August 2022
Gesel Mason at Dance/USA Denver
Gesel Mason will be a keynote speaker at Dance/USA Connect in August 2022!
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In-Person Convening will take place in Denver, CO. Programming will be grounded in archiving and preservation and include sessions about building, maintaining, and animating dance archives; succession planning; safeguarding organizational legacy; and opportunities for one-on-one consultations with archivists. More information about programming an be found on the Dance/USA website!
Open to all regardless of Dance/USA membership status.
Learn more and register HERE!
July 16-17, 2022
Yes, And at Hillwood Estate Museum and Gardens
Presented in partnership with Dance Place, Yes, And will make its Washington, D.C. debut at Hillwood Gardens Museum and Estate!
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Click here for ticketing information!
April 14-16, 2022
Yes, And Premiere at Fusebox Festival
Presented in partnership with Women and Their Work, Yes, And will premiere at Fusebox Festival 2022!
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Yes, And is a collection of performance experiments that place an expanded vision of Black womanhood at the center of its creative process. It takes an iterative approach to performance informed by the creative expertise and lived experiences of Black women (cisgender, transgender, and gender non-conforming.) 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?” These questions catalyze a methodology of undoing and re-imagining that offers participants and witnesses the freedom “to find” and to “be found” from this recalibrated place.
Manifesting as virtual and/or live public engagement “chapters” or events that are unique and remixed to each location, the project invites us to inhabit inspired realities that reclaim the past, transform the present and dream new futures into being. The result is a work that is both: YES, an unapologetic celebration of Black sisterhood, AND, a complex investigation of issues that impact of Black women and our communities.
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Read more about Yes, And at Fusebox here!
December 31, 2020 - January 1st, 2021
Burst! at the ICOSA Gallery
On New Year's Eve, join Gesel Mason for a livestream durational performance experiment, Burst!.
Burst!, informed by Mason's project, Yes, And, represents the culmination of her Texas Performing Arts/Fusebox Festival Residency and is presented as a part of the ICOSA Gallery Transmissions exhibition, curated by Terra Goolsby and Tammie Rubin.
For Burst!, Mason utilizes processes developed during the residency to engage in a five-hour durational performance meditation in the ICOSA Gallery space in Austin, Texas from 10 PM CST December 31, 2020 to 3 AM CST January 1, 2021.
Read more about how you can witness the livestream, here!
April 24, 2020
No Boundaries at Fusebox Festival!
For the first time since it was recorded in April 2018, the full performance of "NO BOUNDARIES: Dancing the Visions of Contemporary Black Choreographers" will stream live on Friday, April 24th at 8:30pm CST as a part of Fusebox Festival 2020: Virtual Edition! "No Boundaries" features the work of Kyle Abraham, Rennie Harris, Donald McKayle, Bebe Miller, David Rousséve, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. (The performance will also be available on noboundariesarchive.com for the duration of the Fusebox Festival - April 24th-26th.)
Then, on Sunday, April 26th at 2:00pm CST, join Gesel for "LIVE DISCUSSION: Gesel Mason and Making of NO BOUNDARIES", a conversation with humanities scholar Dr. Amma Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin, dramaturg Melanie George, and dancer/choreographer MK Abadoo, as they discuss the often emotional journey of performing and archiving the work of Black choreographers. Join the virtual conversation here.
March 19, 2019
Guest Artist at The Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning
Gesel Mason will be a Guest Artist at The Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning March 19-24, 2019. While there she will be leading a choreographic process with artists in the Queens neighborhood surrounding JCAL.
May 20, 2019
Alan M. Kriegsman Creative Residency at Dance Place
Gesel Mason received Dance Place's Alan M. Kriegsman Creative Residency, which provides housing and studio space for GMPP to work on a new performance work May 20-26.
June 17, 2019
Ragdale Residency
Gesel Mason and collaborators are on site at the Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, IL, investigating a new performance work June 17-21, 2019.
November 18, 2019
Rauschenberg Residency in Captiva, FL
The Rauschenberg Foundation awarded Gesel Mason a six week residency at their location on Robert Rauschenberg’s former property on Captiva Island, Florida, where he lived and worked for nearly four decades.
Past Events
December 17, 2020
Gesel Mason and Rebecca Salzer receive NEH Grant
Gesel Mason and Rebecca Salzer (University of Alabama) have received funding from the National Endowment for Humanities for "Prototyping an Extensible Framework for Access to Dance Knowledge".
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This funding supports the creation of No Boundaries, an online resource to increase accessibility to recordings of works by Black choreographers along with tools to make it easier to study dance by providing the ability to search and create connections across collections.
December 1, 2020
Yes, And Receives Support from NPN
Gesel Mason Performance Projects is a Spring 2020 recipient of the National Performance Network Development Fund Award for her project, Yes, And!
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The NPN Development Fund will support a weeklong residency at co-commissioner Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning (JCAL) in Jamaica, NY. This creative residency will allow for dedicated time with both the project’s artistic collaborators and JCAL’s local community to cultivate intentional Black-female-only spaces.
April 24, 2020
Yes, And Receives NEFA/NDP Grant
Gesel Mason Performance Projects is a 2020 recipient of the NEFA NDP Production Grant for Yes, And, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Yes, And is a performance project that re-centers Black womanhood as the norm and operating force in the creative process.
October 1, 2020
TPA/Fusebox Festival Residency
Gesel Mason Performance Projects has been selected to participate in a performing arts residency in Austin, Texas presented by
Texas Performing Arts and Fusebox Festival.
During this residency, Gesel Mason will continue to develop her recent project, Yes, And through in-person and virtual collaborations with artists in the Austin area and beyond.
The residency program is geared towards adventurous Austin-based artists who are pushing the boundaries of performance and on the cusp of new projects, as well as furthering the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the local performing arts community. The program provides four individual artists or ensembles project funding for technical support and artist fees, plus access to the theatres, studios and production shops at Texas Performing Arts for a total award of $50,000 each.
October 1, 2020
Gesel Mason receives
the Distinguished Research Award
Gesel Mason Performance Projects is delighted to announce that Gesel Mason is a recipient of the
2020 Distinguished Research Award!
This award is presented by the University of Texas at Austin's Theatre and Dance Department for her outstanding creative work that "uses the craft and techniques of dance to upend 'normality' as both a political act and creative tool for exploration."
February 1, 2019
Google Arts & Culture showcases No Boundaries
Google Arts & Culture invited GMPP to showcase No Boundaries on their Arts & Cultural online platform in partnership with 651 Arts. This is the first step towards creating a digital archive where you can access a small portion of the No Boundaries archives. Visit the No Boundaries Collections on Google Arts & Culture.
The Google Cultural Institute, including Google Arts & Culture, is an initiative that partners with museums, archives and other cultural institutions to bring the world’s cultural heritage online. With free tools and technologies, partners can showcase their cultural content making it more widely accessible to a global audience. Google’s Cultural Institute is a non-profit platform and is intended to showcase Partner’s cultural content on a non-commercial basis.
September 1, 2018
New Home in Austin, TX
Gesel Mason received Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Texas at Austin where she will be teaching and completing the digital archive for her project No Boundaries.
February 11, 2018
One last time...
651 ARTS and RestorationART / The Billie Holiday Theatre present the final performance of No Boundaries: Dancing the Visions of Contemporary Black Choreographers this April 6 & 7, 2018, in Brooklyn, NY.
This is where you come in…
The project has received a National Endowment for the Arts grant of $30,000 that requires at 1:1 cash match. We are $8,000 shy of matching our NEA grant and meeting our production budget. We need your help to raise the final portion of our budget to match the NEA grant. Donate today.
September 6, 2017
Rauschenberg Residency Awarded
GMPP has been selected to attend the Rauschenberg Residency in August 2018 based on the exceptional work and commitment to our practice.
News
July 16-28, 2023
Yes, And at Bates Dance Festival
In July 2023 Bates Dance Festival will host community workshops with Gesel Mason.
These workshops and this participation will dovetail into a presentation of Gesel’s Yes, And which will be presented at the 2024 Bates Dance Festival.
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Read more about Bates Dance Festival's 2023 Artists in Residence here.