Closing Reception for PORTALS: Traversing Black Continuums

Join us for the final evening of PORTALS: Traversing Black Continuums—ONE NIGHT ONLY. Experience the culmination of eight weeks of collaborative art-making: a live dance performance, the fully realized gallery installation, and a conversation with the artists. The night will close with food, drink, and celebration.

PORTALS: Traversing Black Continuums is presented as part of Recess’s Session program, that provides artists the resources, space, and support to realize ambitious projects in collaboration with the public.

Access Note: All program space at 46 Washington Avenue is fully accessible for wheelchair users. Our restrooms are gender-neutral and ADA-compliant. Administrative offices are located up one flight of stairs, but we offer alternative meeting and workspace on the ground floor. For programs in both of our spaces, we will do our best to accommodate requests. If you have specific access questions or needs, please email info@recessart.org.

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About the Artists

Kendra J. Ross is a proud Detroit native working as a dancer, choreographer, teaching artist, facilitator and community organizer in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. As a dancer in New York City, Kendra has worked with Urban Bush Women (UBW), Andrea E. Woods/Souloworks, Ase Dance Theater Collective, Monstah Black/ Motion Sickness, MBDance, Moving Spirits Dance Company, RAKIA!, Melanie Green, Movement of the People Dance Company and as a guest artist with Oyu Oro. Kendra completed a European tour dancing with Adira Amram and DJ Kid Koala in Vinyl Vaudeville 2.0 and performed with Gyptian at the MTV Iggy awards. Kendra’s choreographic work has been presented at the Florida A&M University, the off Broadway show 7 Sins, Museu de Arte in Salvador, Brazil, Dixon Place, Ailey Citigroup Theater, Actors Fund Theater, and Mark Morris. She has been an Artist in Residence at Brooklyn Studios for Dance, Bates College, Marymount Manhattan, and The Neighborhood Project Through 651Arts, a BAX Space Grantee, and a Visiting Artist at Atlantic Center for the Arts. She was recently the 2022 Inaugural BedStuy Artist in Residence at The Laundromat Project and a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow. Along with sharing her art world-wide, Kendra serves as a Facilitator with UBW’s BOLD (Builders, Organizers, and Leaders Through Dance) network and the Founder/Director of STooPS Art & Community that uses art as a catalyst to strengthen ties between different entities in Bed-Stuy. STooPS has been featured as the New York Times Best of Dance/Best of the Street, New12, Pix 11, NY1, and Bare Feet with Mickela Mallozzi.

www.thekendrajross.art

Ziedah Diata is a Brooklyn, New York-based artist, attorney and nervous system hygiene coach who facilitates social health and social art experiences rooted in self-inquiry and community connection. She teaches creative, body-based, science-supported practices for cultivating resilience, growing capacity and healing communities carrying the weight of chronic and systemic stressors. Ziedah brings to her work a unique perspective framed by her personal journey with stress and the themes--harm, repair, trauma, empathy and transformation--that emerged in testimony during her 17-year career at the New York State Department of State, where she served as Chief Administrative Law Judge during the onset and peak of COVID-19.

Ziedah has worked with cultural organizers, lawyers, educators, judges, healers and law schools. In 2023, Ziedah launched Bed-Stuy Drawn Together, an intergenerational art-making and storytelling project, in collaboration with Stoop Stories and the Annual Stoops Art Crawl. She was an awardee of the 2023 Laundromat Project Create Change Fellowship and the 2024 Bethany Arts Community Multidisciplinary Residency.

Ziedah has served as an advisor for several organizations focused on creating a more just and compassionate world, including the Restorative Justice Initiative and the National Center for Access to Justice at Fordham Law. Ziedah is a graduate of University of Maryland at College Park and Georgetown University Law Center. Ziedah's art projects, coaching and workshop offerings are shared on her website and on Instagram.

ziedahdiata.com

Pia Monique Murray is a choreographer, performer, installation artist, teacher, and creative producer. She leads Pia Monique Murray Dance Collective (PMMDC), producing movement-based multidisciplinary performance works that include community engagement and audience interaction as an artistic practice. As a 2022-23 CCI 2.0 Producing Fellow with Urban Bush Women, Pia was Associate Producer of Haint Blu by Chanon Judson and Mame Diarra Speis and is co-producer of When Black Women+ Speak. As Bailey’s Cafe’s Producing Artistic Director she produces and curates As Quiet as It’s Kept, a multidisciplinary ethnography project about longtime residents in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Additionally, Pia is Creative Producer of Kendra J. Ross’ KJR Works company and the STooPS Summer Festival. In 2023 she created FREE Friend’s Fest, an 8-week festival in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. She is also the creator of Black Daisies, an interdisciplinary project that centers joy as political activism.