Bethany is proud to partner with Works & Process, the performing arts series at the Guggenheim to support creators of the performing arts and incubate new works. As two organizations committed to supporting artists across disciplines and in various stages of their artistic process, the partnership is a natural fit.

 Recognizing performing artists continue to face vulnerabilities including unstable income, lack of access to rehearsal space, and limited opportunities for prolonged collaborations outside the necessity to produce finished premieres, the Works & Process LaunchPAD at Bethany Arts Community provides collaborating artists with living wage fees, transportation, devoted studio and theater space, and housing. Select LaunchPAD projects will premiere at Works & Process at the Guggenheim and partnering presenters.

 Woven into each LaunchPAD will be classes, open rehearsals, and in-process show and tells encouraging appreciation for the complexities of the artistic process and building future audiences for its performing artists.

 Supporting both organizations missions’ LaunchPAD will serve as an incubator encouraging artists and audiences to embrace artistic process as destination, where understanding how work is created is as important as viewing the final product. LaunchPAD will support today’s leading performing artists and nurture an array of performing arts disciplines and historically marginalized artists.

 The program at Bethany is part of a network of residency partners including: • Bridge Street Theatre, Catskill, NY • Catskill Mountain Foundation’s Orpheum Film & Performing Arts Center, Tannersville, NY • The Church, Sag Harbor, NY • Guild Hall, East Hampton, NY • Modern Accord Depot, Accord, NY • The Pocantico Center, Tarrytown, NY • The Watermill Center, Water Mill, NY

Works and Process LaunchPAD Highlights

LADIES OF HIP HOP

Intergenerational Transfer. A Works & Process LaunchPAD “Process as Destination” at Bethany Arts Community residency. Featuring three generations, this project captures the knowledge, beauty, and power of Black female street dancers and looks beyond the traditional lens of exposure for Black bodies in dance, which has overwhelmingly focused on Eurocentric dance aesthetics including modern, contemporary, and ballet. The culmination will be the creation of a concert dance piece that preserves and celebrates the beauty, strength, and lived experiences of Black women in street dance.

Residency: March 15 – 25
Events at Bethany:
Show and tell for students from Ossining’s AMD
Show and Tell: Saturday, March 19, 8 pm. Register Here >>
Events at the Works & Process at the Guggenheim in New York City: Sunday, March 27 – World premiere. Learn more & tickets here >>

THE RECKONING

Francesca Harper – The Reckoning. A Works & Process LaunchPAD “Process as Destination” At Bethany Arts Community residency. Dancer and choreographer, Artistic Director of Ailey II, and Founder of The FHP Collective and The Francesca Harper Project, explores how media and entertainment commodifies and profits off of the erasure and harm of others while catapulting some into celebrity culture. How does our capitalistic society benefit from brutality as it relates specifically to bodies of color? With a sonic tapestry created by rock star Nona Hendryx and daring movement created by Francesca Harper in collaboration with the dancers, they collectively create a choreographic work that explores this intersection of transparency and erasure, what it is we care to see, and what we choose to recklessly disregard.

Residency: January 5 – 9 (bubble residency)
Residency: June 18 – 30
Events: Show and Tell: A Francesca Harper Work & Process Showing  >>REGISTER

THE RECKONING

Francesca Harper – The project being worked on is The Reckoning, both choreographed and directed by Francesca Harper.

Existing as a film and a live performance, The Reckoning is choreographer and director Francesca Harper’s response to the 2010 killing of seven-year-old Aiyana Mo’Nay Stanley-Jones at the hands of Detroit law enforcement. In collaboration with composer Nona Hendryx, Harper creates an expressive historical record of injustice as she explores the relationship between erasure and commodification in the media’s coverage of brutality against bodies of color. Dancers from Ailey II and FHP Collective perform in costumes by Elias Gurrola, with lighting design by Itohan Edoloyi.

The Reckoning was commissioned by ARRAY’s Law Enforcement Accountability Project (LEAP), a propulsive fund dedicated to empowering activists to disrupt the code of silence that exists around police aggression and misconduct.

The development of The Reckoning and this live performance premiere is supported by Works & Process and developed in Works & Process LaunchPAD residencies at Bethany Arts Community with the collaboration of Gabri Christa and The Movement Lab @ Barnard. Presented in conjunction with the Guggenheim exhibition Nick Cave: Forothermore.

Residency: March 5 – 9, 2023