A conversation with Danspace Project

Since taking the helm at Danspace Project in 2008, Judy Hussie-Taylor (Executive Director & Chief Curator) has developed critically-acclaimed programs including the PLATFORM series, a print and online publication program, and a series of research programs to complement Danspace’s presenting series. During her career she has curated and collaborated with leading contemporary dance and performance artists including Kyle Abraham, Simone Forti, Ishmael Houston-Jones, and Joan Jonas, among others. She has served on numerous national grants panels and given talks and lectures at Yale University, Walker Art Center, and elsewhere. She received the first Bessie Award ever given for curation in 2016 and was conferred a Chevalier D’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government in 2014.

Seta Morton is an interdisciplinary performance curator, writer, and editor based in Lenapehoking (New York City). She is the Program Director and Associate Curator at Danspace Project and managing editor of Danspace’s digital and print publications. Informed by techniques of experimental dance artists, Seta has a curatorial practice grounded in embodiment, collaboration, open-ended inquiry, grace, and Black feminist thought (inspired by Zora Neale Hurston, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, and more). Morton has edited six Danspace Online Journal issues and three print catalogues to date. Seta’s own writing occupies spaces between iteration, fermentation, time travel, intergenerational memory and haunt.

Dance editor of the Brooklyn Rail Gillian Jakab is also associate editor of Gagosian Quarterly. Her writing on dance and other topics has appeared in these publications, among others. She holds a BA from the University of Michigan and a MA from Columbia University. She was raised and lives in Brooklyn.