Grounding Feeling

Organized as part of Wave Hill’s current group exhibition Trees, we breathe, which spans the galleries and the gardens, Grounding Feeling is an afternoon of outdoor performances by Emergent Improvisation, Chloë Engel & Nora Raine Thompson, and Tanika I. Williams. Like the exhibition, this performance program underscores our interdependent relationship with trees, focusing on interspecies systems of care and honoring trees as sentient beings with memories, feelings, and decision-making abilities.    

Through both embodied and academic research, the artists in Grounding Feeling have developed site-specific performances in direct communication with some of Wave Hill’s most prominent trees. In our anthropocentric world, strict delineations of selfhood emerge as problematic tools for perpetuating feelings of human superiority over non-human species and the hyper-individualization of society. Privileging the singular human subject in this way is not only correlated with the rapid progression of our current climate crisis but also feelings of isolation and alienation. By regarding the trees and audience as active collaborators in the performance process, the artists in Grounding Feeling ask us all to come together to build scores for more sustainable and intersectional modes of life that are untangled from oppressive hierarchical structures in which non-human species are regarded as objects to be possessed. With experimental practices that incorporate writing, dance, improvisation, and meditation, these performances will attune audiences physically and emotionally to the particular needs, traumas, desires, and experiences of Wave Hill’s trees, fostering a greater sense of connectivity with the earth.  

Curated by Afriti Bankwalla, Curatorial Administrative Assistant.  

Wave Hill’s oldest tree is the red oak that stands unwavering behind Glyndor Gallery, holding whispers of the forest before the privatization of the land. The wisteria winds along the house’s exterior, stashing secrets from faraway lands. What stories remain tangled in their roots?  A Ceremony for the Trees is a site-specific performance series about unearthing delicate histories embedded in unassuming places. The Native | The Naturalized calls attention to the history of Wave Hill—a private residence turned public garden—to challenge notions of belonging, ownership, and authorship.   

Tanika I. Williams  
Tanika I. Williams is an eco-feminist filmmaker and performance artist. She investigates women's use of movement, mothering, and medicine to produce and pass on ancestral wisdom of ecology, spirituality, and liberation. Her films have been screened in national and international festivals and broadcast on American television. Williams has been awarded fellowships and residencies at NYU Tisch School, New York Foundation for the Arts, Hi-ARTS, Cow House Studios, MORE Art, and BRIC. Additional awards and appearances include En Foco Media Arts Fund, 99.5 WBAI, Art in Odd Places, Creative Time, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Civic Art Lab, GreenspaceNYC, Let Us Eat Local, Just Food, and Performa. Williams holds a BA from Eugene Lang College, New School, and an MDiv from Union Theological Seminary.  

Please note that this performance requires audiences to walk across grass on an incline or view it from a distance.   

Two dancers respond, in performance, to a tree over one hundred years old. It is scarred with human carvings of declarations of love, requires regular medical care, and needs ample space. Two dancers research the origins, valences, and trappings of the term “tree hugger,” feeling into the problematics of loving a tree as if we are merged with it, as well as the problematics of loving a tree as if it is utterly separate from us. Two dancers who have been friends for over twenty years will dig into the choreography of embrace as a method of caring, clinging, holding, objectifying, and loving. Two dancers compete against their own limits to investigate “survivalism” as a trending way of confronting nature, asking us to consider how interactions with the nonhuman mimic relations between humans as failed attempts to understand. Do we need to hold on or let go? What is ethical connection on stolen land?  

Choreography and performance: Nora Raine Thompson and Chloë Engel 

Music: Survivor backtracks and Roy Orbison 

With gratitude to the many who influenced the research and development of this work, including the arborists at Wave Hill, Eiko Otake, and time spent at Black Hole Hollow Residency, as well as texts, practices, and thinking from the Chipko Movement, Alice Chauchat, Mel Y. Chen,  Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Lisa Hirmer, Juliana May, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and Gerald Vizenor, among others. 

Chloë Engel 
Chloë Engel is a play worker and performance artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Their studio practice is anchored by an ongoing research project investigating the mistreatment and subjugation of those who have been deemed “mad” in Western European culture. Engel has presented performance work at Abrons Arts Center Underground Theater, wild project, Lifeworld, AUNTS, Open Performance at Movement Research, No Theme Festival, Little Berlin.  

Nora Raine Thompson  
Nora Raine Thompson is a dancer, dance writer, and dramaturg living in Canarsie/Munsee territory in Lenapehoking. They dance, write, and attempt impossible tasks to experiment with ways of gently dismantling constructions of selfhood. In their decade in New York City, Nora has choreographed for theater, created and produced solo and collaborative work, taught improvisation workshops, and worked in various dramaturgical, administrative, and writing roles, including with Eiko Otake, Abrons Arts Center, Danspace Project, and Studio Rawls. Thompson’s writing on performance has been featured in Movement Research Performance Journal, The Brooklyn Rail, Dance Enthusiast, Danspace Project’s Journal, and The Drama Review (forthcoming). They earned a BA from Wesleyan University and are a PhD candidate in performance studies at NYU Tisch.  

Emergent Improvisation (Lucia Gagliardone, Susan Hwang, Uila Marx, Troy Ogilvie, Alexis Vinzons, and Omar Zubair) present a site-specific, interactive performance with improvised soundscapes and dance scores that investigates how tree systems map onto human interdependence. Through play, performance, and community gathering, the group builds new visions for resilience, care, and survival. Engaging biomimicry—the use of the natural world’s complex patterns and systems in solving human struggles—to come into a greater understanding of human relation that prioritizes care and nourishment for each other, tree (v.) will ask: How do we share space? How do we share the sky? What do your roots connect you with? and What kind of tree are you?

About Emergent Improvisation 
Emergent Improvisation was founded in 2019 by sound bender Omar Zubair and dancer Troy Ogilvie. They use dance, sound, and environment to facilitate a deep sense of listening and create an ecosystem of community care. They have gathered a network of life-long improvisers invested in the practice, including Lucia Gagliardone, Susan Hwang, Uila Marx, and Alexis Vinzons. In 2024, all performers improvised together in varying formations for GalleryArts On Site, Bushwick Book Club, Porchstomp Music Festival, and HOWL! Arts.   

Lucia Gagliardone 
Lucia Gagliardone is a Vermont-born, Brooklyn-based artist and educator with movement origins in intergenerational, community-centered dance-making amongst the trees and in the waters of home. Her work explores memory excavation and ancestry, grief and healing, queer worldviews, and play as a facilitator for change. Lucia is interested in storytelling and dance-making as a process of empathy. Lucia co-founded slowDANCE with Lou Sydel, a dance production company with a process-forward mindset. She has premiered twelve live and film dance works, presented by Northampton School for Contemporary Dance and Thought, The Tank, The Living Room, Bowdoin College, The Hopkins Center for the Arts, and more. As a freelance artist, she has performed in works by Reggie Wilson//Fist and Heel Performance Group, Katy Pyle//Ballez, Aretha Aoki, and Flock Dance Troupe. Lucia facilitates Emergent Improvisation (with Troy Ogilvie and Omar Zubair) and organizes food justice and mutual aid with Collective Focus. 

Susan Hwang 
Susan Hwang tells stories and makes collapsible things like songs and times. She plays accordion, janggu (Korean drum) and piano, but physical objects she can’t play, wear or eat intimidate her. She’s the founder/producer of international, literature-inspired arts non-profit, The Bushwick Book Club. Not a great vacationer, she leaves NYC for theater and with bands like The Debutante Hour, Lusterlit, Soozee Hwang & The Relastics and King Missile Dog Fly Religion. Susan plays accordions because they’re lighter than pianos (barely) and drums because it's healthy for a girl to hit things. 

Uila Marx 
Uila Marx is a movement artist and educator from O’ahu, Hawai’i, based in occupied Lenapehoking / Brooklyn. Uila’s movement lineage is informed by a lifelong education in hula and an ever transforming relationship to the soil, wind, and water. Their work centers collective care, tenderness, queer joy, and an urgency toward communal healing and survival. Uila received BAs in dance and psychology from Barnard College, and is a 2024 Hula ‘Ōlapa graduate with Ka Pā Hula O Ka Lei Lehua. Uila is in artful community with DELIRIOUS Dances (Edisa Weeks), Troy Ogilvie, and Accent Dance. Uila hosts Emergent Improvisation, brainchild of Troy Ogilvie and Omar Zubair, is a Community Actionist in Gibney’s Hands Are for Holding program, and hosts the donation-based class series, Body in Play which prioritizes accessibility and community-building for professional dancers. 

Troy Ogilvie 
Troy Ogilvie practices mutual aid, dance improvisation, and participatory democracy in Lenapehoking, currently known as Brooklyn. This work involves free fridges, bulk food distribution, and free stores among other activities that prioritize solidarity, not charity. Troy's community organizing and choreographic work spring from her dance lineage of mentors Sidra Bell, Margie Gillis, Gallim Dance, Punchdrunk, Susan Misner, and Alexandra Wells. Recent choreographic work includes 'luzAzul' an immersive opera for 0-2 year olds with director Malena Dayen; 'Critical Dependency' a film installation about free fridges, food insecurity, and compost in collaboration with the Center for Innovation in the Arts at Juilliard; frequent collaborations with the Bushwick Book Club (founded by Susan Hwang); and 'The Ninth Hour' a Beowulf rock-opera which premiered at the Met Cloisters. She's also a team member on The Dance Union Podcast, a host for Emergent Improvisation with Omar Zubair (and the cast here at Wave Hill!), a volunteer with the Parole Prep Project, a graduate from The Juilliard School, and a parent. 

Alexis Vinzons  
Alexis Vinzons is a New York City-based freelance dance artist from Westchester, NY. She is a facilitator of Emergent Improvisation, a practice crafted by Troy Ogilvie and Omar Zubair, held regularly at Gibney Dance Center and Peridance Center. Her improvisation practice takes an anatomical approach and investigates honesty, spontaneity, curiosity, and care as essential lenses for engaging with and reconnecting to dance. She holds a B.A. from Cornell University, where she studied Information Science, Art History, and Dance. 

Omar Zubair 
After writing his first book Disorientation Therapy in 2007, Omar Zubair found that the closer to the core of being he looked, the more blurry it became; so, he began to listen to it, instead. And ever since, listening has become his primary compositional technique — whether creating a theatrical score with The Wooster Group or building a sound installation for a national historic landmark, whether sound designing for a blind choreographer so that she can continually orient toward the audience or improvising with a dance class at Julliard to coax authentic movement out of each student, whether making music to help people grieve at a funeral or celebrate at a wedding. He lets the ear hear twice before acting once. He has helped found composer collectives across multiple countries in order to promote radical empathy and empower active listening. Some places his works have been presented are Le Grand Palais & Le Centre Pompidou in Paris, The Guggenheim and Lincoln Center in New York, The Disney Concert Hall and Young Projects in Los Angeles, The Schaubuhne and Kunsthalle Dessau in Berlin.