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Ishmael Houston-Jones
is a Choreographer, Author, Performer,
Teacher, and Arts Consultant.
Ishmael Houston-Jones' improvised dance and text work has been performed in New York City, across the United States, in
Europe, Canada, Australia and Latin America.
Ishmael Houston-Jones' Nowhere, Now Here was commissioned
for Mordine and Company in Chicago in spring 2001 and Specimens was commissioned for Headlong
Dance Theater in Philadelphia in 1998. In 1997 he was the choreographer for Nayland Blake's Hare
Follies at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. From 1995-2000 he was part of the improvised trio "Unsafe/ Unsuited"
with Keith Hennessy and Patrick Scully. In 1990 he and writer Dennis Cooper
presented The Undead at the Los Angeles Festival of the Arts. In 1989 he collaborated with filmmaker Julie
Dash on the video Relatives, which was aired nationally on the PBS series Alive From Off-Center (Alive TV).
In 1984 Houston-Jones and Fred Holland shared a New York Dance and Performance "Bessie Award”
for their Cowboys, Dreams and Ladders.
COLLABORATORS
In addition to those
listed above, major collaborators have been
• dancers Steven Craig and Stanya Kahn; • directors Peter
Brosius and Daniel Safer; • designers Huck Snyder and John DeFazio;
• photographer Robert Flynt;
• videographer Cathy Weis,
• and
composers Chris Cochrane, Fast Forward, Dave Pavkovik, Chris Peck, Tom Recchion, Leslie Ross and Guy
Yarden.
• He has appeared in the work of John Bernd, Ping Chong, DANCENOISE, Terry Fox, Beth
Gill, Lionel Popkin, Mike Taylor, Yvonne Meier, and in the films Brother from Another Planet by John
Sayles and Circle's Short Circuit by Caspar Strache.
He is a member of the Brooklyn
Adult Recorder Choir.
PUBLICATIONS
Houston-Jones' essays, fiction, interviews, and performance
texts have been anthologized in the books:
• Conversations on Art and Performance (Johns Hopkins,
1999);
• Footnotes: Six Choreographers Inscribe the Page (G+B Arts, 1998);
• Caught
in the Act: A Look at Contemporary Multi-Media Performance (Aperture, 1996);
• Aroused, A Collection
of Erotic Writing (Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2001);
• Best Gay Erotica 2000 (Cleis Press,
2000);
• Best American Gay Fiction, volume 2 (Little Brown, 1997);
• and Out
of Character: Rants, Raves and Monologues from Today’s Top Performance Artists (Bantam, 1996).
•
He is a subject of the chapter "Speech as Act" in the book Dances that Describe Themselves by Susan
Leigh Foster (Wesleyan University Press, 2002). • and the chapter "Crossing the Great Divides"
in the book Taken by Surprise by Ann Cooper Albright and David Gere, (Wesleyan
University Press, 2003).
• His work has also been published in the magazines: Movement Research Journal; Contact
Quarterly; Real Time; Mirage, FARM; and Porn Free.
TEACHING
Ishmael Houston-Jones is currently
a part-time professor at Eugene Lang College, The New School of Liberal Arts and at Sarah Lawrence College. He has been a
guest teacher at:
• the European Dance Development Center and the School for New Dance Development in Holland,
• La Escuela de Danza Nacional in Nicaragua,
• El Instituto de la Danza Moderna in Caracas, Venezuela,
• the School of the Art Institute of Chicago,
• the American Dance Festival at Duke University,
•
the London International Summer School 2002, (Greenwich Dance Agency, Chisenhale Dance Space and Independent Dance),
•
the Seattle Festival of Alternative Dance and Improvisation (SFADI),
• Movement Research, (New York),
•
Moving On Center, (San Francisco), • Urban Bush Women Summer Institute at Florida
State University, • Hollins University, (Virginia), • University of California, Los Angeles -- UCLA, • Bennington College, (Vermont),
• University of
Memphis,
• New York University, (Tisch School of the Arts and the Experimental Theater Wing),
• Wesleyan
University, (Connecticut);
• and at numerous Performing Arts Festivals worldwide.
FUNDING
The work of Ishmael Houston-Jones has been supported by grants and fellowships from:
• the National Endowment
for the Arts,
• the New York Foundation for the Arts,
• the New York State Council on the Arts,
• the Ford Foundation,
• and Art Matters, Inc.
CURATING
Ishmael Houston-Jones
has served as curator for the following:
• He is the current DraftWork works-in-progress series curator for the
Danspace Project New York,
• Festival of New Swiss Dance as part of New Europe 1999, The Swiss Institute, New York,
• Guest curator for Mad Alex Presents reading series, New York, 1998,
• Dive In Festival of Dance Improvisation,
Danspace Project at , New York, 1993-95,
• Parallels Festival of New Black Dance, Danspace Project at St. Mark's
Church, New York, 1982.
BOARDS
• From 1984 until 2009 Ishmael Houston-Jones served on
the Board of Directors of the Danspace Project at Saint Mark's Church and was its president from 1999-2003.
• He
is currently the vice-president of the Board of Directors of Movement Research in New York and was its president 2006 - 2009.
• He served on the Board of Headlong Dance Theater in Philadelphia for 15 years.
• He is on the Artists Advisory
Committee of Performance Space 122.
• He is on the Advisory Board of Moving on Center in San Francisco. ARTS
CONSULTANT
Ishmael Houston-Jones has served as a panelist for:
• the National Endowment for
the Arts, (Choreography Fellowship and Inter-Arts),
• the New York Foundation for the Arts, (Choreography
Fellowship),
• State Arts Councils for Ohio, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, and Massachusetts;
• the Pew Fellowship in the Arts,
• Urban Artist Initiative,
• Dance Theater Workshop,
• Arts International Inc,
• the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council,
•
the Multi-Arts Production (MAP) Fund,
• New Steps Choreographers' Series, • and others
OTHER
Ishmael Houston-Jones was the Coordinator for the Lambent Fellowship in the Arts of the Tides Foundation from 2002 - 2007.
In this capacity he developed and implemented a program that awards multi-year grants to individual visual and performing
artists in metropolitan New York City. Fellowships totaling $126,000 were awarded to six artists yearly. A partial list of artists funded through this program headed by Ishmael Houston-Jones
includes Elana Herzog, Deborah Grant, Mary Ting, Nicolas Dumit Estevez, Bradley McCallum & Jacqueline Tarry, Emily
Jacir, Yoko Inoue, John Jasperse, Cathy Weis, Sanford Biggers, Patty Chang, Yvonne Meier, Julie Atlas Muz, Sekou Sundiata
(RIP), Ricardo Miranda Zuniga, Ivan Monforte, Miguel Gutierrez, Judi Werthein, Jennifer Monson, and Swoon.
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