Quaba Venza Ernest. Photo by Fulani Hart.
Tickets: $0-$25, pay what you can
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This movement workshop by 2026 AiR Quaba Venza Ernest explores improvised theatrical staging through scored improvisation, composition, and play. Beginning with somatic and proprioceptive practices, participants will cultivate awareness of their own bodies before collectively mapping the space and discovering relationships with one another. Together, we will create events by exploring symbolic weight, spatial relationships, dynamic tension, and the quiet beauty of natural occurrences.
Through simple compositional prompts and improvisational scores, we will investigate how stories emerge through presence rather than predetermined narrative, allowing meaning to arise from the relationships between bodies, objects, space, and time.
Open to movers of all backgrounds, this workshop invites participants to experiment, observe, and compose in real time, embracing curiosity and intuition as tools for theatrical world-building.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Quaba Venza Ernest is a Brooklyn-born, St. Lucian-American interdisciplinary artist whose work merges contemporary dance, theater, writing, and sound to create immersive performance worlds. His relationship to movement is deeply rooted in lineage, the conversation between past, present, and future—and in choreography as a way of carrying dreams across generations. He trained at Dance Theatre of Harlem, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance, and Springboard Danse Montréal. His choreography and films have been presented locally and internationally at venues and festivals including Triskelion Arts, Arts On Site, BAAD!, Jamaica Dance Festival, Making Moves Dance Festival Cinedanza, (Italy), Quinzena de Dança de Almada (Portugal), Dance Camera Istanbul, ADF’s Movies By Movers (2023), Hostos Center for the Arts & Culture, and the 92Y Future Dance Festival. He is the founder of Venza Dance and Ernest Records, platforms through which he develops interdisciplinary work and supports the artistic community. His distinctions include the Works & Process Residency Artist (2026-2027), Center for Performance Research Resident Artist (2026), Dancing While Black Fellowship (2026), Pepatián/BAAD Dancing Futures Residency (2025), Chelsea Factory Summer Residency (2024), the Ann & Weston Hicks Choreography Fellowship at Jacob’s Pillow (2021), and the Thayer Fellowship in the Arts (2019).
OPEN LAB is a series that encompasses theoretical and practical discussions, movement research, and workshops open to the public that invite practice-based inquiry and creative exchange of ideas.