Number of Applicants Almost Triples in Second Round of Collaborative Artist Residencies at Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning (JCAL)

Each selected artist receives a three-month residency at Jamaica Center for the Arts & Learning (JCAL) plus a $1,500 stipend. Three collaborative teams and one individual choreographer will create and develop new work and present one free public program in coordination with Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning. Thanks to the generous support of the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, each artist will receive an additional $500 upon completion of their public program.

The recipients of this year’s residency are: 

Ursula Eagly + Cenk Ergün

Ursula Eagly is a Queens-based artist who has been making dances since 2000. Her work has been presented by The Chocolate Factory, Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project, Dance New Amsterdam, Mount Tremper Arts, Movement Research at the Judson Church, the New Museum for Contemporary Art, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center, P.S. 122 (New York); Labortorio Arte Alameda (Mexico City); Albania Dance Meeting (Durres, Albania); NOT FESTIVAL (Copenhagen); Solo in Azione (Milan); Wherever Whenever (Tokyo); Dramski Theatre and Locomotion Festival (Skopje, Macedonia); and re:PLAY (Imphal, Manipur). Her work has been supported by Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation’s USArtists International program, New York Live Art’s Suitcase Fund, Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ Emergency Grant Program, Japan Foundation’s Performing Arts JAPAN Program, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, and Queens Council on the Arts. She is a 2015 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence and a 2016 Gibney Dance boo-koo Space Grant Recipient.

Cenk Ergün is a composer and improviser based in New York. His music has been performed by artists such as So Percussion, JACK Quartet, Alarm Will Sound, Wet Ink, and Yarn/Wire. As an improviser, he performs electronics in groups with Alvin Curran, Jason Treuting, and Grey McMurray. Venues that have featured Ergün’s music include New York’s Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, 92Y, Le Poisson Rouge, The Roulette, The Stone; Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw, Zurich’s Tonhalle, and Istanbul’s Babylon. Some events Ergün has participated in are the NY Phil Biennial, Lincoln Center Festival, Gaudeamus Music Week, MATA Festival, Bang on a Can Marathon, WNYC’s New Sounds Live, Peak Performances at Montclair University, Stanford Lively Arts, and San Electronic Music Festival. His first solo composition record, Nana, was released in 2014 on Carrier Records. Other releases include The Art Of The Fluke with Alvin Curran and So Percussion’s Cage 100 Bootleg Series.

Daria Faïn + Darius Jones

Originally from France, Daria Faïn has lived in Brooklyn since 1996.  For three decades, she has been deeply influenced by Asian philosophy of the body, ancient Greek theater and the studying of architecture. Faïn has conduct extensive research in sensory perception and human behaviors leading her to work with physically and mentally impaired people in collaboration with professionals. With architect-poet Robert Kocik they co-founded the Prosodic Body in 2006, a research field that explores language as a vibratory medium that interrelates art, health, and social change. In 2008, they co-founded The Commons Choir, a performance group with a variable cast of roughly 30 performers. In New York, her work at been presented at BRIC Arts Media House, Gibney Dance, New York Live Arts, Danspace Project among other venues.

Darius Jones is a critically acclaimed alto saxophonist and composer. In the last decade he has amazed and inspired musicians and audiences from widely divergent backgrounds with his meticulously honed musical gifts. Jones has collaborated with Gerald Cleaver’s Black Host, Oliver Lake Big Band, Eric Revis Quartet, Nasheet Waits Quartet, Trevor Dunn’s Proof Readers, Matthew Shipp, Branford Marsalis, Jason Moran, and many more. He was nominated in 2013 for Alto Saxophonist of the Year, and for Up & Coming Artist of the Year two years in a row for the Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Awards. Jones was one of Jazz Times‘ Debut Artists of the Year for 2009 and his 2012 release, Book of Mæ’bul (Another Kind of Sunrise), was listed among NPR’s Best Top 10 Jazz Albums of that year. Jones made his compositional debut at Carnegie Hall with The Oversoul Manual in October of 2014.

Emily Schoen

Emily Schoen is a Wisconsin-born, New York City-based dancer and choreographer. As a choreographer, she has received the Gibney Dance boo-koo grant for emerging artists in NYC, an emerging artist residency award in Tannersville, NY through the Catskill Mountain Foundation, and was recently nominated for a Princess Grace Choreography Fellowship by METdance in Houston. She has choreographed for Santa Barbara Dance Theater, Long Island Dance Projects, Mid-Pacific Institute in Hawaii, Skidmore University, the Hartt School in Connecticut, and Marymount Manhattan through (M)mix. Her company, Schoen Movement Company, is a three-time invitee to Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out Festival. Emily conceived and created Schoen Movement Company’s dance film series: Ten Tiny Dances, viewable online. As a dancer, Emily has worked with Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion, the Metropolitan Opera in works by Doug Varone and Mark Morris, and is a current member of Keigwin + Company. Dance Magazine chose Emily as one of their “Top 25 to Watch” in 2011.

Christopher Williams + Gregory Spears

Christopher Williams, dubbed “one of the most exciting choreographic voices out there” (The New York Times), is a “Bessie” award-winning choreographer, dancer, and puppeteer devoted to crafting and performing choreographic works in New York City and abroad since 1999. His works have been presented internationally in France, England, Italy, Holland, Colombia, and Russia as well as in many NYC venues including Lincoln Center, City Center, Danspace Project, and Dance Theater Workshop. His most recent commissioners include Interlochen Center for the Arts, Danspace Project, Opéra National de Bordeaux, Perm Opera & Ballet Theater, Teatro Real, English National Opera, and the Harkness Dance Center at the 92nd Street Y. He holds degrees from Sarah Lawrence College and the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq, and has since performed for Tere O’Connor Dance, Douglas Dunn & Dancers, Rebecca Lazier, Yoshiko Chuma & the School of Hard Knocks, John Kelly, Basil Twist, and Dan Hurlin, among others.

Gregory Spears writes music for modern and period instruments that blends aspects of romanticism, minimalism, and early music.  His work has been called “astonishingly beautiful” (The New York Times), “coolly entrancing” (The New Yorker), and “some of the most beautifully unsettling music to appear in recent memory.” (The Boston Globe) In recent seasons he has been commissioned by The Lyric Opera of Chicago, The Cincinnati Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Seraphic Fire, Concert Artists Guild/BMI, Christopher Williams Dances, and the JACK Quartet among others. Spears’ first opera, Paul’s Case, recently described as a “masterpiece” and a “gem” (New York Observer) with “ravishing music” (The New York Times), was developed by American Opera Projects premiered by Urban Arias, restaged at the Prototype Festival in New York, and presented in a new production by Pittsburgh Opera. New Amsterdam Records released his early music-inspired chamber Requiem to critical acclaim in 2011.