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Okwui Okpokwasili & Peter Born

@sweatvariant

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The collaborative practice of Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born. A spectacle of radical intimacy.
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Walkthrough of where you go full, volume 5, unedited. Our first solo museum exhibition on view at @wexarts in Columbus, Ohio through January 24. Come be in the room with it.

Co-commissioned by @wexarts and @icaboston taken in Wexner Center for the Arts by @sweatvariant

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15 days ago

Creating at the intersection of dance, theater, and aesthetics, Okwui Okpokwasili is an artist defining the present and future of the performing arts. Since 2004, Okpokwasili has graced the BAM stage numerous times in her own productions as well as in works by collaborators Peter Born, Nora Chipaumire, and others.

This Next Wave festival, you have two opportunities to see Okwui: in adaku, part 2 (Nov 11—15), and in Minor Music at the End of the World (Dec 4—6). Read up on these unique performances at the link in bio.

1. Scene from Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born's "adaku, part 1: the road opens" During BAM Next Wave Festival, 2023 | Tony Turner
2. Okwui Okpokwasili and Ralph Lemon in the Ralph Lemon production "No Room" part of "How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere?" during BAM Next Wave Festival, 2010 | Stephanie Berger
3. Okwui Okpokwasili in the Nora Chipaumire production "Miriam" during the BAM Next Wave Festival, 2012 | Julieta Cervantes
4. David Thomson, Okwui Okpokwasili, and Darrell Jones in the Ralph Lemon production "Come home Charley Patton: Part 3 of the Geography Trilogy" during BAM Next Wave Festival, 2004 | Jack Vartoogian
5. Portrait of Okwui Okpokwasili, 2013 | Peggy Jarrell Kaplan
6. Scene from Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born's "adaku, part 1: the road opens" During BAM Next Wave Festival, 2023 | Tony Turner by @sweatvariant

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16 days ago

With her resonant voice and formidable intensity, Okwui Okpokwasili creates dance theater that stirs the senses and vibrates the soul, rooted as much in the power and precision of speech as in movement. In collaboration with her longtime partner, the director Peter Born, Okpokwasili has bucked convention by embracing the impromptu, running fearlessly towards the unknown, and establishing herself as “an expectation-confounding blend of authority and vulnerability”(The New York Times).

In 2023, Okpokwasili and Born presented adaku, part 1: the road opens, a cross-disciplinary performance that marked them moving into a new stage of their artistic practice, crafting a thrumming, richly textured sonic and visual landscape. In this first chapter of a larger speculative mythology, a precolonial African village is on the cusp of a major upheaval. The community is entangled in an argument that could shape their future.

adaku, part 2 opens November 11, only at BAM.

📸 Tony Turner by @sweatvariant

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22 days ago

Join us Friday at 4pm for the Fall Exhibitions Opening Celebration at @wexarts free with registration, alongside @temitayostudio, @leonardpongo, and Sammy Baloji via @axisgallery. where you go full, volume 5 opens to all on Sunday, September 20 and stays up through January 24.

Co-commissioned by the Wex, this new installation extends sweat variant’s multidisciplinary performance practice into the gallery space, an immersive landscape of embodied memory in which the performers’ bodies transmit emotion and experience through movement. It is inspired by the physical research developed for adaku, part 2, premiering at the Wex in October 2026.
Performed by @briabacon @mellowbastard @domdamatrix & @hi.ny__. Video Producer @kearramaya, Cinematography by @orestionline and Alex Munro. Gaffer, Maria Cabra. Curated by Rebecca Lowery. Co-commissioned by @icaboston.

Image: sweat variant, let slip, hold sway, Whitney Museum of American Art, 2025. Pictured: Okwui Okpokwasili and Kris Lee. Photo by @photo_by_baranova taken in Wexner Center for the Arts by @sweatvariant

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a month ago

Thank you to everyone who joined us for the New York premiere of ”my tongue is a blade” on Governors Island.

If you’d like to support the creation of more work like this, please consider making a donation to our fundraising campaign for ”adaku, part 2.” We’ve extended our campaign until July 17–please help us by spreading the word. Every contribution, no matter the size, makes a difference.

Head to the link in our bio and story to contribute!

Special thanks to Juan Pablo Siles @jpsiles, the Trust for Governors Island @governorsisland , the LMCC team @lmcc_nyc , and our incredible performers Okwui Okpokwasili, Bria Bacon @briabacon, Kris Lee @mellowbastard, Ny Opong @, and AJ Wilmore @domdamatrix for bringing such dedication and care to the practice.

Photograph one by Julienne Schaer photograph three by Neha Gautam. by @sweatvariant

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4 months ago

Thank you to James Hannaham @thespectacleisreal for this beautiful article “Okwui Okpokwasili ‘96 does work that blurs the boundaries of dance, theater, and performance art” in the Yale Alumni Magazine out now @yalealumnimag

Special thank you to Photographer Chris Buck for this beautiful image @the_chris_buck

Read the article at the link in our story! 🔗❤️ by @sweatvariant

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4 months ago

We are pleased to announce the artists selected for the 2026 Artists Supporting Artists Program (ASAP) and Threading Residency, two initiatives committed to community building and exploring new models for sustaining artists. 🖤

The Artists Supporting Artists Program provides direct monetary support to individual artists and small companies to research and develop new and existing projects. The 2026 ASAP recipients are Souleymane “Solo” Badolo @souleymanebadolo , Kayla Hamilton @kayla_hamilton903 , and Kris Lee @mellowbastard and Lauren Bakst @lgblgb .

The Threading Residency honors the late Georgiana Pickett, a pioneer and steadfast contributor to the arts scene in New York. Artists are selected through an annual nomination process. Designed to support artists living outside New York City, the residency provides a three- to four-week stay in the city for the development of a specific project. The recipients of the 2026 Threading Residencies are SERAFINE1369 @serafine1369 and Angel Shanel Edwards @angeledwardsart .

This year, sweat variant is excited to be partnering with Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya | LEIMAY, @leimayfoundation an artist-led practice and company based in Brooklyn known for its long-term interdisciplinary work in performance and embodied research, who will host London-based artist SERAFINE1369 for a month-long residency in July at LEIMAY’s studio in Brooklyn. Angel Shanel Edwards will be using the sweat variant studio in Sunset Park for the duration of their residency. This residency is also supported by Dr. Saidiya Hartman. @saidiya_says

For more information about LEIMAY see the comment pinned below! And to learn more about our artists head to our website sweatvariant.com 🔗❤️ by @sweatvariant

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4 months ago

Fundraising update - thank you to the Harkness Foundation for Dance and all our current supporters, we are that much closer to reaching our goal!

We are still raising money for the creation of adaku, part 2, which will support the final months of design work and rehearsals before our world premiere in October.

We are calling on our community to help us reach our final goal of $75,000 by June 30th through our @givebutter campaign at the link in our bio 🔗

Any amount helps! ❤️

All donors over $1,000 will have the option to be acknowledged as a “Friend of Sweat Variant” on our website.

All donors over $5,000 will have the option to be listed in the program for adaku, part 2, and will receive special perks including opening night tickets to the NYC premiere in November, invitations to open rehearsals, VIP events, and more.

Photo credit Maria Baranova, “let slip, hold sway” at the Whitney Museum of American Art. by @sweatvariant

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4 months ago

We are two days away from the New York premiere of “my tongue is a blade” on Governors Island!
Performed by: Okwui Okpokwasili, Bria Bacon @briabacon, Kris Lee @mellowbastard, Ny Opong @hi.ny__ , and AJ Wilmore @domdamatrix

📍Governors Island - Colonels Row Green
📆 June 19th and 20th
🕰️ 6PM-9PM durational performance practice: entry is rolling through the duration of the performance, and we encourage audiences to come and go throughout the piece.

Advance booking is recommended. Two entry time slots are available at 6 and 7:30PM.

For tickets, see the link in our bio. To support the creation of more works like this one, please consider donating to our fundraiser for “adaku, part 2” at the link in our bio! 📎

Presented as part of INTERVENTIONS, Governors Island Arts’ annual multidisciplinary performance series that presents local, national, and international artists and invites audiences to experience work made and adapted for outdoor spaces. INTERVENTIONS is curated by Juan Pablo Siles, @jpsiles Associate Curator and Producer at the Trust for Governors Island.

“my tongue is a blade” on Governors Island is co-presented by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s River to River Festival. @lmcc_nyc

Photography by Ava Pellor by @sweatvariant

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4 months ago

For our last ASAP 2025 artist highlight we have Cynthia Oliver, a St.Croix, Virgin Island reared dance maker and scholar. @olicynt

The ASAP award supports Turn. Turning. TURNT. Turn. Turning. TURNT is a tryptic made up of three movement experiments explored before, during, and “after” (if there is one) the global pandemic. Tether - an AfroFuturistic aspirational experiment and meditation on black girls’ creativity, drawn from double dutch as life skill training; Fallow – run ragged by ever changing threats, pivoting quickly and persistently; and Summon. Sow. Reap – we relish what we have summoned, what seeds are sown, and just or unjust rewards are reaped. We reflect and return, more fiercely, to moving, remembering, hoping, and recovering ourselves for a world anew.

Photo by Laura Bianchi

For more on Cynthia check the comments below👇 by @sweatvariant

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4 months ago

Dear sweat variant friends and supporters,

We are raising money for the creation of adaku, part 2, which will support the final months of design work and rehearsals before our world premiere in October.

We are calling on our community to help us reach our final goal of $75,000 by June 30th through our @givebutter campaign at the link in our bio 🔗

Any amount helps! ❤️

All donors over $1,000 will have the option to be acknowledged as a “Friend of Sweat Variant” on our website.

All donors over $5,000 will have the option to be listed in the program for adaku, part 2, and will receive special perks including opening night tickets to the NYC premiere in November, invitations to open rehearsals, VIP events, and more.

Photo credit Maria Baranova, “let slip, hold sway” at the Whitney Museum of American Art by @sweatvariant

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4 months ago

Myssi Robinson is the Platform 2026 Writer-in-Residence. Her writing and drawings here are imaginative responses to “day pulls down the sky”, a night of songs by Okwui Okpokwasili in collaboration with Peter Born (Sweat Variant).

Read Myssi’s full writing in Danspace’s Journal: Issue #19 and at the link in bio 🔗

“These are archives that sprawl and make mess like us. Some of the drawings ask for transformation, mirroring the inner alchemy that happens when supernatural performance takes root within. Witnessing seeds us again and again. Some of the works held tight to their original form. Imprinted, whole and telling. This collection is not finished but ready to be with community as Seta helps me see. Sweat Variant micro-altars. Portals where life force presses. Distillation. I stay playing the album while I listen and act myself into this multi-dimensional witnessing. I recommend that y’all do too. Because medicine.” –Myssi Robinson

🎨: all collaged. ink / pen / marker / colored pencil / printed lyrics on Bristol paper. Artwork by Myssi Robinson. taken in Danspace Project by @sweatvariant

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4 months ago