Ishmael Houston-Jones' artistic practice, his curation and his teaching are inseparable from his activism. He makes provocative work that has examined and memorialised the impact of AIDS on numerous communities as well as work that fiercely supports queer artists and/or artists of colour.
In this conversation with long-time Melbourne friend Philip Adams, they will be talking AIDS, loss, scores for the dead, the context of politics, the politics of dancing and potential prologues for the end of everything.
Ishmael Houston-Jones is a choreographer, author, performer, teacher, and curator. His improvised dance and text work has been performed in New York City, across the US, and in Europe, Canada, Australia, and Latin America. Houston-Jones and Fred Holland shared a Bessie Award for their piece Cowboys, Dreams and Ladders. He also revived THEM, his 1985 collaboration with writer Dennis Cooper and composer Chris Cochrane for which he was awarded his second Bessie Award. He has curated Platform 2012: Parallels and Platform 2016: Lost and Found, both at Danspace Project. He is a recipient of the 2016 Herb Alpert, a 2015 Doris Duke Impact and a 2013 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Artists Awards. Ishmael Houston-Jones is a 2018 KEIR Choreographic Award Jury member.
Image courtesy: Ishmael Houston-Jones, Chris Cochrane, and Dennis Cooper, THEM, 1985/2010. Performance view, PS 122, New York, 1985. Photo: Dona Ann McAdams.
4 March 2018, 2-3:30pm
Temperance Hall, 199 Napier St South Melbourne 3250
Free entry
