J’Sun Howard
The Rightous Beauty of the Things Never Accounted For
Work in progress showing
Wed | July 3 | 7:30pm
Plavin Studio
Free and open to the public
The Righteous Beauty of the Things Never Accounted For explores Black Fugitivity, the ongoing and historical resistance to systems of oppression that Black people face, and how we have sought to escape or evade those systems to preserve our autonomy, dignity, and freedom. In Righteous Beauty, J’Sun Howard uses movement as an anchor and source for practicing freedom, allowing us to discover unexpected beauty that’s typically hard to experience in a carceral state. It is an embodied look into existing when the cosmos does not want us to exist. During our residency, we will continue developing a scene based on Yukiko Motoya’s short story “Typhoon.” The story is about a boy waiting at a bus stop, mocking commuters struggling to keep their umbrellas open in the typhoon until a mysterious old man shows him they hold the secret to flying.
Collaborators include Damon Green, Solomon Bowser, Dedrick Gray, Timothy Tsang, Daiki Sogawa, and Alain Sinadja.
J’Sun Howard is a Chicago-based dancemaker. He is a 2020 3Arts Awardee, a recipient of their inaugural Esteemed Artist Award from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE), and a 2019 Asian Cultural Council Fellow. A Links Hall Co-MISSION Fellow, a Ragdale Foundation Sybil Shearer Fellow, 2017 3Arts Make A Wave Awardee, and 2014 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist. His works have been presented at Links Hall, Ruth Page Center for the Arts, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Defibrillator Performance Gallery, Patrick’s Cabaret and Candy Box Dance Festival (Minneapolis, MN), Danspace Project (NYC), Center for Performance Research (NYC), Detroit Dance City Festival (Detroit, MI), M1 Singapore Fringe Festival (Singapore), New Dance Festival (Daejeon, South Korea) where he won Best Dance Choreographer, and the World Dance Alliance’s International Young Choreographers’ Project (Kaohsiung, Taiwan), among others. He has been commissioned by Common Conservatory, Northwestern University, Columbia College Chicago, World Dance Alliance, and The Art Institute of Chicago. He holds an MFA in Dance and a certificate in World Performance Studies from the University of Michigan.
