devynn emory:
boiling rain

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River Valley Arts Collective is pleased to present boiling rain, a commissioned performance by choreographer and dance artist devynn emory. An awardee of 2024 River Valley Arts Collective + Al Held Foundation Fellowship at STONELEAF RETREAT, emory developed the work-in-process with collaborators Martita Abril, Yanira Castro, maura nguyễn donohue, sound artist Chloe Alexandra Thompson and Jeanie the mannequin. boiling rain premieres at the Al Held Foundation on June 9 and July 21.

For the second staging of performances in Al Held’s painting studio, RVAC’s Olga Dekalo invited emory to present part 3 of a trilogy that centers the artist’s care work with medical mannequins. Activating a 15 x 20-foot abstract painting that was left, uncompleted, in Held’s studio at the time of his death, boiling rain engages audiences in somatic practice of constellation gathering.

emory bridges dimensions of their work as a dancer, choreographer, a registered nurse and a practitioner of ceremony and ritual that includes communicating with the spirit world. The affinity between these realms is anchored by the artist’s personal history of seeing, hearing and talking to spirits from a young age and their medical practice that involves caring for the dying. In casting Jeanie as part of the ensemble, the team embodies and manifests the work of care and poignantly shares the experience of attending to a transcending body.

devynn emory is a choreographer/dance artist; dual-licensed bodyworker; a holder of collaborative spaces gesturing to collective ritual; a medium; educator; and registered nurse practicing in the fields of acute/critical care, hospice, COVID-19 and integrative health in Lenapehoking (NYC). emory’s performance company, devynnemory/beastproductions, finds the intersection of these fields, walking the edges of thresholds — drawing from their multiple in-between states of being. They hold space for liminal bodies bridging multiple planes of transition while finding reciprocity practice as a constant decolonial practice. They are currently working on a trilogy centering medical mannequins holding the wisdom of end-of-life experiences and weaving stories from patients and elders, inviting audiences into grief and somatic practice in collaboration with land. The trilogy is composed of part 1: deadbird (film) and can anybody help me hold this body (grief altar + global archive), part 2: Grandmother Cindy (live performance + film) and Cindy Sessions: LOVE, LOSS, LAND (three films), and part 3 in process: boiling-rain. They have also run a private practice since 2002 named sage that holds a variety of practices and teachings. Born on Lenape Land, emory is of mixed settler/European ancestry on their matrilineal side and is a Lenape/Blackfoot descendent on their patrilineal side.

Martita Abril (Pichu) is a performer, choreographer, and teaching artist from the border city of Tijuana, México. Her work considers abstract elements of physical and cultural boundaries. She recently performed in Joan Jonas Performance Program at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, as part of Joan Jonas: Good Night Good Morning retrospective and was a performer in MoMA’s restaging of Simone Forti’s Dance Constructions in 2019. She has worked with dance artists and companies including Lux Boreal, Kim Brandt, Yanira Castro, Yoshiko Chuma, Milka Djordevich, Daria Fain and Robert Kocik, Kat Galasso, Allyson Green, Mina Nishimura, Cori Olinghouse, Okwui Okpokwasili, Will Rawls, David Thompson, Larissa Velez-Jackson and Cathy Weis. She’s been a PECDA Scholar as a “Young Creator” and received a Mexican national fellowship from The National Endowment for Culture and Arts (FONCA). Martita was part of the Dance and Process (DAP) artist in residency program at The Kitchen in partnership with The American Academy of Arts and Letters and was selected for the Fresh Tracks Residency at New York Live Arts as a Mentor and Consultant for the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Immigrant Artist Program. Martita is the Coordinator of Movement Research at the Judson Memorial Church Monday night series, the Trisha Brown Dance Company Manager, and is currently in The Movement Research Artist-in-Residence Program, funded, in part, by Mertz Gilmore Foundation. She continues to guide workshops in Bushwick for Spanish speaking familias that recently arrived in NYC, through the iLAND (Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art Nature and Dance) program by Jennifer Monson.

Yanira Castro is a two time Bessie-award-winning artist and choreographer whose work with collaborative group a canary torsi is rooted in community action and public gathering. Yanira has staged performances and commissions at Danspace Project, NYLA/DTW, The Invisible Dog, New Museum, PS122, ISSUE Project Room, EMPAC, MCA Chicago among many other spaces and institutions. In 2022 Yanira received the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts for Dance and her work has been supported by Creative Capital, The MAP Fund, NYFA Choreography Fellowship, Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, LMCC, MacDowell, Yaddo, Gibney and Marble House Project. Castro is an advocate for arts workers, working to transform funding and nonprofit structures to community-held, horizontal, participatory models of mutual care. She is a founding member of Creating New Futures (CNF), a group of arts workers who gathered at the start of the pandemic to address deep-rooted inequities in the performance field.

maura nguyễn donohue directs the MFA Dance program at Hunter College/CUNY and has been a member of La MaMa’s Great Jones Repertory Co since 1997. Her experimental performance works have been produced and commissioned by New York Live Arts (1995-2004), Women in Motion, Roulette, Danspace Project, Performance Space 122, La Mama, The Asia Society, Mulberry St. Theater, the Bang Group at West End Theater, and has toured extensively across the US and to Europe and Asia. From 1999-2004, as artistic advisor for DTW’s Mekong Project, she facilitated residencies for Asian American and SE Asian artists in the US, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. A prolific writer, maura was an inaugural contributor to Gibney's "Imaginings" Journal. She has been writing for Culturebot since 2010 and published essays in Contemporary Directions in Asian American Dance, DanceInsider, Dance Magazine, American Theater Journal, and was writer-in-residence for Danspace Project 2021 & 2022. She currently serves on the Artist Advisory Council for Movement Research and the New York Dance and Performance Awards (The Bessies). She holds a BA in Anthropology and Dance (’92) and an MFA in Dance (’08) from Smith College and has taught at Smith College, Hampshire College, Mt. Holyoke College and Queens College.

devynn emory: boiling rain is commissioned by River Valley Arts Collective and is organized by Olga Dekalo in collaboration with the Al Held Foundation in Boiceville, NY.

Choreography: devynn emory
Performers: Martita Abril, Yanira Castro, maura nguyễn donohue, devynn emory, Jeanie (voiced by Olga Dekalo and Oga Li)
Sound design: Chloe Alexandra Thompson
Videography: James Autery
Production/Stage Management: Reilly Horan
Curator: Olga Dekalo

Over the past five years, River Valley Arts Collective has partnered with the Al Held Foundation on a series of outdoor installations on the foundation's grounds as well as exhibitions presented in Al Held’s former drawing studio and, more recently, performances staged in Held’s painting studio. The Al Held Foundation is not open to the public, however pre-scheduled and by-appointment guided tours are available.

For more information contact info@RVACollective.org