About the Work

Following an intergenerational body of collection, CHWYT is a work of the collected. How by the collecting of things, we experience value, for ourselves and for our worlds. As we exhaust ourselves into the duration of grip, CHWYT ruptures itself into pistons of scarcity, belonging, safety and completion.

Exhausting ourselves into a pool of grip, collaborators Lavy, Kenley, and Ragin embark themselves into an evening of embracing exhaustion as we configure ourselves in the desire to hold contact. As we progress in our work together, we hope you will join us for our premiere at LaGuardia Performing Arts Center (LPAC) on March 28th and 29th at 7:30pm. Thank you for your support.

What Your Funds Will Support

As we progress in the work, the necessity for additional funding lies within the mission to further support my collaborators in the building of CHWYT. Specifically, we are seeking additional funding to further compensate the dancers (Kenley and Ragin) and choreographer (Lavy) beyond the stipend Mare Nostrum Elements provides. Our sound designer, Sarilou, will be developing a new and delicious soundscape for us over the duration of our time with Mare Nostrum Elements. Sarilou has spent time with us in rehearsals, gathering various soundscapes, beats, and melodic intervals to aid in the vision of CHWYT. As part of this request for funding, it is necessary to compensate Sarilou for her curation, labor, and editing hours both inside and outside our rehearsals. As we prepare to share CHWYT with you on stage, I am further curious how CHWYT can propel itself beyond the proscenium. To do this, we capture the work at various stages, locating itself into spaces non-traditional in an effort to see how the work contextualizes itself into an accessible body of process - oriented work. Funds will go towards the capturing of CHWYT in interdisciplinary modes of photography, videography, installation, and durational practice. Lastly, costuming for CHWYT will be essential in transporting you into the world we have built for CHWYT. Funding for these costumes will go directly into the labor, materials, and time required to build them. Thank you for taking the time to read more about CHWYT and its potentiality.

Please see below for a breakdown of costs:

$1200 - Sound Commission
$3000 - Dancers + Choreographer Additional Stipend
$600 - Costuming for 4 Collaborators
$400 - Archival Resources

About the Choreographer, Alex (Lavy) Cavaliere

Lavy (Alex Cavaliere) he/they, is a gender queer, Queens based, choreographic artist. Graduating with their BFA in dance from Marymount Manhattan College, their performance credits include works by Kyle Abraham, Andrea Miller, Jenn Freeman, and Belinda McQuire. In 2021, Lavy founded VERBAL ANIMAL, a collective of queer dance makers. Excavating areas of queer identity and belonging, the company curates interdisciplinary worlds of drag and dance theater. Lavy’s work has been presented at the 14th St Y, WAXworks, TADA! Theater, 3 Dollar Bill and Triskelion Arts. Currently, Lavy is commissioned as an emerging choreographer by Mare Nostrum Elements to premiere a new work in March 2023 at the LPAC theater in Queens. In addition, their work, with(in) limit was presented at the 14th Street Y by the Pioneers Go East Collective, a show that features Radical LGBTQ and Feminist artists, most of them being BIPOC, Latinx, and/or immigrants. This March, VERBAL ANIMAL will premiere their first curated, all queer festival, Queer Noise - an experimental, multi-disciplinary, and process centered show, providing emerging queer choreographers with an opportunity to present work at the TADA! Theater. Over the past year, Lavy has received space residencies from MOtiVE Brooklyn and the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, as well as, being one of seven residents to be selected for the 2022 international choreographic residency at Art Omi.

Meet Dancer Kenley Hardwick

Kenley Hardwick is a recent graduate from Marymount Manhattan College. Before coming to New York for college he began his training in South Carolina where he attended the South Carolina Governors School for Arts and Humanities. Upon Graduation, Kenley began studies with Gibney Pro, working with choreographers such as Rena Butler, Maleek Washington, Laja Field, and Elia Mark. Recently, Hardwick joined VERBAL ANIMAL as a company member for their 2023 season.

Meet Dancer Ragin Smith

Ragin Smith is a dance artist based in Brooklyn, New York. She works to develop deconstructed narratives by stringing together contexts of movement, poetry, visual art, and music — plugging into the interest sparked by pecking at dormant places. Her recent projects examine the implausibility of innocence, dynamics of the subconscious, overlapping memories, and the dissonance between isolation and affection. She has performed works by Kyle Abraham, Brendan Fernandes, Valeria Gonzalez, Andrea Miller, Elizabeth Roxas-Dobrish, Loni Landon, Troy Ogilvie, La Intrusa Company, and others. She is also a creative director and co-producer of the ongoing Fabled Narcissism arts events. Ragin has a BFA in dance with concentrations in composition and modern dance, as well as a minor in business management from Marymount Manhattan College. She is a member of the Wet Hairy Women collective, Hivewild, Pacing Bodies Dance Company, and Alison Chase Performance Group.

Meet Sound Designer Sarilou

Brooklyn-based French multidisciplinary artist, ST2You, develops music, jewelry and tattoos inspired by the uncanniness of nature. When they’re not melting metal around clearwater pearls, they’re tattooing intricate floral patterns. When not at their tattoo studio, ST2You is at the microphone at the frontlines of their psychedelic jazz band Cocomofo.

A Note from Choreographer Alex (Lavy) Cavaliere

As CHWYT perpetuates itself towards a proscenium stage, I look further to how the work can hold itself as a beginning towards decentralized performance. By offering this work as an in process showing, I am curious how we can encourage inquiry and further, follow a continued, communally activated, engagement with the work. As I continue in this process with Mare Nostrum Elements, I will be following an interdisciplinary process of gathering to expand how this work is transported, and therefore experienced beyond the stage. Thank you for your contributions as we continue to grow within the work together. With Love, Lavy!

ABOUT ECS

The Emerging Choreographer Series is an intensive crash-course in self-producing; offering rehearsal space, dancer and choreographer pay, career development consultations, and professional mentorship to selected choreographers. During the course of the program, choreographers will create, develop, and premiere a new work at CUNY’s LaGuardia Performing Arts Center (LPAC) in Long Island City.

Mare Nostrum Elements, Inc. is a not-for-profit, tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) organization. All contributions are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.

CHWYT by Lavy Cavaliere / Verbal Animal

By Mare Nostrum Elements, INC

CHWYT by Lavy Cavaliere / Verbal Animal

New Work for Emerging Choreographer Series 2023