UPCOMING Events

please help us celebrate:

THE INAUGURAL VISIONARY DANCE FESTIVAL

Johnny Butler, Alex Oliva, Quaba Venza Ernest, Caleb Patterson, MichelLe Thompson Ulerich and Annie White

LIVE MUSIC / DANCE / CHOREOGRAPHY

AUGUST 12, 2023 8PM

Brooklyn-based, Grammy-award winning musician and arranger Johnny Butler has become somewhat of a fixture at The Visionary.

This year, Johnny and New York City based performer, choreographer, director and educator Alex Oliva are mentoring four other outstanding choreographers/dancers while they create new works with Johnny.

When recently asked what drives his process with different dancers he said:

"I thrive on transforming theater into dance into music. Music—and, more broadly, sound—can recall scenes from our childhoods, drift us into a daydream, and reveal what's behind the billowing blue velvet curtain... For me the art is in crafting the compositions to bend, to gesture, to drip down, beautifully, with a feeling that inspires your deepest fantasy." 

Johnny and Alex will also perform their new interdisciplinary work: Recess

Recess harkens back to when we were young children in elementary school, waiting for the bell to ring so we could go outside and hang out with our friends. Recess is a break from class, a time to play, to try things out, to meet new people, to use your body, to daydream. Our memories are ensconced in the buildings that housed us. We remember lunches in the cafeteria, PE in the gym, story time in the library. The specific memories that fill each of these spaces are personal to each of us, yet all these memories are closely connected to school, the architecture of the building, and where each memory was inscribed in our minds. The buildings we inhabited are a shared, collective experience. Perhaps nostalgia, perhaps painful, perhaps full of joy, our childhood schools are where many of our most formative memories are housed.

With Recess as our playground, we’re seeking to explore human relationships, examining what it means to make a friend, to look forward to seeing each other, for things to go wrong, to fight, and to reconcile. Friendship is so deeply rooted in our everyday lives that it’s easy to minimize the importance of friendship. As we grow older, life changes, work changes, we have children of our own, and we grow distant from our friends and family. For adults as well as children, the importance of human connection is paramount and cannot be overstated. Making art and making friends are anti-capitalist, pro-humanist endeavors that operate outside of the world of work and give our lives purpose and meaning. The goal for this work is to capture and distill this delicate moment in time and to make space for the audience to connect with their own personal histories, simultaneously watching the performance and reflecting on their own childhoods. 

 Johnny Butler is a Brooklyn-based, Grammy-award winning musician and arranger for his work on Beyoncé's "Love on Top." Butler received a 2022 Lucille Lortell Award and a 2023 Obie Award for his work on the biggest Off-Broadway hit of 2022, Heather Christian's Oratorio for Living Things. Butler plays the saxophone, flute, clarinet, piano, guitar, composes, engineers audio, dances, and makes films. Butler uses a wireless microphone and handful of electronics to create vast soundscapes while dancing onstage, blending the music, the dancer, and the daydream.

Quaba Venza Ernest is a St.Lucian-American, born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He is an alumni of Dance Theatre of Harlem, Fiorello H. LaGuardia Arts High School, and SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance where he was selected as a recipient of an Adopt-A-Dancer Scholarship & The Thayer Fellowship in the Arts for Choreography/Dance. He began his career at Ballet BC in 2019, and later began working with Doug Varone and Dancers in 2021. He has danced in works by Kimberly Bartosik, George Balanchine, Ronald K. Brown, Sidra Bell, Norbert De La Cruz lll, Sharon Eyal, Johan Inger, Loni Landon, Sidi Larbi, Ana Maria Lucaciu, Ohad Naharin, Staycee Pearl, Crystal Pite, Jerome Robbins, Ted Shawn, Cayetano Soto, Didy Veldman and Medhi Walerski.

Alex Oliva is a New York City-based performer, choreographer, director and educator. Her performance and choreographic experience spans dance, immersive theater, and improvisation. Alex thrives in collaborative settings and seeks to work with artists of all disciplines to create compelling performances that help people connect to their imagination, to themselves, and to each other.

Caleb Patterson began professional training In 2014 at The Joffrey Ballet School where he performed works for several notable choreographers such as Nathan Trice, Sekou McMiller, Rena Butler, Lane Gifford, and Patrick O'Brien. After school he moved on to new media, appearing in HBO’s Random Acts Of Flyness by Terrance Nance, choreographed by Domani Pompey. He recently performed at Battery Dance Festival with MATHETA dance, performing excerpts from Buya, the company’s full-length piece first performed at Judson Church. Caleb is currently working with Dolly Sfeir&Dancers, MATHETA dance, Alpha Omega, Nathaniel’s Dance Collective, Javi Padilla’s Movement Playground, and Spark Movement Collective.

Michelle Thompson Ulerich is currently an adjunct professor at SUNY Purchase, and the Artistic Director of Spark Movement Collective. She received her training from San Francisco Ballet, and danced for 14 years with Ballet Austin. She performed in works by Balanchine, Twyla Tharp, Ulysses Dove, Stephen Mills, Sidra Bell, Greg Dolbashian, Nelly Van Bommel, Amy Seiwart, James Gregg, Gina Patterson, Thang Dao, and more. Also during her time in Texas she earned her undergraduate degree from St. Edward’s University, and began her choreographic career with an emphasis on site specific and immersive dance experiences. She is a freelance choreographer in New York, and has recently shown work at The Mark O’Donnell Theater, Green Space, Arts On Site, and Dixon Place. She has recently been commissioned by CounterPointe, CreateArt, Kingsland Wildflower Festival, and SUNY Purchase. She also creates for film and music video projects. She teaches yoga, and is a mother of two. Michelle has worked closely with Johnny Butler and Caleb Patterson on projects performed at The Visionary, Mercury Lounge, Ace Hotel in Brooklyn, C'mon Everybody, and the Howland Cultural Center in Beacon, NY and she is thrilled to embark on the next adventure with them.

Annie White (she/her) is a dancer and choreographer based in NYC. Growing up in St Petersburg, Florida, she was a dedicated skim boarder and competition dancer, and she attended the Pinellas County Center for the Arts at Gibbs High School before she went on to study at the Joffrey Ballet School, training with Michael Blake, Rena Butler, Maleek Washington, and more. Since then, Annie has been performing in the city and beyond in the freelance scene, bouncing from project to project, working with Bitedown Collective, Michelle Thompson-Ulerich, Manuel Vignoulle, Jerome Bel, Toddrick Hall and others. She is a current collaborator with LaneCoArts, Sikora+ Dance, and Faustine Lavie Dance Project. Annie is also a choreographer, and her work has been shown at Howland Cultural Center, Living Gallery, Arts On Site and TADA Youth Theater. Annie waters her plants regularly and has a pet snail named Chris.