PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Horses full of steam deconstructs to reimagine visual and topical elements from the almost forgotten 1932 ballet-symphony, H.P. (Horse Power), with music by Carlos Chávez, designs by Diego Rivera, and choreography by Catherine Littlefield. Adopting the ballet’s original 4- episode structure, the work explores the hybridity of Pan-American culture through a magical realist lens. The piece is a collaboration between director & choreographer Hilary Brown-Istrefi (Same As Sister & HB2 PROJECTS); composer & trumpeter Mahsa Matin; and art historian & performance narrator Savona Bailey-McClain (West Harlem Art Fund).

Horses full of steam is being created through the Trisk Presents 2023 Resident Artist Program, made possible with generous support from the Howard Gilman Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and New York State Council on the Arts.

BIOS

Hilary Brown-Istrefi (she/her) is a Canadian-American director, choreographer, performer, educator, curator, and cultural worker. Originally from Toronto, now living in Far Rockaway, she is a graduate of École de danse contemporaine de Montréal, and over the last decade has performed in the works of Melissa Riker, Bouchra Ouizguen, Jillian Peña, Doug Elkins, Linda Tegg, and Candice Breitz. In 2013 she co-founded the award-winning performance collective, Same As Sister (S.A.S.), with her twin Briana Brown-Tipley. Their interdisciplinary commissions have been presented internationally at The Citadel: Ross Centre for Dance (Toronto); Base: Experimental Arts + Space (Seattle); Danspace Project (NYC); BRIC Arts | Media House (NYC); New York Live Arts (NYC); Marmo – Libreria d’Arte Contemporanea (Italy); Archaeological Museum of Messenia (Greece); and Centre d’Art Marnay Art Centre (France), among other venues. Hilary initiated HB2 PROJECTS in 2017, as a choreographic platform to expand her collaborations in performance. HB2 has presented work throughout NYC as a resident artist at West Harlem Art Fund’s 2020 Visual Muze Residency on Governors Island; Norte Maar’s 2018 Dance at Socrates Residency at Socrates Sculpture Park; and Exploring the Metropolis’ 2017-18 Choreographer + Composer Residency at Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning.

Sabrina Canas is a first-generation Argentine American artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She holds her BFA in Dance from UArts, where she performed in works by Netta Yerushalmy, Helen Simoneau, Beth Gill, and Sidra Bell, among others. In January 2018, she attended and performed at the International Association for Blacks in Dance Conference in Los Angeles, CA under the direction of Tommie-Waheed Evans and Kim Bears-Bailey; and produced/presented an immersive installation performance under the direction of Niall Jones. Since moving to Brooklyn, Sabrina has presented work at The Craft: Late Night Performances and Brews, and performed at Triskelion Arts; HATCH Performance Series; Uptown Rising Performance Series; and was a featured dancer in jazz musician Tony Glausi’s music video, When It All Comes Crashing Down. She is currently a company member of Chris Masters Dance and Kinesis Project in NYC, while continuing to pursue her own work.

Maira Duarte is a Mexican New Yorker artist, educator, and organizer. She directs Dance to the People/Danza para la Gente, a collective that creates waste-less art that demands justice for Indigenous peoples, people of color, and poor and working classes globally, promoting humanity’s shared responsibility to value life, and care for natural resources and the land. Maira has taught for over 14 years in innumerable public schools in NYC and New Jersey, through the organizations Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Dancewave, The New Victory Theater and Dance Theater of Harlem. She was also a dance professor at the University of The Americas Puebla, Mexico, in 2013, and holds an M.A. in Dance Education from New York University. Mai
ra is part of the community project Escuelita Arrecifes, located in a marginalized neighborhood of Tulum, Mexico, where she has implemented several dance and environmental education programs. She also co-runs The Woods, a low-cost rehearsal and performance space in Ridgewood, Queens.

Joey Kipp (he/him) born in Brazil and raised in Mtn. View, California. BA Dance and Biology at Marymount Manhattan College. Joey has worked/collaborated with Heather Kravas, Vic Haven, Zeena Parkins, Cynthia Madansky, luciana achugar, Heidi Latsky, Pioneers Go East, Ani Taj, Steven Hoggett, David Byrne, Yasmine Lee, Bill T. Jones & Janet Wong at the Park Avenue Armory, BAM, The Walker, BRIC, Rauschenberg Residency, La Mama, and Judson. NY Times has featured him for his work with Stacy Grossfield, Jody Oberfelder, and Biba Bell. Theater: Newsies, Damn Yankees (The Rev); Kirsten Childs’ The Bubbly Black Girl, In the Heights, The Village (Dixon Place); The Miracle of Heliane choreographed by Cat Galasso and The Silent Woman by David Neumann, both directed by Christian Râth (Bard’s Summerscape). Joey most recently choreographed The Threepenny Opera at NYU Tisch with director Ash Tata and music director Sean Peter Forte.

Mahsa Matin (she/her) is a Brooklyn-based trumpeter and producer, whose music blends jazz and Afro-Latin rhythms. She was awarded “Best One Woman Band” as featured in The Best Of – San Francisco Weekly, and has performed at festivals in Mexico, China, and many other venues throughout the West and East Coasts. Mahsa earned her Bachelor of Music in Sonic Arts at the City College of New York. As a musician she believes that you have to have style — slick, creative, imaginative, and innovative. Style is reflected by how you get from one note to another. It’s not what notes you play, it’s what you do with them. You’ll hear it.

Savona Bailey-McClain is a Harlem-based curator and arts administrator. For the past 20 years she has been the Executive Director/Chief Curator of the West Harlem Art Fund, which has organized high-profile public art exhibitions across NYC including Times Square, DUMBO, SoHo, Governors Island, and Harlem. Her public art installations encompass sculpture, drawings, performance, sound, and mixed media, and have been covered extensively by The New York Times, Art Daily, Artnet, Los Angeles Times, and Huffington Post, among other publications. She is the host/ producer of the “State of the Arts NYC” podcast, aired on Podyssey, Radio Public, YouTube, and Mixcloud. Savona is also a member of ArtTable; Advisory Board member of NYC’s Dance in Sacred Places and Governors Island Advisory Council; and new Board member of NY Artists Equity Association.