John Jasperse Projects: Wandering
20-23 May 2026
Two performances per evening at 5:30 and 7 pm
“Wandering” emerges from a shared curiosity between multiple artists: who has the agency to wander, and how can we summon movement across space through the coalescence of visual, choreographic, and sonic imaginaries? Animating this entire project is the spirit of dialogue, a kinetic encounter - the visual and choreographic synergy between artist Julie Mehretu’s and choreographer John Jasperse’s investments in the liberatory potential of abstraction in their work.
How do choreo-sonic landscapes enliven Mehretu’s works, and how, in turn, do her paintings activate dancers’ and musicians’ actions? Jasperse’s choreography, supported by seven astonishing dancers and two composers, brings our attention to the energetic, ambitious, wildly illegible, meticulously executed, deeply sensual, cryptically political, hauntingly blurred, and dynamically marked surfaces of Mehretu’s work. At times the dancers undulate against a wall, ear to rampart, as if to listen for the visitation of a memory’s echo; at other times they support each other’s weight in corporeal duets while creating shadows behind Mehretu's / Nairy Baghramian's TRANSpaintings / Upright Brackets.
When does the dancing body here function as paintbrush, feeler, mourner, activator, silence, healer, soldier, ghost, chaos, sound, child, sketch, griot, lover, color, guide, rhythm, scream, seducer, frenzy, or wanderer? And how will sound transport us temporally, to yesteryears, afrofutures, and queer utopias? The audience, also a collective of internal and external wanderers, will live in this moment with us. - Ariel Osterweis, dramaturg/producer
Marian Goodman Gallery, Julie Mehretu, and John Jasperse Projects are pleased to present Wandering, a series of live performances at the gallery’s headquarters in New York on 20-23 May 2026. In this work, seven dancers (known individually for their performances in companies such as Trisha Brown, Bill T. Jones, Kyle Abraham, and Shen Wei)respond to the music ofcomposers Hahn Rowe and Will Johnson under Jasperse’s direction. They will inhabit six different articulated galleries on three different floors in dialogue with Mehretu’s exhibition, Our Days, Like a Shadow (a non-abiding hauntology), on view at the gallery from 14 April - 6 June 2026. With a building interest in dance, Mehretu invited Jasperse to respond to her work after being introduced to Jasperse’s oeuvre by dramaturg/producer Ariel Osterweis (founder of Body Shop Performance Projects).
Wandering, which marks the first performance encounter between Jasperse and Mehretu, plays off the bifurcation of the Tribeca gallery building’s architecture at 385 Broadway, as well as its storied history dating back to its existence as a factory. Occupying what was originally built for industry and is now a designated space for art in all its forms, the dancers embody and enliven the choreo-politics of the gallery, traversing vertically from floor to floor, and horizontally across space and through archways resembling portals. Immersed in sonic layers created in real time by composers Hahn Rowe and Will Johnson, the dancers generate dynamic shadows behind Mehretu's / Nairy Baghramian’s TRANSpaintings / Upright Brackets and echo the kineticism of Mehretu's Black Paintings. Together with a roaming audience, the dancers collectively explore Mehretu’s oeuvre, all within the spatial, cultural, and temporal environment that surrounds and extends from the gallery’s walls. Each floor of the exhibition evokes a different sense of temporality, and Wandering moves through them, embodying Mehretu’s idea that her paintings interrogate transience and fugitivity as constant states of motion.
Jasperse’s formal compositional style finds affinity with the detailed layering, fervent sensuality, and spectral charge of Mehretu’s work. Wandering, which navigates conceptual, corporeal, and temporal forms, responds to Mehretu’s cryptically political planes of marks and vectors, and the sense of emergent motion in her work. The highly articulated movements, directionality, and ephemerality of Jasperse’s work pays homage to the liminality and the dynamically marked surfaces in Mehretu’s paintings. For both Mehretu and Jasperse, queerness is a space of invention, as is touch in all its meanings – paint to canvas, dancer to ground, body to body.
The dancers, individuals in their own right, inherently bring their identities to Jasperse’s works and in turn to Mehretu’s paintings, bringing the figure into the scene. Following on the rectilinear plane of paintings and the physicality of Mehretu’s works, blurring boundaries and marks, the choreography helps establish a perceptual vibration between the two mediums. The dancers work with the materiality in the space, finding a sensual intimacy with both vertical and horizontal planes, sliding off walls and floors.
The choreographic construction of the work additionally incorporates the audience, as spectators and participants, who are navigating Mehretu’s paintings alongside the performance. The encounter of dancers and visitors becomes a form of invitation and negotiation within the space.
Creating areas to delineate between the paintings and the audience, the dance incorporates somatic rectangularity, with the addition of a mattress and cardboard, evoking the broad range between rest, intimacy, or even a wanderer’s surrogate home. The dancers invite the audience to reflect and ponder the existence of those living in liminal spaces: there are stages of collapse, unity, itinerancy, discordance, camaraderie, and conflict, melded together, occurring concurrently, no matter how disparate.
Jasperse’s work, in dialogue with Mehretu’s paintings, serves as a poignant reminder of our ever-changing times and our response to - and participation in - history’s past, present, and future.
Wandering was made possible by grants from the Cultural Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York State Council On the Arts, the James E. Robison Foundation, the Harkness Foundation for Dance, and the Kyle J. Mulroney Foundation, as well as contributions from individuals.
Residency support for the development of Wandering was provided by the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Press Contact
Linda Pellegrini, Head of Communications and Events
linda@mariangoodman.com
+1 (212)977 7160
Janet Stapleton Public Relations
stapleton.janet@gmail.com
+1 (212)633 0016
Performance Times: Each performance is about 45 minutes; two performances per evening at 5:30 and 7 pm.
Audience: invited to sit or travel through the space. At the Marian Goodman Gallery, the performances occur on three levels, traveling up and down stairs and elevators.
Dancers: Maria Fleischman, Catherine Kirk, Cynthia Koppe, Andrea Soto, Mak Thornquest, Jace Weyant, and Zo Williams.
Composers/Musicians: Hahn Rowe and Will Johnson
Costumes: MX Oops
Choreographer: John Jasperse
Dramaturg/Producer: Ariel Osterweis/Body Shop Performance Projects
John Jasperse has been working as a dance artist in New York City since graduating from Sarah Lawrence College in 1985. He founded John Jasperse Company, later renamed John Jasperse Projects, in 1989 and has since created 19 evening-length works through this non-profit structure as well as numerous commissions for other companies including Baryshnikov's White Oak Dance Project, Batsheva Dance Company, and Lyon Opera Ballet, as well as two co-productions with William Forsythe's Ballett Frankfurt and Forsythe Company.
John Jasperse Projects has been presented in 26 US cities and 29 countries by presenters including BAM, Joyce Theater, New York Live Arts, Dance Theater Workshop, The Kitchen, Walker Art Center, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, American Dance Festival, La Biennale di Venezia, Dance Umbrella London, Montpellier Danse, and Tanz im August Berlin. He is the recipient of a 2014 Doris Duke Artist Award, two Bessie awards (in 2014 and 2001), and multiple fellowships from U.S, Artists, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Tides/ Lambent Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts in addition to numerous grants and awards for John Jasperse Projects.
Jasperse has been on the faculty and taught at many distinguished institutions nationally and internationally, including Hollins University MFA, UC Davis, Movement Research, P.A.R.T.S. (Brussels, Belgium), SEAD (Salzburg, Austria), Centre National de la Danse (Lyon, France), and Danscentrum (Stockholm, Sweden).
Early in his career, Jasperse performed with Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker in Rosas, Lisa Kraus, Jennifer Monson, and various other dance artists in New York City. Jasperse is co-founder of CPR-Center for Performance Research in Brooklyn, NY and serves as an honorary member of its Board of Directors. Since 2016, Jasperse has served as the Director of the Dance Program at Sarah Lawrence College.
Ariel Osterweis (she/they) is a scholar-practitioner of dance and performance. Osterweis has a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from UC Berkeley and has been on faculty at CalArts for the past decade, teaching courses in Performance Studies and Critical Dance Studies. Their book, Body Impossible: Desmond Richardson and the Politics of Virtuosity, is published with Oxford University Press (Oxford Studies in Dance Theory Series, 2024), and current book projects include Prophylactic Aesthetics: Latex, Spandex, and Sexual Anxieties Performed (University of Michigan Press, Theater: Theory/Text/Performance Series), Disavowing Virtuosity, Performing Aspiration: Dance and Performance Interviews (Routledge), and Prince Moves (Oxford). Osterweis has danced and performed professionally with Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Mia Michaels R.A.W., Heidi Latsky, and Julie Tolentino. They were also a dramaturg for John Jasperse, Narcissister, and a.k. payne, and directed evening-length performances, Jérôme Bel and Talent Show at REDCAT. They are Co-Chair of the Dance Studies Association’s 2026 conference, “Speculative Choreographies.” Osterweis is the dramaturg/producer for Wandering with John Jasperse and Julie Mehretu at Marian Goodman Gallery, and has recently founded an organization called BODY SHOP Performance Projects.
Composer, producer, and performer Hahn Rowe has developed a uniquely personal sonic language, traversing a vast array of musical terrains and weaving them into ever-shifting, polymorphic soundscapes. At home in the studio as well as in the performance arena, he has worked to break down the barriers between traditional musical performance, sound art, and physical theater.
As an engineer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist (violin, guitar, electronics) he has worked with Hugo Largo (two albums on Brian Eno’s LAND/OPAL imprint), David Byrne, Anohni (Anohni and the Johnsons), Glenn Branca, Swans, R.E.M., and Yoko Ono, among many others.
A recipient of three New York Dance and Performance Awards (aka the Bessie), Hahn Rowe has a long history of scoring music and performing for dance and theater. He has been involved in over 30 evening-length dance/theater productions, working globally with the likes of Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods, Benoît Lachambre, Louise Lecavalier, Bebe Miller, John Jasperse, Simone Aughterlony, and Antonija Livingstone.
Hahn Rowe is active as a composer for film and television, having created scores for films such as Clean, Shaven by Lodge Kerrigan, Spring Forward and The Cold Land by Tom Gilroy, Married in America by Michael Apted, and Sing Your Song by Susanne Rostock.
Recently, Rowe’s music was featured as a major component in Adam Pendleton’s Who Is Queen? at MoMA (2021) and he has created the soundscore for Pendleton’s latest video work, Toy Soldier (Notes of Robert E. Lee, Richmond, Virginia/Strobe), as part of his exhibition, Toy Soldier (Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich 2022).
Will Johnson is a multimedia artist and composer from the Bronx, New York. His work explores themes that include black digital memory, phantom archives, and the latent poetics embedded in the language of audio engineering. He is a recipient of the Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Sound Art/Composition and the McKnight Foundation Fellowship for Musicians. His commercial work includes licensed sound and original compositions for Acura, GAP, Beats Electronics, and HBO, as well as contributions to the Grammy Award–winning electronic album Skin. In the past, Johnson’s live performances have been commissioned by institutions including Lincoln Center, The Kitchen, 92Y, and MASS MoCA. Johnson is currently a doctoral candidate at Brown University and will be a visiting lecturer at Harvard University in 2026. His writing appears in Think/ing from Black: A Lexicon, edited by Dionne Brand, a collection that imagines words, terms, and practices emerging from the “manifold positions of blackness that animate and sustain black life.”
MX Oops is an associate professor of dance, multimedia performance, and somatic studies at Lehman College, City University of New York. Founder of Complex Stability, a research and multimedia production company, their creative practice links urban arts [breaking, house, vogue, emcee, dj, vj, fashion design], somatic studies [yoga, Thai Yoga Massage, energy healing, sound baths], media and gender studies. Through this transdisciplinary approach, their work questions whether consciousness itself is the primary medium. Their philosophy and fashion line, ECSTATIC AESTHETICS, uses wearable art to transmit an erotic vision of the sacred.
Dancers
Maria Rose Fleischman is a dance and multimedia artist based in New York City. She joined John Jasperse Projects as a collaborative dance artist in 2023. Maria has had the pleasure of working as a dance artist for Allysen Hooks Projects and has performed dance works by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Hélène Simoneau, Mina Nishimura, Ming-Lung Yang, Trish Casey, Martha Graham, José Limón, and others. Her photobook and films have been presented at Brick Aux Gallery and The Living Gallery in Brooklyn. She has additionally served as a guest faculty member in the Sarah Lawrence College dance department. She graduated from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts with a diploma in Contemporary Dance and holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence College with concentrations in Dance, Filmmaking, and Philosophy.
Catherine Kirk (she/her) is a dancer, choreographer, and educator raised on the unceded land of the Kiikaapoi and Wichita peoples, known as Dallas, Texas. With a BFA in dance from New York University, a yoga certification through The Perri Institute for Mind and Body, and a Reiki certification, Catherine’s research and interests have led her to dance and collaborate with Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener, Jodi Melnick, Sidra Bell Dance New York, Jasmine Hearn, and Burr Johnson. She has been featured in the Netflix series Halston, the Showtime series Ziwe, and performed works by choreographers including Bebe Miller, Sharon Eyal, Doug Varone, Keerati Jinakunwiphat, and Andrea Miller. Catherine has created work for installation spaces and commercial short films, curated an evening for Chez Bushwick’s RECESS, and presented solo works as an Artist-in-Residence at Art Cake Brooklyn and Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation. She danced for A.I.M by Kyle Abraham for eleven years while working as the company’s Marketing Associate, and continues to restage A.I.M company works across American companies and universities. Catherine currently is in her third year with Trisha Brown Dance Company.
Born in Singapore, Cynthia Koppe is a New York City based dancer, teacher, and bodyworker. The New York Times has called her “incredibly wild, but precise” and “so rigorously present in her body, she seemed to have broken through to a different realm.” Her longest collaborations were with Liz Santoro and Pierre Godard of Le principe d’incertitude (2009-2020) and as a company member with Shen Wei Dance Arts (2009-2017). In addition, she has danced with Trisha Brown Dance Company, Mimi Garrard, Heidi Howard and Liz Phillips, Nicole Mannarino, John Jasperse, Ryan McNamara, Sam Roeck, Andrew Tay and Stephen Thompson, Adam Weinert, Christopher Williams, Ellis Wood, and Bill Young, amongst others, and was a “reperformer” for Marina Abramovic’s 2010 MoMA Retrospective. Cynthia graduated with honors from Cornell University with a double major in Sociology and Dance and is a certified Yoga and Pilates instructor. Cynthia also practices craniosacral therapy and works in holistic pelvic health. She is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Occupational Therapy in service of becoming a pelvic floor therapist.
Andrea Soto is a Mexican American movement artist from Juárez, Mexico. Her practice spans performance and physical theater. Using embodied research, she investigates memory, displacement, and the body’s entanglement with landscape and the non-human world. Her works have been shared at Grace Exhibition Space, Living Gallery, MAK Center of Art and Architecture, NYFW, Art Basil Miami, Human Resources and Highways Performance Space. She studied at California Institute of the Arts and is the Barbara Ensley Award recipient on behalf of the Merce Cunningham Trust.
Mak Thornquest (they/them) is a trans, Idaho-born dancer, writer, and choreographer. They received their BFA in Dance from the California Institute of the Arts in 2022. Mak has been a company member with the Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Company since 2024, touring nationally and performing a wide range of repertory from the company’s 40 year history. Alongside their own work, Mak has performed with artists including Sidra Bell, Danielle Agami, Dimitri Chamblas, and Lavinia Eloise Bruce.
Jace Weyant is a transgender multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated from highschool at UNC School of the Arts with a concentration in Contemporary Dance, and completed a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College where she studied Dance, Mathematics and Computer Science. She has worked as a dancer for Amanda Hameline, evan ray suzuki, Katherine Fisher, and John Jasperse. She has worked as a creative technologist for Salsa Stories and Safety Third Productions. Her own creative work stands at the intersection of the emotive and the mathematical, using both dance and technology to create otherworldly environments in which bizarre and fantastical scenes play out. She has shown her work at Judson Church, Theater Mitu, Chez Bushwick, Summer Happenings Festival, StandardVision Studios, Mono no Aware, and Astoria Film Festival. She has accepted residencies at Theater Mitu, Chez Bushwick and ImPulsTanz. She has also accepted awards from the YoungArts Foundation, Astoria Film Festival, and Montreal Film Fest.
Zo Williams is a dancer and artist living and working in Brooklyn. Since graduating Bennington College Zo has performed work by evan ray suzuki, Anna Sperber, Chloe Engel and Jennifer Miller. Zo has completed two five borough tours of New York City as a stilt dancer, general company member with the free, political, circus, Circus Amok! Zo is currently in process with Owen Prum, and Cherrie Yu.
Julie Mehretu: Our Days, Like a Shadow (a non-abiding hauntology)
Marian Goodman Gallery's seventh solo exhibition by Julie Mehretu, titled Our Days, Like a Shadow (a non-abiding hauntology), which will include new and distinct bodies of work from 2024-2026. Presented for the first time in the U.S., a prelude to this body of work was seen in the exhibition Ensemble at Palazzo Grassi in Venice in 2024, and Transcore of the Radical Imaginatory at MCA Sydney in 2024-25.