Year: 2023-2024
DanceForce Member: Judy Hussie-Taylor
Artist: Andros Zins-Browne
Community Partner: Denniston Hill
Audience: 343
County: Sullivan

With the support of NYS DanceForce, Danspace Project facilitated and supported a week-long residency at Denniston Hil for choreographer Andros Zins-Browne in October 2023. Zins-Browne worked with set design collaborator Kim Schnaubert during this concentrated period to develop a new work which premiered at Danspace Project in February 2024. This was the first residency held at Denniston Hill, a residency center located in Glen Wild, New York, supporting visual and performing artists in their creative artmaking. With the unanticipated and sudden closing of the Petronio Residency Center for the foreseeable future, Danspace reached out to Denniston Hill to form a new partnership.

There was minimal time to plan and the intersection of the residency outreach revolved around the artists and Denniston staff with occasional public guests throughout the residency. Comments Zins-Browne, “I visited a studio that was under construction, had a tour of the land, and another of the garden by one of the friends and neighbors of Denniston Hill, and had a fantastic night out at a local spot where I met many people who have made the Southern Catskill area their home. I appreciated learning about Denniston Hill, as I co-run an informal artist residency in Belgium (where I used to live), it was very inspiring as a model to learn how such a place operates. It was also so important to begin this project in a natural environment as so much of this work had to do with nature, and the ‘choreography of the ground’, so our hikes in the surroundings, were particularly activated at this time, and I was so glad I wasn’t doing this research while taking breaks from my computer to stomp along the pavement of the City. I was not in the phase of my process to organize showings or share the work in that way. I appreciated talking about my research with the neighbors there, and it was particularly inspiring to have a tour of the beaver “architectures” in the area while I was considering ways that nature builds and forms itself beyond or outside of human activity.”

Zins-Browne also shared: “My artistic residency at Denniston Hill provided me with the space and time I needed to reflect and prepare for my upcoming process. Rather than jump directly into a studio in a production phase, this time allowed me to ask essential questions about what I was doing and why, and to articulate the conceptual and practical parameters of the work I was about to launch into. It’s rare, especially when you live in a palace like New York City, to be able to find this kind of dedicated, focused, and uninterrupted time.”