The Living Ancestors

The Living Ancestors is a multimedia dance theater production that launches the audience into the narrative journey of artistic worldbuilding and ethnography as conceived by the project’s Artistic Director j. bouey. Guided by the poetic libretto of Junauda Petrus, this disco-funk space-opera dance-theater work presents an immersive vision of a future global society at the precipice of abolishing oppression. In this speculative story, The Living Ancestors, a renowned band of griots, reveal their origins as formerly enslaved clones from the Underground and shift the future world’s perspective of a supposed utopia. Ethnochoreological research of Punking and Waacking is encoded into The Living Ancestors’ choreography by performers Tyrone Bevans, Nubian Néné and Jayson P. Smith. The entrancing cast of performers bring embodied fieldwork to the concert stage through iterative artistic and field research practice. Sound designer Dane Deveraux‘s sonic landscape of funk, disco, and house music seamlessly connects the futuristic setting of this tale with the history of the liberating underground club scenes that birthed Waacking, Punking and House dance, projecting their legacy into the future. Featuring George Del Barrio’s pioneering Live Performance Camera Obscura projection design, this epic saga of an oppressed population of trafficked people conjures otherworldly images, inviting audiences to re-engage with the human form as a boundless body.

Appropriate Age Range
Appropriate for audiences of all ages

Content Warnings
The Living Ancestors includes loud club music with heavy bass and visual projections that can possibly trigger vertigo for sensitive viewers.

Duration: 70 minutes

j.bouey is a 2023 Bessie Award Outstanding Performer recipient and is the founder of The Dance Union Podcast. They have served on the DanceNYC Taskforce and the Board of DanceUSA and initiated the NYC Dancers COVID-19 Relief Fund and The Dance Union Town Hall For Collective Action to support the dance community. j. is a 2026 BAX | Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance (BAAD!) and CUNY Dance Initiative Artist in Residency. j. was a 2024 ImPulsTanz | 8:tension Artist-in-Residence, a 2022/2023 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence, a 2021/2022 Jerome Fellow, a 2023 STooPS Artist, a Gibney 2021 Spotlight Artist, an Artist-In-Residence at Center for Performance Research, a 2021 Bogliasco Fellow, a 2019 Queer Art Mentorship Fellow, 2018 Movement Research Van Lier Fellow, 2018 Artist-in-Residence at the Dance and Performance Institute of Trinidad and Tobago, a 2018 Dancing While Black Fellow and a 2017 Chez Bushwick Artist-in-Residence. j. has presented their original work at JACK, Odeon Theater, Madura Studios, New York Live Arts, Judson Church and many other theaters and locations around the world. They are currently the Assistant Director, Lighting Director and Research Assistant for Flow State, under the direction of Professor LaTasha Barnes. They perform with nia love’s UNDERcurrents and have formerly performed with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, The Fabulous Waack Dancers,  Germaul Barnes’ Viewsic Dance, Maria Bauman’s MB Dance, Dante Brown, Antonio Brown Dance, Christal Brown’s INspirit Dance, Scorpius Dance Theater,EPIK Dance Company. and apprenticed with Elisa Monte Dance, under the artistic direction of Tiffany Rea-Fisher.

Artistic Direction - j. bouey

Creative and Technical Direction - George Del Barrio

Libretto - Junauda Petrus

Sound Designer - Matthew Dane Livingston

Featured Performers - Tyrone Bevans, j. bouey, Matthew Dane Livingston, Nubian Néné, Junauda Petrus, and Jayson P. Smith

Choreography - j. bouey, created in collaboration with all performers

The Living Ancestors was made possible, in part, with commissioning support from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, through a Franklin Furnace FUND grant, through the Movement Research Artist-in-Residence Program and Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance (BAAD!) Artist-in-Residence Program. The Living Ancestors was also supported by a Dance Lab New York Production Lab Residency, ImPulsTanz [8:tension] Young Choreographers Series residency.The Living Ancestors was developed as part of the 2026 Guild Hall William P. Rayner Artist-in-Residence program.

Performance Space New York

150 First Avenue (Fourth Floor), Manhattan, NY 10009

By Subway: L to 1st Avenue, 6 to Astor Place, F to 2nd Avenue, R/W trains to 8th Street, 4/5/6/N/Q/R trains to Union Square (Wheelchair Accessible), 6/B/D/F/M trains to Bleeker/Broadway-Lafayette Street (Wheelchair Accessible). By Bus: M8 at St Marks Place/ 1st Avenue, M14a at Avenue A/ East 9th Street, M15 at 1st Avenue/ St. Marks Place.

Access

Performance Space New York is ADA compliant with a no-step entry. We have level access from the sidewalk and an elevator that leads to the fourth floor spaces. Public restrooms are located on the same floor as the performance spaces and are multi-stall, gender neutral, and wheelchair accessible with handrails on the left side. Assisted Listening Devices are available on the ground floor at the Box Office. Service Animals are gladly welcomed. For more accessibility information, please visit https://performancespacenewyork.org/visit.

Box office opens one hour before each performance.

For any ticketing matters, please contact ticketing@utrfest.org.

Presented by UTR in partnership with Performance Space New York