KYL/D Sanctuario, Esperanza Teatro, 2023.
The Study of movement and Modern Dance. Contemporary and modern dance enter a conversation on movement. The avant-garde artist in American art and performance art from the Renaissance creates a themed social gathering to “expand the scope of expression.” (Greggory Battock, The Art of Performance: A Critical Anthology). Kyle Abraham’s choreography on colorful construction paper were sketches from viewing the New York City Ballet, When We Fell. It captured that feeling of being in nature when the world was under pressure by the epidemic health advisory for social distancing. The filming by Marie Helfant brought me to the 2025 live performance premiere at Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch theater where Kyle signed the artwork. Arts on stage becomes a view finder for sketching the world as I relate best to artists. I began drawing more from Kun-Yang Lin and Dancers in Philadelphia. And returning visits to other artists such as, Annie Wilson’s Always The Hour, a full-immersion into installation and performance art at the IceBox Project Space after her solo Fringearts fall 2017 AT HOME WITH THE HUMORLESS BASTARD.
Drawing from the Theater in 2026, means something GREATER than studying movement. My understanding of the artistic genre allows for a ritual to display the action as it was documented in the audience. The Met Live Opera on screen in, The Pearl Fisher, 2017, then was a matter of scaling the classical genre. I began following Curtis Symphony Orchestra when the Philadelphia Orchestra artistic director Yannick Nezet-Séguin conducted Straus’s An Alpine Symphony in 2024, and Ravel’s Le Mer in 2025, he signed the artwork after the performance. Sketching artwork for a document of the event essentially to recall from the past experience. I worked to find the organizations that presented meaningful work for artists, such as the BlackStar Film Festival. My ventures for drawing imagination from live performances gives meaning to the event, a distant memory and creating a depiction of our experiences.
WHYSEEART.
Take a look at the content from the classics to the contemporary in critique of our culture. They present concepts that push the boundaries and define a genre. A series of sketches in this mode of journaling reality. A place for representing symbolic value for a better understanding of the influence that inspires the artwork.
When We Fell
Choreography by Kyle Abraham for NYCBallet
We make TheArt World mean what we choose to attend by becoming an audience that recognizes its subject, and takes their ordinary, objective life and flips it upside down. It’s in the art salons, soirées, the theatrical arts, and in the dance studios that influences begin to take shape. The artists dream things into place to recall its place in an intricate web of symbols. Of course dreams and art tend to break away from the trends of everything around us. The influence is the imagination of the world, and artists recite stories through new lenses to new audiences with familiar tendencies. What compares the nature of the human being to a complex intelligent relationship with the self, the other, as seen from afar, the proxy, or first-hand experiences. I was influenced to sketch from performances to craft a concept of the art, the artist, and the society.
In some cases, I have had the pleasure of meeting artists, like Valerie Green, in the audience at the Joyce Theater for Fouad Boussouf’s Näss, in 2022 L’Alliance New York Crossing the Line Festival. Other times, following the performance of an artist, like Kyle Abraham at the NYCBallet. In conversation my work with other artists feels like a collaboration at a distance, like Jeanne Balibar from 2018 Crossing the Line Festival, then later going to seeing the screening of her role in Memoria in 2023. Meeting with the artists too, can be in a way, showing gratitude for the artwork they’ve done. This has led to a signature series of drawings, where the most important contemporary artists today will have signature sketches of their art work, like portraits of the artist.
I revisited the show to see Chris Davis once again in December 2024 for the parody holiday show known as The NutCracker: The One-Man Show. I experienced once before in 2023, Davis performed an array of one man shows in the theaters in Philadelphia. While show running the summer festival, So-Low Festival in 2018, Die-Cast showed “Gintry,” and Almanac Circus, Your Sunday’s Best, a special comedy show held at a local drinking hole known for actors frequenting, as well as a look inside of Fergies Pub with Jenna Kuerzie’s Johny Depp retrospective.
Yuja Wang, Curtis Symphony Orchestra 2025
The Curtis Symphony Orchestra is something that offers a music conservatory to the most gifted classically trained musicians. The events interest me in how the programs are designed to prepare its constituents to be able to evaluate such art . A composition by EinoJuhani Ruatavaara played by Yuja Wang to a point of rage or confusion, an art performance that transmutes plot or narrative. We to listen as the duration unfolds in the agility or breadth of conceptualism by the pianist.
In 2025, I made my first appearance at the Association of Performance Art Professionals New York, a premier event for the industry of performing artists. It is with special thanks to Valerie Green at Dance Entropy that made it possible for us to be there to draw from an excerpt of her choreography, EVERYTHING. The continued partnership between artists, and the influence of one art form to another stands for a social circle of creatives. In following the passion in artists, the work they put themselves into, poured their heart, vulnerable to critics, audiences, and our reception is the culture. That is, our society made by ecosystems of influence, and the signature artist series are documents of their lasting mark on society.
COmedy
Your Sunday’s Best
At Quiqs Pub in Philadelphia, a gathering of local actors and creatives.
Joseph Jiggetts |
Ashley Spearman & Khalif Troy
| Jonté Desiré, Bruce Canada, and Khalif Troy
