News + Press
Two Blistering Solos Raise the Stakes at Live Artery
By Gia Kourlas
Highlights so far of the 2025 contemporary dance festival, spread across New York City, are Symara Sarai and Leslie Cuyjet’s outstanding dances. […]
Another amazing sight was Cuyjet in “For All Your Life,” in which she examines Black life and death as they relate to the life insurance industry. There is a personal connection: Cuyjet’s great-grandfather was the president of a Black-owned life insurance company. The solo, first seen at the Chocolate Factory Theater in Queens and now at the Center for Performance Research in Brooklyn, continues Cuyjet’s impressive body of work exploring aspects of her lineage.
Throughout, Cuyjet melds her finely wrought delicacy with a simmering fury. In a film and onstage, she plays an insurance saleswoman. With every raise of her eyebrow, every confiding smile, she is corporate America at its worst: frighteningly good.
A (Green) Place for Dance and Performance to Bloom
By Gia Kourlas
Until John Jasperse laughs — the sound is a bit like a high-pitched machine gun, but friendly — it can be hard to know what he’s thinking. Tall, pale and serious, he stood in the middle of the Center for Performance Research in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, last month, scrutinizing a fresh coat of paint as if he were a scientist peering into a microscope. “It’s good,” he finally said, punctuating his approval with a contagious peal of laughter. “It’s turning into what we imagined it would be.”
In the impoverished world of contemporary dance the Center for Performance Research is practically palatial. A nonprofit collaboration between Mr. Jasperse’s Thin Man Dance and Jonah Bokaer’s Chez Bushwick, the new dance and performance space will be unveiled on Saturday night in a preopening performance and party called “Displacement @ Greenbelt.” The center is to open as rehearsal space in May.