experimental narratives. Her latest achievements include co-authoring a chapter in Plural Feminisms and landing her first role in a feature film.
PERLE PALOMBE
Perle Palombe, born in Marseille to an Armenian father and French mother, grew up in southern France and now lives in Paris with her man Thierry Raynaud and their two sons Joseph and Roberto. A 2007 Strasbourg National Theater graduate, she has since danced in Harrell’s works since 2009, including Caen Amour, Maggie the Cat, and Deathbed. Invited to the Ensemble of the Schauspielhaus Zürich from 2019 to 2024, she continues her collaboration with Harrell in Monkey, The House of Bernarda Alba, and Welcome to Asbestos Hall She also performs in plays Carmen (dir. Moved by the Motion, Holland Festival 2024) and Superstructure (dir. Hubert Colas, Festival d’Automne Paris 2025).
MAXIMILIAN REICHERT
Since graduating in 2017, Maximilian Reichert has worked primarily in contexts between theater and visual art. Key collaborations include Romeo Castellucci, Mike Bouchet for Azzedine Alaïa, Alexander Giesche, and Cuqui Jerez. His own works include In Limbo (Ruhrtriennale, 2016) and le cri du lapin (far festival, 2017). He has worked at Theater Basel, Art Basel, Festival d’Automne, the Salzburg Festival, and Münchner Kammerspiele, and also works in radio plays. Reichert is a Max Reinhardt Award recipient and has been a member of Schauspielhaus Zürich from 2019 to 2025. In 2020, Der Mensch erscheint im Holozän (dir. Alexander Giesche) was invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen.
STEPHEN THOMPSON
Stephen Thompson is a Canadian interdisciplinary dance artist working internationally as performer, choreographer, pedagogue, rehearsal director, dramaturge, and consultant for more than 30 years. He has received a 2016 Victor Martin-Lynch award from the Canada Council for the Arts, 2015 Bronze at the World “Figure” Championships, and Best Top Male Dancers mention from The New York Times (2014). He has collaborated with Trajal Harrell (2012 to present), Antonija Livingstone, Jennifer Lacey, Alexandra Bachzetsis, Cullberg Stockholm, Thibault Lac, Robin Meier, Adam Linder. His production Make Banana Cry (2017) co-authored with Andrew Tay, a critical regard of Asian stereotypes, continues to tour internationally.
SONGHAY TOLDON
Songhay Toldon became interested in contemporary dance through his future wife and studied dance at the Laban Conservatoire for Music and Dance in London. While living in the UK he discovered his interest in urban dance styles such as House, Whaacking, Vogueing, and Hustle. During this time he worked for artists such as Gary Clarke, Trajal Harrell, Vadim Zakharov, Yunkyung Song, Saju Hari, Willi Dorner, and Adrian Look. From 2019 to 2024 he lived in Zürich and was a member of the Schauspielhaus Zürich ensemble, where he worked with directors such as Nicholas Stemann and Wu-Tsang. In this period he was, and still is working with Trajal Harrell.
ONDREJ VIDLAR
Ondrej Vidlar, born in the Czech Republic, was trained in Latin, Modern, and Contemporary dance. He graduated from the renowned Belgian school of Performing Arts-P.A.R.T.S. in 2008. He was based for many years in Brussels and worked as a freelance dancer, performer, and production manager in numerous international projects. For over 14 years he has been working in close collaboration with Harrell as a dancer, choreography assistant, and rehearsal director. He joined Schauspielhaus Zürich with Harrell in 2019, where he remained as a full-time employee and a member of the Schauspielhaus Zürich Dance Ensemble until summer 2024. He lives in Zürich and now works as a freelancer.
PRODUCTION CREDITS
ARMORY PRODUCTION STAFF
Kanako Morita Company Manager
Janneurys Colon Assistant Company Manager
Megan Hanlon Production Assistant, Production
Carl Whipple, Colin Gold Production Carpenters
Noah Chartrand Deck Carpenter
Nick Houfek Lighting Supervisor
Dave “Tater” Polato Production Electrician
David Orlando Lighting Programmer
Jordan Smith Deck Electrician
Mark Grey Audio Supervisor
Max Helburn Audio Systems Engineer
Jeff Rowell Production Audio
Victoria Bek Wardrobe Supervisor
Olivia Rivera, Caitlynne Simonton Dressers
James Tullos Production Rigger
Theodore Sarge Seating Supervisor
ZÜRICH DANCE ENSEMBLE
Björn Pätz Touring and Company Manager
Cynthia Naef Production Assistant
Camille Roduit Assistant to Trajal Harrell
Ondrej Vidlar Rehearsal Director
Pablo Weber Technical Director
Petra Kenneth Costume Manager
Liv Senn Dresser
Ulrich Kellermann Lighting Technician
Jan Hoffmann Stage Manager
Stephan Wöhrmann Sound Technician
A production of Schauspielhaus Zürich
New York performances of Monkey Off My Back or The Cat’s Meow are supported by Pro Helvetia Swiss Arts Council.
PRODUCTION ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
BNW Rigging
Five Ohm Productions
Odeum Labor Services
Prmier Stagehands
Lighting and Rigging Equipment by 4Wall Entertainment
Audio Equipment by Masque Sound
SteelDeck NY
Shelley Pinker and Will Spitz, Covey Law
ABOUT PARK AVENUE ARMORY
Part palace, part industrial shed, Park Avenue Armory supports unconventional works in the performing and visual arts that cannot be fully realized in a traditional proscenium theater, concert hall, or white wall gallery. With its soaring 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall—reminiscent of 19th-century European train stations—and an array of exuberant period rooms, the Armory provides a platform for artists to push the boundaries of their practice, collaborate across disciplines, and create new work in dialogue with the historic building. Across its grand and intimate spaces, the Armory enables a diverse range of artists to create, students to explore, and audiences to experience epic, adventurous, relevant work that cannot be done elsewhere in New York.
The Armory both commissions and presents performances and installations in the grand Drill Hall and offers more intimate programming through its acclaimed Recital Series, which showcases musical talent from across the globe within the salon setting of the Board of Officers Room; its Artists Studio series curated by Jason Moran in the restored Veterans Room; Making Space at the Armory, a public programming series that brings together a discipline-spanning group of artists and cultural thought-leaders around the important issues of our time; and the Malkin Lecture Series that features presentations by scholars and writers on topics related to Park Avenue Armory and its history. In addition, the Armory also has a year-round Artists-in-Residence program, providing space and support for artists to create new work and expand their practices.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
The Armory’s creativity-based arts education programs provide access to the arts to thousands of students from underserved New York City public schools, engaging them with the institutions artistic programming and outside-the-box creative processes. Through its education initiatives, the Armory provides access to all Drill Hall performances, workshops taught by Master Teaching Artists, and in-depth residencies that support the schools’ curriculum. Youth Corps, the Armory’s year-round paid internship program, begins in high school and continues into the critical post-high school years, providing interns with mentored employment, job training, and skill development, as well as a network of peers and mentors to support their individual college and career goals.
The Armory is undergoing a multi-phase renovation and restoration of its historic building led by architects Herzog & de Meuron, with Platt Byard Dovell White as Executive Architects.
PARK AVENUE ARMORY STAFF
Rebecca Robertson Adam R. Flatto Founding President and Executive Producer
Pierre Audi* Anita K. Hersh Artistic Director
ARTISTIC PLANNING AND PROGRAMMING
Michael Lonergan Senior Vice President and Chief Artistic Producer
Chris Greiner General Manager
Rachel Rosado Producer
Samantha Cortez Producer
Darian Suggs Associate Director, Public Programming
Kanako Morita Company Manager/ Associate Producer
Oscar Peña Programming Coordinator
ARTISTIC PRODUCTION
Paul E. King Director of Production
Claire Marberg Deputy Director of Production
Nicholas Lazzaro Technical Director
Lars Nelson Technical Director
Mars Doutey Technical Director
Rachel Baumann Assistant Production Manager
ARTS EDUCATION
Cassidy L. Jones Anita K. Hersh Chief Education Officer
Monica Weigel McCarthy Director of Education
Naima Warden Associate Director of School Programs
Biviana Sanchez School Programs Manager
Nadia Parfait Education Programs Manager
Ciara Ward Youth Corps Manager
Bev Vega Youth Corps Manager
Milen Yimer Youth Corps Assistant Drew Petersen Education Special Projects Manager
Emily Bruner, Donna Costello, Alberto Denis, Alexander Davis, Asma Feyijinmi, Shar Galarza, Hawley Hussey, Larry Jackson, Drew Petersen, Leigh Poulos, Neil Tyrone Pritchard, Bairon Reyes Luna, Vickie Tanner, Jono Waldman Teaching Artists
Daniel Gomez, Nancy K. Gomez, Maxim Ibadov, sunyoung kim, Amo Ortiz Teaching Associates
Arabia Elliot Currence, Victoria Fernandez, Sebastian Harris, Oscar Montenegro Adriana Taboada Teaching Assistants
Eden Battice, Teja Caban, Koralys De La Cruz, Azrael Hernandez, Nephthali Mathieu, Blue Price, AJ Volkov Youth Corps Advisory Board
Felipe Aguirre, Joseph Balbuena, Janneurys Colon, Matthew Deyhill, Fatoumata Diallo, Moon Emigli, Adonai
Jason Moran Curator, Artists Studio Tavia Nyong’o Curator, Public Programming
Fletcher-Jones, Melina Jorge, Yenupaak Konlan, Sabre Lee, Alan Munoz, Hennsy Pena, Hillary Ramirez Perez, Angela Reynoso, Denivia Rivera, Kedesia Robinson, Naima Rodriguez, Naomi Santos, Arely Suarez, Elijah Tejeda, Lucille Vasquez Youth Corps, Post High School Advanced Interns
Phoenix Acevdeo, Justin Amesquita, Mariela Bonilla Martinez, June Bottex, Marc Chaudry, Verkiel Cosino, Elizabeth Cruz, Laurin Dieujuste, Kaylani Ellington, Leah Fernandez, Gabriela Gonzalez, Jenny Guevara Reyes, Besa Hasanovic, Alejandro Mayorquin, Jacelyn Melendez, Steven Merino, Gabriel Morris, Tirso Reyna, Jaylen Ventura Youth Corps, High School
BUILDING OPERATIONS
Marc Von Braunsberg Chief of Building Operations
Samuel Denitz Director of Facilities
Xavier Everett Security/Operations Manager
Emma Paton Administrative and Office Coordinator
Williams Say Superintendent
Olga Cruz, Leandro Dasso, Mayra DeLeon, Jeferson Avila, Felipe Calle, Jose Campoverde, Edwin Fell, Jacob Garrity, Jonathan Mays, Tyrell Shannon Castillo Maintenance Staff
DEVELOPMENT
Patrick Galvin Chief Development Officer
Alan Lane Director of Development
Caity Miret Executive Assistant to the Chief Development Officer
Jessica Pomeroy Rocca Major Gifts Officer
Chiara Bosco Manager of Individual Giving
Angel Genares Director of Institutional Giving
Hans Rasch Manager of Institutional Giving
Margaret Breed Director of Special Events
Séverine Kaufman Manager of Special Events
Michael Buffer Director of Database and Development Operations
Nick Yarbrough Associate Director of Digital Marketing
Dileiny Cruz Digital Marketing Coordinator
Allison Abbott Senior Press and Editorial Manager
Mark Ho-Kane Graphic Designer
Joe Petrowski Director of Ticketing and Customer Relations
Monica Diaz Box Office Manager
John Hooper Assistant Box Office Manager
Jordan Isaacs Box Office Lead
Victor Daniel Ayala, Fiona Garner, Sylvie Goodblatt, Sarah Jack, Matthew Kamen, Emma Komisar, Michelle Meged, Caleb Moreno, Arriah Ratanapan, Ester Teixeira Vianna Box Office Associates
Caitlin O’Keefe, Anne Wolf Tour Guides
Natasha Michele Norton Director of House Management
Clayton McInerney, Nancy Gill Sanchez, Rachel Carmona House Managers
Adonai Fletcher-Jones, Aiyana Greene, Beth Miller, Billie Martineau, Blue Price, Christina Johns, Christine Lemme, David Lawson, Denise Williams, Eboni Greene, Edwin Adkins, Eileen Rourke, Elijah Tejeda, Eliza Goldsteen, Emmett Pryor, Felipe Aguirre, Glori Ortiz, Grace Hazen, Heather Sandler, Hector Rivera, Hillary Ramirez Perez, John Summers, Joseph Balbuena, Kathleen Rodriguez, Kathleen White, Kedesia Robinson, Kin Tam, Konlan Yenupaak, Lana Hankinson, Mae Cote, Maria Inkateshta, Mariel Mercedes, Mathew Tom, Melina Jorge, MJ Ryerson, Myren Mandap, Naomi Santos, Regina Pearsall, Sandra Kitt, Sarah Gallick, Sebastian Harris, Shannon Wallace, Tess Kondratiev, Yesenia Mayers, Zulay Calamari Ushers
Resnicow + Associates Press Representatives
NEXT AT THE ARMORY
11,000 STRINGS
SEPTEMBER 30 – OCTOBER 7
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
Surrounding audiences with 50 micro-tuned pianos playing simultaneously alongside a chamber ensemble, maverick composer Georg Friedrich Haas’s spatial masterpiece, performed by Klangforum Wien, unleashes a cascade of sound that transcends traditional tonality while focusing on the human dimension in music experimentalism and creating a new way of listening. This sonically adventurous spatial work is realized as a concert installation in the Wade Thompson Drill Hall, showcases Haas’s focus on the human dimension in his experimentalism while creating a new way of listening.
THE FAGGOTS AND THEIR FRIENDS BETWEEN REVOLUTIONS
DECEMBER 2 – 14
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
This cult book of fables and myths serves as the starting point for a new music theater adaptation from the creative minds of composer Philip Venables and director Ted Huffman. Together they conjure up a world that takes the original text on a kaleidoscopic journey that ignores boundaries just like the characters on stage do, drawing on theater, dance, and song from the Baroque to Broadway and beyond. The performers serve as actors, storytellers, and musicians all rolled into one, continually swapping roles while doing away with gender and genre norms and replacing them with unapologetic individuality and a lust for life. The resulting cabaret-like spectacle is both vulnerable and daring, a fantastic parable hiding a political manifesto for survival that gives voice to the marginalized and oppressed everywhere.
RECITAL SERIES
PENE PATI & RONNY MICHAEL GREENBERG
SEPTEMBER 24 & 26
The first Samoan tenor to perform on Europe’s top opera stages, Pene Pati has made a name for himself on both sides of the Atlantic with an exceptional versatility in repertoire that showcases his luminous timbre, a seductively natural singing style, and perfectly nuanced articulation. Pati makes his North American solo recital debut in the Board of Officers Room with a varied program of songs traversing eras and continents that beautifully showcases his caressing colors and amber high notes.
JEREMY DENK
OCTOBER 8 & 9
Jeremy Denk is one of America’s foremost pianists, receiving acclaim from audiences and critics alike for his nuanced performances on both the recital and orchestral stage. Denk gives a marathon performance of what is considered the most famous and challenging collection of suites in music history—Bach’s Six Partitas—large musical canvases that follow the basic form of the Baroque dance suite and beautifully showcase virtuosic playing.
SASHA
COOKE & MYRA HUANG
NOVEMBER 13 & 15
Two-time Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke comes to the Board of Officers Room for a new program titled “Of Thee I Sing,” including an artfully curated set of works by Copland, Barber, Ives, Weill, Jake Heggie, Sondheim, and more, as well as the New York premiere of an Armory-commissioned work by American composer Jasmine Barnes.
ATTACCA QUARTET
DECEMBER 16 & 18
Attacca Quartet are recognized as one of the most versatile and outstanding ensembles of the moment, gliding through traditional classical repertoire to electronica, video game music, and contemporary collaborations. They come to the Armory with a wide-ranging program of classic quartets by Bartók and Felix Mendelssohn, quartet-arranged interpretations of signal works for other instrumentation, and the North American premiere of “Daisy”—a new Armory-commissioned composition by David Lang.
MAKING SPACE AT THE ARMORY
CAFTAN: STYLE AS LIBERATION AND CULTURAL EXCHANGE
SEPTEMBER 28
Inspired by the legendary fashion icon André Leon Talley, his iconic caftans, and his role in the world of fashion, this vibrant, multifaceted program explores fashion’s role in self-expression, freedom, and diasporic encounter. The day includes a panel discussion with industry historians, designers, educators, and community activists that examines the role of fashion as a tool for resistance, cultural preservation, and cross-cultural dialogue; an interactive workshop engaging participants in creating wearable art pieces; as well as pop-up exhibitions, runway shows, and more.
ARTISTS STUDIO
GUILLERMO
E. BROWN
OCTOBER 11
Drummer, composer, and creator Guillermo E. Brown pushes music performance to new heights through musical collaborations, sound installations, and singular theatrical works. Brown comes to the Veterans Room with a cast of collaborators for an insightful overview of the past, present, and future of his work, including some of his Creative Capital projects and new compositions played on a new audio-visual musical instrument he is building as part of the Doris Duke Foundation Performing Arts Technology Lab.
SANDRA MUJINGA
NOVEMBER 20 & 21
Norwegian artist and musician Sandra Mujinga uses speculative fiction in the Afrofuturist tradition to investigate economies of visibility and disappearance, in which she typically reverses established identity politics of presence. After recent exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Basel, the Guggenheim, and the Venice Biennale, the multifaceted creator comes to the Veterans Room to broaden and expand her practice in the performative spectrum by creating an otherworldly sonic environment that plays off the architecture of the room.
JOIN THE ARMORY
Become a Park Avenue Armory member and join us in our mission to present unconventional works that cannot be fully realized elsewhere in New York City. Members play an important role in helping us push the boundaries of creativity and expression and enjoy the following exclusive benefits. *Subject to ticket availability. For more information about membership, please contact the Membership Office at (212) 616-3958 or members@armoryonpark.org.
tickets to an Armory Public Tour*
ticket pick up at the Patron Desk
for two to a Chairman’s Circle event
complimentary tickets to the Malkin Lecture Series
please contact the Box Office at (212) 933-5812 or visit us at armoryonpark.org.
CHAIRMAN’S CIRCLE STARTING AT $2,500
Chairman’s Circle members provide vital support for the Armory’s immersive arts and education programming and the restoration of our landmark building, and receive unparalleled access to the Armory, including exclusive experiences and intimate engagements with our world-class artists.
AVANT GARDE STARTING AT $350
The Avant Garde is a dynamic group for adventurous art enthusiasts in their 20s to early 40s. Members enjoy an intimate look at Armory productions, as well as exclusive invitations to forward-thinking art events around New York City.
