From September 5-7, High Line Art will present a performance by artist Alexis Blake. For this iteration, we are looking for performers and dancers based in New York and available from August 21– September 7, 2023.

Blake will present a new iteration of Crack Nerve Boogie Swerve, a work that takes up glass and breaking as metaphors for the fragility and strength of the human body. A percussionist, two sound artists, and six dancers from different dance genres activate an installation of glass and steel to explore transparency, resistance, resonance, and breaking—breaking free from physical constraints and liberation from social and political oppression. Blake's work on the High Line will mark the work's US premiere and the artist's first performance in New York City.

More specifically, we are looking for various women-identifying and non-binary dancers that have a dance background in hip hop, break dancing / b-girling, waacking, popping, locking, wave, house, krump, afro-fusion, and tap. It is also important that the dancer has improvisational skills and, ideally, is versed in more than one dance genre. Essential to the project is discussing and practicing how one can understand each other dance styles without appropriating each other’s movement language, but instead communicate, break patterns, and potentially create a new vocabulary of movement as a collective without losing one’s subjectivity.

To participate in the casting, please submit your materials via this form by July 15, 2023

Casting, rehearsal, and production dates and locations:

Rehearsals: Weekdays from August 21 - September 5, 2023. At the Indoor rehearsal location (TBD) and on the High Line (820 Washington St., New York, NY, 10014)

Performance: Evenings, Tuesday, September 5; Wednesday, September 6; and Thursday, September 7. 

About High Line Art

Founded in 2009, High Line Art commissions and produces many artworks on the High Line, including site-specific commissions, exhibitions, performances, video programs, and a series of billboard interventions. Led by Cecilia Alemani, the Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Director & Chief Curator of High Line Art, and presented by the High Line, the art program invites artists to think of creative ways to engage with the unique architecture, history, and design of the park, and to foster a productive dialogue with the surrounding neighborhood and urban landscape.

For more information on High Line Art, please visit thehighline.org/art.

About Alexis Blake

Alexis Blake (b. 1981 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) merges visual arts, performance, and dance to explore social norms through the human body. Blake's compositions are based on extensive research into specific moments in art and history—such as the Parthenon friezes, archetypal depictions of women in museum collections, or the banning of lamentation in ancient Greece—which she uses to build an ever-expanding lexicon of gestures, sounds, and even scents.  www.alexis-blake.com