RODERICK GEORGE | KNONAME ARTIST: THE GRAVE’S TEARS

Roderick George is a choreographer, performer, and director from Houston, Texas. He trained at Ben Stevenson’s Houston Ballet Academy, The Alvin Ailey School, and Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. George has performed with Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, Theater Basel, GöteborgsOperans Danskompani, and The Forsythe Company. In 2015 he founded kNoname Artist, a Berlin-founded, New York City–based collective developing collaborative work exploring memory, care, and community. His choreography has been presented by Jacob’s Pillow, New York City Center, New York Live Arts, Suzanne Dellal, Tanzhaus Zürich, Sophiensæle, Kaatsbaan, Pocantico Center, HarlemStage, Guild Hall, and Fall for Dance North. Honors include the YoungArts Fellowship, Mertz Gilmore Dancer Award, Jacob’s Pillow Men Dancers Award, and the Princess Grace Award and Fellowship, as well as recognition from the National Performance Network and NEFA National Dance Project.

Across his work as a maker and collaborator, George remains committed to creating environments that honor collective labor, amplify marginalized histories, and sustain artistic practice through care and shared responsibility.

Photo: Laura Fuchs

kNoname Artist is a Berlin-founded, now New York City-based company created in 2015 by Roderick George. kNoname Artist is a collective that strives to use art as a form of protest and healing method to find agency. The company invests in reflecting the times, both past and current events, and using the culture of origins as a vessel for creative expression. The knowledge of division created by colorism, class, and social-economic differences provoked the mind of George, yet also with joy and hope to motivate the growth of kNoname Artist. The mission of this multidisciplinary company is to gift its spectators’ evocative stories told through raw, percussive, and fluid movement interspersed with dialogue and humor. The iterative and evolving vision for the company melds dynamic movement, music, and scenic landscapes into experiential works exploring themes of queerness, blackness, and human rights. kNoname Artist has performed at festivals such as Festival Quartiers Danses, Suzanne Dellal, Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, Zurich Tanzhaus, Hollins University, New York Live Arts, Pavillon Noir| Ballet Prejlocaj, Sophiensæle Festspiele, Pocantico Art Center, and Fall for Dance North/NIGHTSHIFT.

Photo: Rebecca Hurson

Jace Clayton is an artist and writer, also known for his work as DJ /rupture. He is Assistant Professor of Studio Art and Director of Graduate Studies at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College. Clayton is the author of Uproot: Travels in 21st Century Music and Digital Culture (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016) and the forthcoming Behold the Monkey, for which he received a 2020 Arts Writers Grant, about contemporary art, faith, and social media. As an artist, Clayton’s interdisciplinary approach focuses on how sound, memory, and public space interact, with an emphasis on low-income communities and non-Western geographies. His writing appears in publications including 4Columns, Artforum, frieze, Bidoun, and New York Times Magazine. He has performed in over three dozen countries, as a solo artist and as director of large ensemble performances. His work has been exhibited internationally, most recently with They Are Part (2023) a solo exhibition at MassArt Art Museum in Boston. 

Photo: Max Lakner

Tanja Rühl is a freelance lighting designer and lighting supervisor. She was born and resides in Germany. In 1999 she began her theatrical engineering apprenticeship at Frankfurt Opera House. After completion of the apprenticeship with distinction, Tanja joined Ballet Frankfurt under the artistic direction of William Forsythe in 2002 as Assistant to the Lighting Supervisor. She was then appointed Lighting Supervisor with the newly founded Forsythe Company in 2005. In 2006 she completed her master of theatrical engineering majoring in lighting. Since 2007 Tanja has been acting as the company's lighting designer, mostly in cooperation with her mentor Forsythe and her colleague in the company’s lighting department. Being a member of Forsythe Productions, Tanja acts as technical and design consultant, collaborating with ballet and dance companies in matters of Forsythe license works. Since 2014 she is working as a full time freelance lighting designer, with choreographers, companies and artists around the globe. As a designer she is also still working with William Forsythe on his new works and on recreations of his existing repertoire. Productions she has created the original design for have been performed at Opéra Garnier, Paris; Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York; Tate Modern, London; Kawasaki Arts Center, Japan; Ruhrtriennale Jahrunderthalle, Bochum and Taichung National Theater, Taiwan. Apart from her work on stage, Tanja is teaching workshops about lighting design and the technical aspects of lighting at Palucca Hochschule für Tanz, Dresden and HfMDK Frankfurt am Main.

Photo: Dominik Mentzos