A conversation with Claire Alrich, Irfana Jetha Noorani, and Boris Willis

Moderated by Hayley Cutler

This roundtable conversation will focus on the relationship between sites, performance, and the local archive exploring questions including: What choices are artists making to connect with sites in DC? How are sites experienced/felt by different bodies? What does site mean when looking into the archive? What memory does a site have of a performance?

The program is a part of WPA’s ongoing archival work in preparation for our 50th Anniversary in 2025 and it’s the culmination of Hayley Cutler’s Research & Development Residency. During her residency, Cutler has been excavating WPA’s historic relationship to postmodern dance artists—including Steve Paxton, Simone Forti, Yvonne Rainer, and others—and the correlation between the various sites throughout DC in which their work was presented and DC’s dance history generally. Hayley has previously worked with WPA as an Artist-Curator, during which time she selected six local, emerging movement-based artists to create solos for KUVV, a mixed-bill evening of work addressing embodied familial lineages.

Attendees will be invited to contribute to a mapping project to collect information about important sites in DC that have a relationship with local performance and dance history.

About the Participants

Claire Alrich is a multidisciplinary artist living in Washington, DC. A trained dancer, Claire’s art practice centers the body and the somatic experience even as it moves across mediums to include: installation, dance production, 2-D art, and sculpture. Based in DC since 2014, Claire’s work has been seen at Dance Place, ‘but, also’ gallery, RhizomeDC, The Capital Fringe Festival, The Source Festival, and the Performatica Festival in Puebla, Mexico. Beyond her individual practice, Claire is a consummate collaborator and an active part of the DC art community. Career highlights include co-founding the performance collective Area Woman, organizing and curating The Shed Gallery, performing as a company member with darlingdance, and creating costumes for Heart Stück Bernie and Extreme Lengths Productions. Claire is also the Field/DC site coordinator, regularly leading workshops in the Fieldwork feedback method. In companionship with her work as an artist, Claire has spent the last nine years working in public gardens, first with the Friends of the U.S. Botanic Garden, and now with the Friends of the National Arboretum. This infuses her art practice with an attention to landscape, cycles, and interspecies connections. Photo by Mariah Miranda for darlingdance.

Irfana Jetha Noorani (she/her/hers) is an artist, producer and administrator based in Washington, D.C. She supports neighborhoods, public spaces, cultural organizations, and philanthropic institutions with equitable planning processes and programming that center people of color and justice-based outcomes in their work. Irfana founded a cultural consulting practice in 2021 and currently serves as a Project Consultant to the Ford Foundation, Gehl, and Therme Group US. Other recent projects include providing interim executive leadership for  Transform 1012 N. Main Street, leading a public art commissioning process for the 11th Street Bridge Park, and serving as a Senior Fellow to the High Line Network. You can read more about her work and current projects at irfanajethanoorani.com. Photo by Jared Soares.

Boris Willis designs media and stage experiences and works at the intersection of games and performance. He is the founder of Black Russian Games, Boris Willis Moves and is an Associate Professor of Game Design at George Mason University. His work has been exhibited at Bucknell University, The Watermill Center, Fenwick Gallery, The Museum of the Future, The Kennedy Center, and Dance Place. He has performed with Company E, Liz Lerman/Dance Exchange, Streb, Edgeworks Dance Theater, and Dianne McIntyre. Danceaday.com was created by Willis in 2007 as a series of over 700 site-specific dance films. He is a scholar and writer who contributed to the books The Power of Play in Higher Education, edited by Alison James and Chrissi Nerantzi, and Black Game Studies, edited by Lindsay Grace.

About the Moderator & Organizer

Hayley Cutler is a choreographer, performer, artist organizer, curator, and dance educator. She is the founder and artistic director of darlingdance, a project-based dance company in its fourteenth season. She is also co-founder of artist neighbor collective, a curatorial performance project based in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of DC. Cutler’s work has been presented at Dance Place, The Kennedy Center, Gala Hispanic Theatre, Atlas Performing Arts Center, Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, as well as art galleries, on basketball courts, at city bus stops, in studio apartments, at universities, and in her local CVS. Recent works include All My Friends, a site-specific dance that premiered at The Kennedy Center’s REACH lawn in late 2022, and mother luck – intro, which premiered at The National Gallery of Art in March 2023. From late 2023 into early 2024, Cutler has been busy reimaging two works – VICTOR and mother luck – intro – with students at Corcoran School of the Arts & Design at GW, as well as developing FAKE ERRANDS with her longtime collaborator Claire Alrich.