Symara Sarai and Cleo Reed. Photo by Whitney Browne. Courtesy Abrons Arts Center.
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In partnership with Abrons Arts Center, 2024-26 Performance AIRSpace Residents Cleo Reed and Symara Sarai will share excerpts of what they have been developing during the first year of their two-year residency as part of OPEN STUDIOS. The program will conclude with a dialogue between the artists and audience.
Abrons Arts Center’s Performance AIRspace Residency supports a cohort of two early career performing artists with a 12-month project development residency and production period in the following year.
OPEN STUDIOS is a series of work-in-progress showings held regularly throughout the year, organized by guest curators, and serves as an incubator for new work, inviting the public into the artistic process.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Ella Josephine Julia Moore aka Cleo Reed is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practices uses participatory art, music composition, instrument-making, bandleading, installation, and fabric arts. Under the alias Cleo Reed, they complete musical projects that are rooted in their ancestral and cultural lineage. Recently, they developed software instruments for Jon Batiste’s American Symphony at Carnegie Hall. Their debut album project Root Cause was released in 2023 and alongside the work they premiered a self-directed performance art piece titled Black American Circus at AFROPUNK Festival, Banlieues Bleues in Paris, and Brooklyn Museum. They work toward a future that enables them to realize intentional creative endeavors and encourage joy within collaborative spaces such as museums, theaters, and unseen spaces. In their practice, they are currently drawn to notions of tradition, dissolving the binary, making noise, and breaking the barrier between artist and audience.
Symara Sarai, a Portland, OR native currently residing in Brooklyn, has immersed herself in interdisciplinary and choreographic studies globally. A 2023 Bessie Award winner for Breakout Choreographer, Symara is also a recipient of the Dai Ailian Foundation Scholarship based in Trinidad and Tobago. The scholarship led her to Beijing, China where she spent two years gaining an associate degree in modern choreography at the renowned Beijing Dance Academy. Symara is a 2019 graduate of SUNY Purchase’s Conservatory of Dance Program. She was a resident artist for Bearnstow, Gibney 6.2 Work Up, Gallim’s 2022 Moving Artist’s Residency, BAX’s Fall 2022 Space Grant Program, and CPR – Center for Performance Research’s 2022 AiR Program. She is a 2023/2024 New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks Artist and a 2023/2024 Women in Motion Commissioned artist. Their work as a performer and maker has been reviewed and featured in the New York Times, Dance Enthusiast, and Fjord, and promoted through Forbes. She has had multiple film works commissioned by Berlin-based choreographer Christoph Winkler. They have presented work at New York Live Arts, The Clarice at UMD, The LGBT Center, Judson Church, BAAD, Kestrels, and other venues throughout the United States, China, and Germany. She is currently an Urban Bush Women company member. She has also notably worked with Jasmine Hearn, Ogemdi Ude, Pioneers Go East Collective, Kevin Wynn, Joanna Kotze, Nattie Trogdon+Hollis Bartlett, and Slowdanger, among others.