ENDURANCE
Friday and Saturday, May 16–17, 2025, 7–10 PM
L.A. Dance Project
2245 E Washington Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90021
Free parking available on site, wheelchair accessible
TICKETS ARE SOLD OUT
Please note that seating is very limited for this program. If you can no longer attend, we kindly request that you release your ticket so someone else may attend.
Download the digital program here.
ENDURANCE presents performance art and interdisciplinary work by elder artists. This series is a companion program to LACE’s 2024 performance series, ABUNDANCE, both featuring often invisibilized bodies.
Through their longstanding committed and engaged practices, artists in ENDURANCE transmit wisdom and experience while embracing the challenges and opportunities that come with age and aging. Held over two nights at L.A. Dance Project, ENDURANCE showcases re-stagings and new commissions by legacy performance, dance, and literary artists Gloria Enedina Álvarez, Kamau Daáood, Anna Homler, Jeff Schwartz, and David Javelosa, Ulysses Jenkins and his band “Who Dat!,” Juanita and Juan (Alice Bag + Kid Congo Powers), Sharon Kagan, Hirokazu Kosaka, Oguri, Sheree Rose, Barbara T. Smith, The Dark Bob, and Awilda Sterling-Duprey. The program also features films by Eiko Otake and Joan Jonas on May 16, and Marnie Weber on May 17.
These artists share groundbreaking contributions to their disciplines with multiple generations, changing exclusionary narratives, and becoming ancestors in life.
ENDURANCE is curated by Selene Preciado, LACE Curator and Director of Programs.
Performance Schedule:
Friday, May 16, 2025
7:00 PM: Eiko Otake and Joan Jonas film, With the Earth at My Waistline (2021)
7:30 PM: Kamau Daáood
7:50 PM: Sharon Kagan
8:15 PM: Sheree Rose
8:40 PM: Hirokazu Kosaka
9:05 PM: Awilda Sterling-Duprey
9:30 PM: Juanita and Juan
Saturday, May 17, 2025
7:00 PM: Marnie Weber film, The Cabin of Mothra Crone (2021)
7:30 PM: Gloria Enedina Álvarez accompanied by Greg Hernandez
7:50 PM: Awilda Sterling-Duprey
8:15 PM: Barbara T. Smith
8:40 PM: Oguri
9:05 PM: The Dark Bob, Ulysses Jenkins
9:30 PM: Anna Homler, Jeff Schwartz, and David Javelosa
In addition to the performances, artist Sharon Louden’s newest publication Last Artist Standing will be available for purchase. Last Artist Standing presents essays on the lives of thirty-one artists over the age of fifty, which explore how they have sustained their creative lives and the different paths they have taken throughout their artistic careers. Click here to learn more.
About the artists
Gloria E. Alvarez is a Chicana poet/intermedia artist, literary translator and curator, presently teaches creative writing and works as a consultant in public schools, universities, libraries, museums, and art centers. Her literary/artistic efforts have been recognized by the CAC, National Endowment for the Arts, Cultural Affairs Department, City of L.A.,COLA Award and Poets & Writers, Inc., among others. She has published and read widely in the U.S., Latin America and Europe. Her books of poetry in English and Spanish include La Excusa/The Excuse and Emerging en un Mar De Olanes, spoken word albums include Centerground and Between Epiphanies. Her poetry has been published in various anthologies and numerous periodicals. Over the course of her career she has worked with diverse populations which have crossed cultures and generations. These experiences have taken place within the university environment, as well as within the community via the support of community based organizations resolutely committed to service through the arts and education for a span of over 50 years. She has been honored by institutions and organizations, such as the CAC, NEA, C.O.L.A., Maestro Award, SPARC, SHG, Poets & Writers, Inc, HeArt Project and others, for her service as a pioneer of community building, art-making, and mentor to three generations of youth.
Legendary Los Angeles performance poet Kamau Daáood was recently honored with the California Art Council 2023 Legacy Fellowship for decades of creative excellence. Daáood, an L.A. native, is best known as a powerful performance poet whose early nurturing began in the late 60’s at the Watts Writers Workshop and as a member of The Pan Afrikan People’s Arkestra. One of Kamau’s crowning accomplishments was co-founding the World Stage Performance Gallery with Master Drummer Billy Higgins 36 years ago, which is still serving the Los Angeles community today.
Daáood is the author of The Language of Saxophones: Selected Poems of Kamau Daáood (City Lights Publishers, 2005), and Notes D’un Griot De Los Angeles (Le Castor Astral publisher, 2012), published during his artist-in-residency at L’Universite Michel de Montaigne in Bordeaux, France. Daáood recorded the critically acclaimed CD Leimert Park (M.A.M.A. Records, 1997). He has been the subject and featured poet in several documentaries, including Life is a Saxophone produced by S. Pearl Sharp (1984); the PBS documentary Race is the Place (Paradigm Productions, 2005); and Leimert Park: The Story of a Village in South Central L.A. by Jeannette Lindsay (DVD, 2008). More recently, he appears in And When I Die I Won’t Stay Dead, a film about Bob Kaufman by filmmaker Billy Woodbury (2016). Daáood is featured on the 2022 CD and release of The Gathering /Healing Suite on The Village records.(LP release on P-Vine Records).
Greg Hernandez. Starting at a young age, and for the past 35 years, he has performed in various and diverse bands, ranging from North American Western-influenced to Blues, Rock and Roll, Punk Rock, Jazz, and everything in between. His multi-genre musical fluidity has allowed for expansion and experimentation with diverse sounds and tones, leading him to exploratory projects that merged the different cultural music genres of World music. During the late 90’s, along with Angel Garcia, Hernandez co-founded the much-heralded and pioneering music project Mezklah. From 2010 to present, Hernandez has continued his musical trajectory as a hired musician and performer, who has also expanded his creative outlets to include writing and recording with various notable bands in Los Angeles, San Diego, and New Mexico.
David Javelosa is an American composer and former Sega of America audio director, recording artist, and sound designer. He was a recording and performance artist with Los Microwaves and Baby Buddha in the 1980s featured on Poshboy Records. After departing Sega in 1994, he remained active in the game industry as a freelance composer and audio director, Industry Specialist for Yamaha, and eventually became a Professor of Interactive Media at Santa Monica College from 2001 to 2024. He currently runs the independent music label Hyperspace Communications, which specializes in releasing electronic, new wave, and game music on vinyl records. As a composer, he has an MFA In composition from CalArts and has studied under Allen Strange, David Rosenboom, and Morton Subotnic.
Ulysses Jenkins is a video/performance artist with an MFA in Intermedia-Video/Performance Art from Otis Art Institute. Los Angeles, CA in 1979 where he earned a MFA. His undergraduate degree is from Southern University in Baton Rouge Louisiana, where he earned his BA degree in Painting and Drawing. Previously Jenkins taught video production at UC San Diego and Otis College of Art, and performance art at California State University, Dominguez Hills. He currently is an emeritus Professor from the University of California, Irvine; in the Claire Trevor School of the Arts, from the Department of Art (1993–2022). His video and media work examines how image, sound, and cultural iconography inform representation. Combining archival footage, photography, digital collage, and music soundtracks, Jenkins constructs an “other” history that questions issues of race and gender as they relate to ritual, history, and state power. Source
Joan Jonas (b. 1936) is an American visual artist and a pioneer of video and performance art, and an influential figure in the performance art movement of the late 1960s. Jonas works in video, installation, sculpture, and drawing, often collaborating with musicians and dancers to realize improvisational works that are equally at home in the museum gallery and on the theatrical stage. Drawing on mythic stories from various cultures, Jonas invests texts from the past with the politics of the present. Source
Juanita and Juan is a dynamic musical duo formed by Alice Bag and Kid Congo Powers, two influential figures in the punk and alternative music scenes who first crossed paths in 1977 during the early days of the Hollywood punk movement. Their friendship, rooted in a shared passion for raw, boundary-pushing music, has led to a new creative partnership that transcends genres and defies labels, although the two refer to their sound as “Loud Lounge.”
Alice Bag, a founding member of the pioneering punk band the Bags, is known for her fierce stage presence and unapologetic, feminist approach to punk music. She has spent decades championing the voices of women in rock and advocating for social justice, both through her music and activism. Kid Congo Powers, an original member of The Gun Club and a key player in The Cramps, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, as well as his own band, Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds, brings his audacious blend of noisy, psych-infused rock with a touch of glam. His unique guitar playing and distinctive style have made him a beloved figure in underground music circles. Together, Juanita and Juan blend their influences—Bag’s fiery vocals and penchant for dark melody with Powers’ atmospheric, reverb-laden guitar tones—creating a musical landscape that is both nostalgic and fresh-sounding. Their collaboration captures the adventurous spirit of their punk roots while embracing new sonic territory. The duo’s chemistry is undeniable, with their musical partnership serving as both a testament to their enduring friendship and the spirit of musical exploration that began for the pair in 1976, proving that punk is not just a genre, but a lasting, ever-evolving attitude.
Sharon Kagan’s 45 year art career started with her video installation The Sacred Marriage (1979) for her MFA thesis at Otis Art Institute. For the last 20 years, knitting has been central to her practice for its ability to construct and unravel. She explores secrets, stories, and body memories. Her recent performance, Release Me, was a five-day durational performance of the artist knitting in a rocking chair and an audio soundtrack. This was part of a solo exhibition Compassion in Action (2022) at Alfred University. Other solo exhibitions include The Politics of Color at Show Gallery, Hollywood, CA; and String Theory at College of Southern Idaho, Twin Falls, ID, and at Yellowstone Art Museum, Billings, MT. Kagan’s video performances Freedom from Entanglement (2023) and The Undoing: Forgiveness (2021) were selected for inclusion in national and international film festivals. Kagan received the WORD Artist Grant (2021).
Hirokazu Kosaka was born in Wakayama, Japan in 1948. Kosaka is an ordained Shingon Buddhist priest, a master of the art of Japanese archery, as well as the Master Artist in Residence of the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center. After graduating from the Chouinard Art Institute (CalArts) in 1970, he continued to study in the fields of esoteric Buddhist art. He has been actively advocating Japanese culture and art at JACCC since 1983.
Oguri. A native of Japan and a resident of Venice, California, Oguri formed Body Weather Laboratory Los Angeles with Roxanne Steinberg. Since 1990, Oguri has been teaching, creating, and producing dance and multimedia works that incorporate his large-scale set/sculpture installations in both formal theater settings and site-specific venues worldwide. He continues to investigate the relationship between dance and the environment, as well as the boundaries between performer and audience. Oguri has developed collaborative projects with dancers, musicians, sculptors, painters, and poets, using literature, daily life imagery, and simple materials to transform space and time through dance. He actively brings dance to the wider community. Oguri has received numerous grants and awards regionally, nationally, and internationally, including the 2018 United States Artist Doris Duke Fellow. Photograph by Pep Daudey.
Eiko Otake. Born and raised in Japan and a resident of New York since 1976, Eiko Otake is a movement–based, interdisciplinary artist. After working for more than 40 years as Eiko & Koma, she now performs as a soloist and directs her collaborative projects.
Sheree Rose. The performance, photography and video work of Los Angeles based artists, Bob Flanagan and Sheree Rose shook, rattled and rolled across the United States in the late 1980’s beginning with “Nailed,” a performance at Olio, a small space in Silverlake, Los Angeles, that was notorious for Flanagan nailing his scrotum to a board, Rose cutting into the breasts of a woman strapped to a cross, which caused grown men to faint, and drew the attention of Jesse Helms, a United States senator, which ended much funding of the National Endowment of the Arts, and rallied artists to declare “Art is not a Crime!” Flanagan and Rose exhibited their extreme show, “Visiting Hours” at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, and the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. After Flanagan’s death in 1996, the documentary, “Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan: Supermasochist” graced the screens of Sundance to great acclaim. Rose was commissioned by Japan to produce “Boballoon” a 20-foot inflatable statue, complete with leather straightjacket and 4- foot erect penis, which was exhibited at Big Space in Tokyo. Rose has continued to show her photography at international galleries, including the Tate Modern in Liverpool, Country Club and Coagula Galleries in Los Angeles. She has done a number of cutting edge performances, including “Corpse Pose” at various venues, and “Breaking Borders” at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, California.
Beginning in 2010 Rose has collaborated with English performance artist, Martin O’Brien, both in London and in Los Angeles, including “Do with Me As You Will,” “Dust to Dust,” and “If It Were the Apocalypse (I’d eat you to stay alive).” In November 2016, they performed “The Viewing,” a posthumous concept by Flanagan at the DaDaFest in Liverpool, England. In 2017, Rose curated “Every Breath You Take,” at Jason Vass Gallery in Los Angeles. A book about her life and art, “Rated RX: Sheree Rose Before and After Bob Flanagan,” edited by Yetta Howard, was published by Ohio University Press, recently released in October 2023.
Jeff Schwartz is co-leader of the Decisive Instant creative orchestra, principal bass of MESTO, a member of the Santa Monica Symphony, and is very active in the Los Angeles avant-garde music community. He has also performed with artists including Anthony Braxton, Glenn Branca, Dana Reason, Nicole Mitchell, Tracy McMullen, and Adam Rudolph, and attended the Creative Music Studio and the Vancouver Creative Music Institute. The author of a popular online biography of Albert Ayler, his writing has also appeared in the journals American Music, Popular Music, and Postmodern Culture, and in the forthcoming revision of A Basic Music Library. He is under contract to write a book on free jazz for Routledge’s music bibliographies series. His day job is as a reference librarian at the Santa Monica Public Library, where he curates the Soundwaves new music series.
Barbara T. Smith (Pasadena, b. 1931) has been a radical force in West Coast performance art since the 1960s. Her work explores concepts at the core of human nature, including sexuality, physical and spiritual sustenance, technology, and death.
Awilda Sterling-Duprey (San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1947) is an interdisciplinary artist, choreographer, and pioneer of experimental dance in the Caribbean. Her work merges performance, painting, drawing, and improvisation, exploring the body as an archive of resistance, spirituality, and Afro-Puerto Rican memory. She co-founded Pisotón, Puerto Rico’s first experimental dance collective, and has presented her work across Latin America, the Caribbean, the U.S., and Europe. For over five decades, her practice has challenged the boundaries between gestural mark-making and embodied movement, integrating jazz, Afro-Caribbean religiosity, and conceptual art. Her performance Blindfolded was featured in the 2022 Whitney Biennial, and most recently she premiered Actos de cimarronaje at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico. Sterling-Duprey has received fellowships and residencies from USA Artists, the Rauschenberg Foundation, and NXTHVN. She joins ENDURANCE with a new work invoking the mythical figure of François Mackandal, channeling the Antillean uprising as an embodied force through performative action. Photograph by José Lopéz Serra.
The Dark Bob (Francis Shishim). As a founding member of the conceptual art team Bob & Bob, The Dark Bob is widely acknowledged as a pioneer in the Los Angeles performance art scene dating back to the mid-70s. He recently released a double album of tribute songs to artists, performed by many of LA’s favorite musicians, and is currently producing a documentary film about the history of Los Angeles performance art with Michael Masucci of EZTV, while simultaneously preparing for a retrospective exhibition of Bob & Bob drawings slated for 2026 at the Craig Krull Gallery. His works are in many public collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Getty Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He has been inducted twice into the Smithsonian Institute’s Archives of American Art for both his solo work and his collaborations as half of the Bob & Bob team.
Marnie Weber’s multidisciplinary practice encompasses performance, film, sculpture, collage, painting, music and costuming. By combining her own mythology of creatures, monsters, animals and female characters with costuming on film and stage sets; she creates her own fictional narratives of passion, transformation, and discovery. Weber creates uncanny worlds that exist in a realm between fantasy and reality, and invites viewers into an exploration of the subconscious. Using fairytale-like imagery, she places women in positions of power and primacy creating a backdrop as a site of transformation and magic. Her work is in the collections of MOCA Los Angeles, Hammer Museum, LACMA, FRAC Paris, Neuberger Berman New York, and Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.
About the films
Eiko Otake and Joan Jonas, With the Earth at My Waistline, 2021 (28 minutes)
With the Earth at My Waistline is a short video work by Eiko Otake and Joan Jonas, commissioned and premiered at Danspace Project for Platform 2021: The Dream of the Audience, curated by Judy Hussie-Taylor.
With the Earth at My Waistline
Dedicated to Douglas Crimp
Conceived by Eiko Otake and Joan Jonas
Directed by Joan Jonas in collaboration with Eiko Otake
Assisted by Sekeena Gavagan, Paula Longendyke, Iris McCloughan, and Allison Hsu
Performers: Eiko Otake, Joan Jonas, Iris McCloughan
Lighting Design: Jan Kroeze with Yolanda Royster
Videography: Jeri Coppola and Joan Jonas
Video Editing: David Sherman and Joan Jonas with Eiko Otake and Sekeena Gavagan
Video Backdrop and props: Joan Jonas
Seagull Footage: Eiko Otake
Poem: “Ballad of the Shadowy Pigeons” by Federico García Lorca, translated by Jack Spicer
Music: Super Reggae by The Liquadators
Sound effects: Sounds of the American Southwest
Marnie Weber, The Cabin of Mothra Crone, 2021 (33:11 minutes)
A lonely old artist crone lives in isolation in a mountain cabin. Slowly her mental state declines as she paints away the seasons. Unexpectedly a traveling monkey shows up at her door and she welcomes him in. Together they live happily until a haunting moth spirit changes everything.
Marnie Weber created this film in isolation at her mountain cabin in Lake Arrowhead, CA between 2019-2020. It was filmed entirely on her iPhone as an alter-ego self portrait. As with all her previous films, Marnie developed the costumes, played the various characters, and created the musical soundtrack.
SUPPORT
ENDURANCE is supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. Special thanks to our friends at L.A. Dance Project for their support while LACE’s Hollywood gallery is under renovation.
