CLICK HERE TO WATCH SUKKAH IN PLACE

Since 2013, artists Danielle Durchslag and Ryan Frank have been re-configuring and re-imagining the Jewish ritual of Sukkot. Assembly Required, their two-person artist collective, creates expansive art installations and experiences for people of all backgrounds, using ancient religious ritual as a framework and inspiration, especially the Sukkot theme of Ushpuzin, or welcoming the stranger. The weeklong holiday of Sukkot, when observant Jews build temporary ritual huts, constructed from natural materials, in which they eat and sleep, has inspired the artists to fashion new, interactive art experiences rooted in the holiday that address contemporary problems. 

In 2015, Assembly Required designed a colorful, single-serving sukkah on the back of a pickup truck, titled A Wandering Sukkah, and toured it throughout NYC. That project addressed the relentlessness and crowded reality of city life, offering all New Yorkers a space for reflection, quiet, and privacy during the fall holiday. Over 700 New Yorkers of all backgrounds entered the structure at stops hosted by a diverse roster of both religious and secular institutions, The Queens Museum, The Jewish Theological Seminary, The Invisible Dog Art Center, and the Hindu Temple of North America amongst them. A Wandering Sukkah received exciting press coverage from outlets including Tablet, Hyperallergic, and the New York Observer.

This year, in the midst of the pandemic, Assembly Required has designed a new Sukkot art experience to help people cope with the omnipresent constrictions and isolation present since the onset of the covid-19 pandemic. Rather than build a physical sukkah structure, as they've done in years past, their 2020 project, Sukkah In Place, redefines the human body as this year's sukkah. Like a sukkah, the body is a temporary, vulnerable vessel, and the pandemic has made most of us more acutely aware of its potential for producing feelings of both freedom and confinement. With this in mind, Durchslag and Frank have invited four choreographers from diverse backgrounds and spiritual identities to create video movement pieces in response to specific Sukkot rituals. These works, created by Hadar Ahuvia, Verónica Santiago Moniello, Londs Reuter, and Nehemoyia Young, will offer four different perspectives on physicalized ritual at a time when our bodies are increasingly challenged and vulnerable. 

Sukkah in Place had its premiere on Thursday, October 1st, at 8pm, co-presented by the Jewish Museum, New York, and Congregation Beth Elohim, and is now available on the Jewish Museum’s YouTube channel.

CHOREOGRAPHERS

Hadar Ahuvia / @primaahuvian

Hadar Ahuvia creates dance, text and song for a Radical Diasporism. She was in Israel/Palestine and the US/Turtle Island and has received support from Movement Research, the 14th St Y, Baryshnikov Art Center, Yaddo, Danspace Project and Gibney. She was a 2018 Bessie nominee for Outstanding Breakout Choreographer and named a Dance Magazine ‘25 to Watch in 2019’.

Verónica Santiago Moniello / @moniellora

Verónica Is a Venezuelan choreographer and dancer currently residing between the south of México and New York. She holds an MFA in Fine Arts at the Theatre & Dance Program (UCSD)-University of California San Diego (U.S.) and a B.A. in Dance Making at Folkwang Universität der Künste, Essen (Germany). Her projects have been presented in Mexico, Venezuela, Belize, Germany, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Spain, Korea and the U.S. Her Ongoing research “The Body that has Been Possessed” awarded by the Tinker Fellowship. Member of Red Alterna Merida-Yucatan (Mexico.)

Londs Reuter / @londsitude

Londs Reuter is a dancer, dance-maker, and access worker. Her dancing interrogates the conditions necessary to feel, to feel, to feel. In May, she received her MA in Disability Studies from CUNY while quarantining in her 525 sq. foot apartment. 

Nehemoyia Young / @nehemoyia

Nehemoyia is a 2019 graduate of Union Theological Seminary where she received a Masters in Theology, Performance Art & Ritual. She is the founder of SpiritList, a digital platform focused on indigenous healing and wellness, as well as the co-founder of In Liberated Company, a social dance community committed to addressing religious trauma among ex-fundamentalists. She’s had the pleasure of working alongside Okwui Okpokwasili, Andre Zachary, David Thompson, Maria Bauman among others.