Tickets & Events

19 Minutes with Joseph Hall

KST Presents

Chats with Arts Leaders

Tuesday, June 30, 12:30pm
@KSTheater on Instagram Live!

KST Executive Director Joseph Hall takes to Instagram Live for conversations with arts leaders in Pittsburgh, across the USA, and internationally. Tune in, get to know Joseph, and find out how he and fellow arts leaders around the world are adapting to the challenges brought on by COVID-19.

On Tuesday, June 30. Hall will be joined by writer and art critic Jessica Lynne.

19 Minutes with Joseph Hall is a part of KST Global Stream, KST’s COVID-19 responsive online programming initiative.


UPCOMING GUESTS 

Mark your calendars for 19 Minutes with Joseph Hall in July and August: 

Tuesday, July 28, 12:30pm: Janis Burley Wilson

Tuesday, August 25, 12:30pm: Indira Goodwine


ABOUT THE GUESTS

Charles Rice-González, (Guest – Tuesday, March 31) born in Puerto Rico and reared in the Bronx, is a writer, long-time community and LGBT activist, co-founder of BAAD! The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance and a Distinguished Lecturer at Hostos Community College – CUNY. He received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Goddard College. His debut novel Chulito (Magnus Books 2011) has received nearly a dozen awards including a 2013 Stonewall Book Awards – Barbara Gittings Literature Award Honor from the American Library Association and a “Small Press Highlights” mention from the National Book Critics Circle. He co-edited with Charlie Vazquez, From Macho To Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction (Tincture/Lethe Press 2011).

His writing’s been published in Los Otros Cuerpos (Tiempo Press 2007), Best Gay Stories 2008 (Lethe Press 2008), The Best of PANIC!: En Vivo from the East Village (Fireking Press 2010), Ambientes: New Queer Latino Writing (University of Wisconsin Press 2011), Love, Christopher Street (Vantage Point 2012), Who’s Yer Daddy (University of Wisconsin Press 2012), Untangling the Knot (Ooligan Press/Portland State University 2015), as well as articles in El Diario (1997) and The Nation (2013). His play I Just Love Andy Gibb will be published in the summer of 2016 in Blacktino Queer Performance: A Critical Anthology (Duke Press 2016). In addition, Mr. Rice-Gonzalez has written several plays including Los Nutcrackers: A Christmas Carajo (produced each year at BAAD! since 2004).

He’s attended Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, VONA: Voices of Our Nation, Lambda Literary Writers’ Retreat and Sandra Cisnero’s Macondo Writing Workshop, and has done residencies at the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. He received an Audre Lorde scholarship from the ZAMI Foundation, a P.R.I.D.E. (Puerto Rican Initiative to Develop Empowerment) Award and the Lambda Literary Foundation’s Dr. Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award in 2014.

In 1998, Charles co-founded, with award-winning choreographer/dancer Arthur Aviles, BAAD! – The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, a cultural organization and theater that presents empowering works for women, people of color and the LGBTQ community. In 2014, he was appointed as a Distinguished Lecturer in the English Department at Hostos Community College – CUNY, where he will also serve as an Associate Artistic Director of Hostos Center for the Arts and Culture.

He serves on the boards of the Bronx Council on the Arts and the National Association of Latino Art and Cultures, where he is currently chair of both. charlesricegonzalez.com

Jane Gabriels, Ph.D. (Guest – Tuesday, April 7) is a performer, writer, curator/producer. The Bronx, NY has been her professional and artistic home for over 20 years as Director of the non-profit organization, Pepatián. Two years ago, she moved to Vancouver, British Columbia to work at Made in BC – Dance on Tour, an arts service organization that seeks to connect dance artists with a ten-presenter network throughout the province. She’s contributed writings about artists and non-profits of the Bronx as well as co-edited two publications: Curating Live Arts: Critical perspectives, essays, and conversations on theory and practice (Berghahn Books, 2018), and Essays from Configurations in Montreal: Performance curation and communities of colour (published by Duke Univ and Concordia Univ, 2018). She also contributed an essay about dance maker Merián Soto in Latina Outsiders (Routledge Press, 2019). To further support dance and spoken word artists in the Bronx, she produced two documentary video projects: “Women in Hip-Hop Rep the Bronx” and “Out of La Negrura/Out of Blackness in the Bronx: A choreographic collaboration across Diaspora” (distributed by Third World Newsreel). As Executive Director In Vancouver, she created a residency project – now in its second year – to support emerging dancers and writers of colour. This project is modeled after a residency project she produced in the Bronx, working with Joseph, for the last seven years.

Maria Bauman-Morales (Guest – Tuesday, April 14) is a “Bessie” award winning multi-disciplinary artist and community organizer based in Brooklyn, NY. She is 2020 Columbia College Dance Center Practitioner-in-Residence, 2019 Gibney Dance in Process residency award winner, 2018-20 UBW Choreographic Center Fellow, 2017-19 Artist in Residence at Brooklyn Arts Exchange and was the 2017 Community Action Artist in Residence at Gibney. In 2009 she founded MBDance which recently premiered (re)Source to sold-out audiences, co-commissioned by the Chocolate Factory Theater and BAAD!. She creates bold and intimate artworks for MBDance, via dream-mapping and nuanced, powerful physicality. Centering non-linear stories, bodies and musings of queer people of color, she draws on her studies of English literature, capoeira, improvisation, dancing in nightclubs and concert dance classes to emphasize ancestors, imagination, and Spirit while embodying inter- dependence.

Bauman-Morales is also a performance collaborator with Jumatatu Poe’s and Donte Beecham’s Let ‘im Move You: This is a Formation. Previously, she danced with Urban Bush Women (UBW) and was UBW’s Director of Education and Community Engagement before becoming Associate Artistic Director. She still works with Urban Bush Women as part of the UBW Summer Leadership Institute advisory council and faculty member for the Summer Leadership Institute.

She is an active member of our dance community outside of choreography and performance. Bauman-Morales is a Core Trainer with The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, helping arts organizations and university dance programs understand and undo racism. In 2014, she co-founded a grassroots organization, Artists Co-creating Real Equity, which won the 2018 BAX Arts and Artists in Progress Award for working to undo racism in our daily lives. Organizing to undo racism informs her artistic work and the two areas are each ropes in a Double-dutch that is her holistic practice. She is also a mentor to early career artists through Queer Art Mentorship.

Alejandra Duque Cifuentes (Guest – Tuesday, April 28) is an immigrant activist, artist, producer, and educator. With more than 10 years of production and stage management experience in theatre and dance, she has toured nationally and internationally with Zaccho Dance Theatre, Bandaloop, Dancing in The Streets, The Foundry Theatre, and Columbia University School of the Arts, among others. As a teaching artist, Ms. Duque Cifuentes taught children and adults of all ages how to express themselves through theatre and movement practice in over 100 New York City public schools and through community theatre programs. In 2011 she founded Theatre That Transcends, which taught local, underserved communities how to express themselves and address community issues through the art of theatre. As an activist, she plays an integral part in advancing a more equitable arts and cultural ecology by working on measures to increase access, justice, equity, and inclusion within dance for disabled artists, immigrant artists, and artists of color in the five boroughs of New York City. Ms. Duque Cifuentes is a member of the National Association for Latino Arts and Culture, Women of Color in the Arts, the Children Museum of Manhattan’s Dance Portal Advisory Board, and Eva Yaa Asantewaa’s Curatorial Advisory Team at Gibney, and she is an advisor for the Latinx Artists Retreat, an annual convening for Latinx cultural producers across all artistic disciplines and fields. She was born in Medellín, Colombia and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Drama and Theatre Arts from Columbia University School of General Studies.

Tara Aisha Willis (Guest – Tuesday, May 5) is a dancer and a PhD candidate in Performance Studies at New York University. She is Associate Curator in Performance & Public Practice at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and recently held a Jerome Robbins Dance Division Research Fellowship in the Dance Theater Workshop archives. Willis has held editorial positions for Women & Performance and TDR/The Drama Review, and co-edited with Thomas F. DeFrantz a special issue of The Black Scholar. Other writings appear in Movement Research Performance Journal, the Brooklyn Rail, Magazin im August, Voices from the Bush, Dancing Platform Praying Grounds: Blackness, Churches, and Downtown Dance, Performance Research, and Performa Magazine. Willis performed in a collaboration between Will Rawls and Claudia Rankine, and recently in works by Kim Brandt, Megan Byrne, and Yanira Castro. She danced in the 2016 “Bessie” award-winning performance by The Skeleton Architecture. Photo by Ian Douglas.

Harold Steward (Guest – Tuesday, May 12) (They/He) is a cultural organizer and arts administrator from Dallas, TX. They joined The Theater Offensive in Boston as the Managing Director in June of 2017 and currently serves as Co-Producing Executive Director and oversees fund development/revenue enhancement, communications, and artistic programs throughout the organization. Harold most recently served as Manager of the South Dallas Cultural Center, a division of the City of Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs, which provides instruction and enrichment in the arts with an emphasis on the African contribution to world culture. Harold also founded Fahari Arts Institute in Dallas in 2009 after recognizing a gap in the landscape for local LGBTQ artists of color in Dallas. Fahari Arts Institute celebrated, displayed, and produced the work of queer artists from the African Diaspora. Harold is a proud member of Alternate ROOTS, Board of Directors & Program Committee Chair for the National Performance Network/Visual Artists Network, Board of Directors & Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee Co-Chair for Theater Communications Group and Steering Committee of the Black Theater Commons. In 2013 Harold co-founded NextGen National Arts Network, a network of arts leaders under the age of 40 that offers support through professional development and peer networking opportunities. Harold is also a Founding Partner of Steward Cultural Development Group, currently leading the strategic program design for ArtsBoston’s Network of Arts Administrators of Color. Steward is a National Cultural Equity Facilitator with Equity Quotient and Affiliate Faculty in the Department of Theater Studies at Emerson College.

Duane Binion (Guest – Tuesday, May 19) is the Co-Creator of True T Pittsburgh (PGH), a Pittsburgh-based 501-c3 organization that serves the LGBTQIA+ Community of Color through Creative Art & Entertainment, Social Activism, and meaningful Resource Sharing. He is a social change-maker, producer of art, and community leader working to build social awareness for LGBT+ POC and community members of the iconic underground Ballroom scene for over 10+ years. Duane is a 2013-2014 Pittsburgh Public Ally Alum, and former Producer at Pittsburgh’s historic Kelly Strayhorn Theater. Through his 5 year tenure with the theater, Duane has adapted a diverse background in arts management, program development, community engagement, marketing, media, and performance art. Under the curatorial leadership of then-Executive Director of the Kelly Strayhorn Theater; janera solomon, he has managed projects for an exciting mix of artists including; Carmen de’ Lavellade, David Rousseve, Bill Shannon, Thaddeus Phillips, Staycee Pearl Dance Project, slowdanger, and More! Duane has a passion for creating platforms that aid in dismantling the negative stereotypes and portrayals of black and brown queer people. In 2019 he was awarded his first Advancing Black Arts grant by the Pittsburgh Heinz Foundation to create a new project highlighting the rich creativity of the underground ballroom scene. He has served on a number of panels and committees, and most recently was recognized by Coro Pittsburgh with the 2019 “Distinguished Coro Alumni Leadership” Award.

Tiffany Wilhelm (Guest – Tuesday, May 26) (she/they) is a Program Officer at the Opportunity Fund in Pittsburgh, a foundation that supports the arts and social & economic justice. Previously, she was Deputy Director of the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council where she raised funds, oversaw programming, and co-led initiatives on accessibility for people with disabilities and racial equity. Tiffany has been involved with several collectives focused on educating and organizing for racial justice, both in Pittsburgh and in the national arts field. Prior to Pittsburgh, she was Executive Director of the Central Wisconsin Children’s Museum and taught in an undergraduate arts management program. Tiffany is part of the core facilitator team with artEquity and has facilitated with Keryl McCord’s group Equity Quotient.

 

Jessica Lynne (Guest – Tuesday, June 30) is a writer and art critic. She is a founding editor of ARTS.BLACK, an online journal of art criticism from Black perspectives. Her writing has been featured in publications such as Art in America, The Believer, BOMB Magazine, The Nation and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a collection of essays about love, faith, and the American South. Jessica lives and works in coastal Virginia. Find her online at @lynne_bias.

 

Noemí Segarra Ramírez (Guest – Tuesday, July 14) is an activist, movement artist, healer, educator and cultural organizer in the field of somatic and social justice practices and experimental dance in Puerto Rico. After traveling and studying abroad, Segarra returned home to manifest a space for new forms in dance and expand the reach of these practices beyond art.  to mobilization and organization. PISO proyecto is a container to approach structured movement improvisation and instant composition as Afro Caribbean and Afro boricua practices of affirmation, embodied sovereignty and agency, and community building. Mutual aid, interdependence, redistribution, collaboration, co creation centering and embodiment of the uses of the erotic redefining power are at the core of our work. 

Indira Goodwine (Guest – Tuesday, August 25) is the Program Director for Dance at the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) where she directs NEFA’s National Dance Project and major dance initiatives in New England. With a dual background in dance and arts administration, Indira most recently served as the Managing Director of Camille A. Brown & Dancers (CABD) where she shepherded the organization through the attainment of 501(c)(3) nonprofit status, established the organization’s founding Board of Directors, enhanced the institutional and individual fundraising efforts, and provided oversight of the development, implementation and continued growth of CABD’s dance engagement program, “EVERY BODY MOVE.”

Prior to her leadership role with CABD, Indira held various positions at Harlem Stage that deepened community partnerships and supported the organization’s annual dance program, “E-Moves.” A 2016 New York Community Trust Fellow, she has participated in notable programs, such as the American Express Leadership Academy and Dance/USA’s DILT Program, contributed to panels within the field of dance, and received several awards and citations for her work professionally and within her community. Indira holds a BFA in Dance Performance from Florida State University and an MA in Performing Arts Administration from New York University.