EXTINCTION RITUALS
LUDUS CLASS

Ximena Garnica & Shige Moriya | LEIMAY presents

Extinction Rituals - LUDUS Class with Ximena Garnica and the LEIMAY Ensemble

Saturday, December 9, 2023 at 10:00am
Sunday, December 10, 2023 at 10:00am

90 minutes

Ages 8+

$5-$25 Pay What You Can ticket pricing

Chelsea Factory Resident Artist duo Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya of LEIMAY host two LUDUS classes to celebrate bringing Extinction Rituals - Video Installation to Chelsea Factory.

Each 90-minute class can be taken together or separately and is open to anyone curious about movement, imagination and transformation as a state of being. Participants will be exposed to aspects of the LEIMAY LUDUS—the underlying methodology of Ximena Garnica, Shige Moriya and the LEIMAY Ensemble’s movement practice—and will have the opportunity to experience some of the choreographic explorations used their video installation installation Extinction Rituals.

For tickets to the video installation, running December 8-10, visit here.

Please dress comfortably (e.g., sweatpants), bring layers, and remove all jewelry prior to the class. Please come prepared to move without shoes and socks.

“Extinction Rituals” is a Creative Capital-awarded project. LEIMAY works this season are made possible in part by the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, the New York Community Trust, the New York State Council on the Art, the Mellon Foundation, and many generous contributions from individual donors.

About Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya:
Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya are a Colombian and Japanese multidisciplinary artist duo. Their collaborative works manifest as live installations, dance and theater performances, operas, and sculptures that are presented in theaters, museums, galleries, and public spaces. Alongside their performative work, Ximena and Shige also invest their energy in critical research, printed and digital publications, and community projects. Shige and Ximena are the co-founders and artistic directors of LEIMAY and the LEIMAY Ensemble. The word LEIMAY is a Japanese term symbolizing the changing moment between darkness and the light of dawn, or the transition from one era to the other. Ximena and Shige work out of their home studio CAVE, which is located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Garnica and Moriya are Creative Capital, National Dance Project, National Endowment for the Arts and Café Royal Cultural Foundation Award recipients, and Watermill Center and Chelsea Factory Artists in Residence. Garnica received the Van Lier Fellowship for extraordinary stage directors and was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of California, Riverside. She is currently on the faculty of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Marymount Manhattan College and Sarah Lawrence College. Garnica and Moriya have been nominated for The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts and a United States Artists Fellowship. Her article ‘LEIMAY, CAVE, and the New York Butoh Festival’ was recently published in The Routledge Companion to Butoh Performance.

Ximena and Shige's work is rooted in questions of being, perception, interdependency and coexistence. They look to expose the multiplicity of spatial and temporal intervals that exist within the body, between materials and environments. They are curious about what emerges when the stability of habits, affirmation of binaries, social norm expectations, and the crystallization of identity dissolve and expose the potentialities of being.

About LEIMAY:
LEIMAY is a POC immigrant, artist-run presenting organization, performing arts ensemble, and visual art collective that exists out of a converted garage space called CAVE in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. LEIMAY holds a regular NYC home season, offers classes to the public, presents emerging and established artists across NYC and beyond, and hosts educational and research activities. LEIMAY partners with presenting venues, businesses, and communities to bring art to public spaces, community gardens, streets, theaters, museums, and galleries. For over 25 years, CAVE, the home of LEIMAY, has been a refuge for immigrants and New Yorkers. CAVE, as cited in Alternative Histories: New York Art Spaces from 1960-2010, is embedded in the aesthetic and social fabric of NYC as a site for experimentation for artists to innovate, perform, and exhibit. Anonymous and acclaimed artists from across the globe, such as Yoshito Ohno, Akira Kasai, Alvaro Restrepo, Martinus Miroto; and celebrated New York artists, such as Laurie Anderson, Helga Davis, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, and Robert Wilson, have all left traces at CAVE where Garnica, Moriya, the LEIMAY Ensemble, and a rotating group of local and international artists continue to incubate their work. Over the years, LEIMAY has created, supported, and participated in numerous performances and exhibitions uplifting both visual and movement artists in NYC. Most recently, LEIMAY became the funder and lead organizer of the Cultural Solidarity Fund, an initiative that provides $500 relief microgrants to NYC artists and cultural workers. So far, the CSF has raised over $1M and supported 1,800+ artists affected by COVID-19. Visit leimay.org for more info.

About the LEIMAY Ensemble:
The LEIMAY Ensemble is a group of national and international dancers and performers who create body-centered works around the principle of LUDUS, a practice that explores methods to physically condition the body of the performers and develop a sensitivity to the “in-between space.” Current Ensemble members include: Masanori Asahara, Krystel Copper,Mario Galeano, Akane Little, Maitlin Jordan, and Andrea Jones. Founded in 2012 by Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya, the group took form through the creation of the Becoming Series pentalogy, of which three parts have been created: Becoming Corpus, borders, and Frantic Beauty (Brooklyn Academy of Music). The group holds a regular practice at their studio in Brooklyn where they engage in the creation of new work in addition to teaching, training, research, and distillation of years of direct transmission of embodied knowledge by Japanese Butoh pioneers, Noguchi Taiso practitioners, and Experimental Theater innovators.

Health and Safety Protocols:

• Masks are optional for this event.

• While Chelsea Factory strongly recommends vaccination against COVID-19, proof of vaccination is not currently required for audience entrance into performances and public programs.

Click here for our full Health and Safety Protocols.