Inside the Pillow Lab: Gesel Mason
5:59
Inside the Pillow Lab is an intimate new film series that captures works in process and behind-the-scenes moments of what it’s like for artists to live, work, and rehearse together again in COVID-compliant residencies on the Pillow’s retreat-like campus. Gesel Mason is artistic director for Gesel Mason Performance Projects and associate professor of dance and choreography at the University of Texas at Austin. She was a member of Liz Lerman Dance Exchange and Ralph Lemon/Cross Performance Projects. Her company, Gesel Mason Performance Projects (GMPP), serves as a medium for her creative work. GMPP is a project-based dance company that seeks to create meaningful, relevant, and compelling art events as a way to encourage compassion and inquiry. In her work, Mason utilizes dance, theater, humor, and storytelling to bring visibility to voices unheard, situations neglected, or perspectives considered taboo. Mason will be using her time in the Pillow Lab to work on Yes, And, a collection of performance events that center an expansive vision of Black womanhood as the operating force in the creative process. An iterative approach informed by the expertise and lived experiences of self-identified Black women and femmes, Yes, And asks: “Who would you be and what would you do if, as a Black woman, you had nothing to worry about? What would you create and how might you be in community with others?” The questions frame a methodology of undoing and re-imagining that offers participants and witnesses the freedom “to find” and to “be found” from this recalibrated place. The project is supported by National Performance Network and New England Foundation for the Arts. RESIDENCY DATES: March 3–14, 2022 APPEARING IN FILM: Gesel Mason Yunina Barbour-Payne Love Muwwakkil Khorii Tinson Roxanne Young Eliot Fisher MK Abadoo Rita Burns MUSIC: Jovan Landry FILMING: Erica Spizz Film produced by Nel Shelby Productions: Nel Shelby, Producer Caroline Haidet, Editor Benjamin Richards, Graphic Animation LEAD SUPPORT FOR THE 2021-2022 PILLOW LAB IS PROVIDED BY: The Mellon Foundation WITH ADDITIONAL SUPPORT FROM: Deborah & Charles Adelman Arison Arts Foundation The Barr Foundation Harkness Foundation for Dance Barbara and Amos Hostetter Christopher Jones & Deb McAlister Mertz Gilmore Foundation National Endowment for the Arts © 2022 Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, Inc.
Related Videos
In Inside The Pillow Lab Film Series
-
Play video Inside The Pillow Lab: Camille A. Brown
Inside The Pillow Lab: Camille A. Brown
Continuing her explorations of Black Joy, director and choreographer Camille A. Brown is creating a new work for her Company that launches queries into the possibilities of imagination—investigating the past to boldly reimagine it.
4:19
-
Play video Inside the Pillow Lab: LaJuné McMillian
Inside the Pillow Lab: LaJuné McMillian
For this project, LaJuné McMillian is developing "Spirit and Child", a series of prayers between Child and Spirit, presented as a live motion capture performance and installation.
6:05
-
Play video Inside the Pillow Lab: Larissa Velez-Jackson
Inside the Pillow Lab: Larissa Velez-Jackson
For this project, "Yackez Love For A New World Paradigm", Larissa returns to directing and choreographing Yackez, her collaboration with her husband, musical director Jon Velez-Jackson.
6:35
-
Play video Inside the Pillow Lab: Monique Martin and Minty Fresh Circus
Inside the Pillow Lab: Monique Martin and Minty Fresh Circus
For this Pillow Lab, creator of Minty Fresh Circus Monique Martin investigates the power of Black music created by enslaved Africans as a healing alchemical force.
7:29
-
Play video Inside the Pillow Lab: Aakash Odedra
Inside the Pillow Lab: Aakash Odedra
In this Pillow Lab residency, Aakash Odedra and Rani Khanam seek to explore and research form that upholds the sanctity of traditional Sufi Kathak.
5:38
-
Play video Inside the Pillow Lab: André Zachery
Inside the Pillow Lab: André Zachery
During his Pillow Lab residency, André Zachery develops "Respiration", an evening-length multimedia performance of dance, original sound and digital media inspired by the novel "The City We Became" by acclaimed Afrofuturist writer N.K. Jemisin.
6:31