A video display wall is among the highlights of the newly restored and revitalized New York City Center, which reopened this October, adding a modern element to the theater’s transformed orchestra lobby. The video wall will showcase an evolving roster of video content and create new synergy between the visual and performing arts and their audiences. It will feature high-definition plasma monitors that will be visible to pedestrians on 55th Street through new glass doorways, making the art accessible to thousands of people each day. The New Museum will curate three installations in the inaugural year.

FIVE (2011) (performance still), Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, October 4, 2011
© Rashaad Newsome, courtesy Marlborough Chelsea, New York, NY

FIVE ICA Boston (2011)

New York–based artist Rashaad Newsome (b. 1979 in New Orleans, LA) presents a new work, FIVE ICA Boston (2011) for the inaugural video installation at New York City Center. Newsome acts as an anthropologist, composer, and DJ, sampling and mixing culturally-specific material to create works that upend the distinction between high and low art forms.

Long fascinated with the dance form known as vogue, which originated in New York City’s gay ballroom scene in the 1960s and ’70s, Newsome invited contemporary vogue dancers to be recorded performing at his studio and at various museums. The recombined, reordered sequences transform the dance into a series of abstract movements, lifting this typically marginalized dance genre from the underground club scene, where it is usually relegated, to a more public arena.

For his performance series “FIVE,” Newsome breaks down voguing choreography into various components, assigning one of the five core movements—hands, catwalk, floor work, spin-dips, and duck-walking—to five different dancers. Hair, another fundamental component of voguing associated with the transgender community provides a sixth key element as part of “FIVE,” and is similarly assigned to a specific performer.

FIVE ICA Boston (2011) was recorded during Newsome’s latest performance installment at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Boston, and was shot from three different angles during two sets of performances. In this work, made specifically for the video screens at New York City Center, and taking advantage of their technological possibilities, Newsome further abstracts the performance, isolating each dancer individually and reframing footage to choreograph a new dance on video.

Rashaad Newsome has exhibited and performed nationally and internationally at venues including the New Museum (New York), the Whitney Museum (New York), P.S.1 MoMA (New York), and the Fondation Cartier (Paris).

The presentation of FIVE ICA Boston (2011) has been organized by the New Museum for New York City Center.

New York City Center

New York City Center has played a defining role in the cultural life of the city for nearly seventy years. It was Manhattan’s first performing arts center, dedicated by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in 1943 with a mission to make the best in music, theater and dance accessible to all audiences. Today, City Center is home to many distinguished companies, including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Manhattan Theatre Club; a roster of renowned national and international visiting artists; and its own critically acclaimed and popular programs. City Center has undergone an extensive renovation and restoration to revitalize and modernize its historic theater.