Press for Yes, And
Who Would You Be: Gesel Mason on Black Women and the Permission to Worry Less
An interview by Sara Carminati (National Performance Network)
"I’m thinking about the ways [Yes, And] can connect us versus isolate us, and I’m still understanding what that means and what that looks like."
--Gesel Mason
"What if it’s not one event? What if it continues? What if I think of Yes, And as a methodology of undoing?"
--Gesel Mason
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Read the full article here.
In Process: Gesel Mason on "Yes And"
An interview by Anna Gallagher-Ross (Fusebox Festival)
"As an African American woman artist sometimes I feel like there are these ideas about the kind of work that needs to be made, or what it should look like, or who it should speak to, or the themes that it should have, and I think in some ways I wondered, Well what would I make if I didn't feel those real or imagined expectations of my work? What would I make if Blackness wasn't in response to whiteness? What if I could be my fullest self without any sort of fear or expectation or translation? What would I make? How would I be in community with others? "
--Gesel Mason
Read the full article here.
Press for No Boundaries
Ms. Mason has put together a show [No Boundaries] that should be required viewing for students of dance history. – Jennifer Dunning, New York Times. Read more...
Gesel Mason’s one-woman show [No Boundaries] was the sort of performance that in any other realm would enshrine her among a select few standouts…an ambitious, riveting and impressively executed program. – Sarah Kaufman, Washington Post. Read more...
The thing about the No Boundaries project that matters is that we’re allowed to bear witness to a flowering of diversity of voices and approaches and different constellations of black performance or black lives or black humanity within these works and how they tell different kinds of stories that are related through a shared experience and shared vision of a global black presence. – Dr. Thomas DeFrantz
Press for antithesis
Photo slideshow of antithesis at MCA Denver.
Photos by Ken Hamblin, Westword. View all photos...
antithesis: Dance Place Practice was hands-down one of the most remarkable shows I’ve seen
in quite some time. - Taryn Packheiser Brown, DC Dance Journalism Project. Read more...
Mason has constructed a probing critique of a slice of contemporary eroticism - Lisa Traiger,
D.C. DanceWatcher. Read more...
Foremost was the notion that to entertain and to educate is one and the same thing. Just acting
out doesn’t suffice for this insistent, agile, stalwart dancer/choreographer/teacher, nor does bare
theorizing. - George Jackson, Dance View Times. Read more...
Last but not least was the extremely powerful solo by Gesel Mason herself, in which she
graciously shared a deep finding of Eros by tapping into her essential creative energy… - Taryn
Packheiser Brown, DC Dance Journalism Project. Read more...
It’s about taking back our ability to feel fully alive: brain, breasts, belly (soft or pilates tight),
hands (for reaching and receiving), pelvis (moving in circles but also supporting a healthy, strong
back), and feet (to stand firmly on the earth). - Laura Zam, On the Pink Couch
Press. Read more...
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