#Ni&039;Ja Whitson

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Jessica and Clara had the great pleasure of interviewing five 2019 Bessie Award nominees this year thanks to the help of Bessies rep Kamila Slawinski! In order of interview, we spoke to: Caleb Teicher, Molly Poerstel, Shamar Watt, Ni’Ja Whitson and Leslie Cuyjet.

The Bessies are New York City’s premier annual dance awards honoring outstanding creative work in the field, and our interviewees could not have illustrated this more clearly. We were fascinated to dig into the inspiration and processes behind a sampling of the imaginative, diverse, socially important and truly outstanding works that are being recognized this year. We hope you will enjoy listening as much as we enjoyed conversing. For more about each artist, continue scrolling for individual bios! Note that the Bessies awards ceremony will take place on Monday, October 14th, 2019. Jessica and Clara will be there, alongside our five interviewees and of course many more. Come join us and be sure to say ‘hi’!

THE BESSIES: Five 2019 Nominees Jessica and Clara had the great pleasure of interviewing five 2019 Bessie Award nominees this year thanks to the help of Bessies rep Kamila Slawinski!

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Pod de Deux interviewed Ni’Ja Whitson as part of a series of interviews with five 2019 NYC Bessie Award nominees. Ni’Ja was nominated for a Bessie for outstanding production and Visual Design of Oba Qween Baba King Baba, which was Co-commissioned by Danspace Project and Abrons Arts Center. We hope to do a full-length interview with them in the future!

Ni’Ja Whitson (CA/NYC) is a Creative Capital and Bessie Award winning, Nonbinary Transinterdisciplinary artist and writer, who has been referred to as “majestic” by The New York Times and recognized by Brooklyn Magazine as a culture influencer. Theyare a 2018 MAP Fund recipient, featured choreographer of the 2018 CCA Biennial, 2019 USA Artists Fellowship Nominee, and 2018-2020 Urban Bush Women Choreographic Center Fellow. Other recent awards include a Jerome/Camargo Fellowship, Watermill Residency, Dance in Process (DiP) Residency, Hedgebrook Fellowship, LMCC Process Space Residency, Bogliasco Fellowship, and Brooklyn Arts Exchange Artist Residency. Whitson is an Assistant Professor of experimental choreography at UC Riverside and founder of The NWA Project. www.nijawhitson.com 

Ni’Ja’s Oba Qween Baba King Baba engages spiritual multiplicity and the role of Queerness in the Divine. The work’s title is based on the Yorùbá word “Oba,” which is a genderless term that has come to be known as a king. An iteration of this work was presented during Dancing Platform Praying Grounds: Blackness, Churches, and Downtown Dance (Platform 2018) curated by Reggie Wilson.

2019 BESSIE NOMINEE: Ni’Ja Whitson Pod de Deux interviewed Ni’Ja Whitson as part of a series of interviews with five 2019 NYC Bessie Award nominees.