Marian Goodman Gallery, visual artist Julie Mehretu, and John Jasperse Projects present Wandering, a series of live dance performances running May 20-23 in New York City. CalArts School of Dance faculty Ariel Osterweis served as dramaturg/producer.
The performances take place across six articulated gallery spaces on three floors of Marian Goodman’s Tribeca headquarters, with seven dancers responding to live sound by composers Hahn Rowe and Will Johnson under Jasperse’s direction. Among the performers are two CalArtians: Andrea Soto (Dance BFA 23) and Mak Thornquest (Dance BFA 22).
Wandering was created in direct dialogue with Mehretu’s current exhibition, Our Days, Like a Shadow (a non-abiding hauntology), on view at the gallery through June 6. As the dancers move across walls, floors, thresholds, and architectural planes, they activate the materiality of the gallery and invite audiences to travel through the space alongside them.
For Osterweis, Wandering asks how the dancing body can move between multiple states of meaning, sensation, and history:
“When does the dancing body here function as paintbrush, feeler, mourner, activator, silence, healer, soldier, ghost, chaos, sound, child, sketch, griot, lover, color, guide, rhythm, scream, seducer, frenzy, or wanderer?” Osterweis noted in the press release. “And how will sound transport us temporally, to yesteryears, afrofutures, and queer utopias? The audience, also a collective of internal and external wanderers, will live in this moment with us.”
Osterweis is a scholar-practitioner of dance and performance who has taught Performance Studies and Critical Dance Studies at CalArts for the past decade. Their book Body Impossible: Desmond Richardson and the Politics of Virtuosity was published by Oxford University Press in 2024. Osterweis has performed professionally with Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Mia Michaels R.A.W., Heidi Latsky, and Julie Tolentino, and has worked as a dramaturg for John Jasperse, Narcissister, and a.k. Payne.
Wandering features two performances daily at 5:30 and 7 pm. Each performance is approximately 45 minutes.
