Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics

An Elders’ Gathering & African Dance Circle: The History & Humble Beginnings of Afrofuturism from a Sankofa Lens

🗓️ Friday, May 2, 2025
🕒 6:00 – 8:30 pm (EST)
📍 Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Plaza, 1368 Fulton St, Brooklyn, NY 11216 – Multipurpose Room (street-level entrance on Fulton Street)

We invite you to join us for an exploration of Art, Movement, and Music, curated by the Hemispheric Institute’s first Folklorist in Residence, Aissatou Bey-Bara. This conversation and community dance circle reflects on the foundational influences and creative beginnings of African performance arts. It measures the long collective impact of African dance, visual arts, music and performance in a global diaspora – an impact that informs the Afro future. Panelists Aquah Tcherbu Beale, Januwa Moja, Amaniyea Payne, and Obara Wali Rahman King will discuss the power of the drum, of embodied performance, and the visual grandeur of African regalia. The panel will be followed by a movement workshop led by Amaniyea Payne and drummer Obayana Olumide.

This program is the culminating event of the series, “We Not New To This, We True To This”, curated by Archivist Camille Lawrence, at the Hemispheric Institute. Camille will moderate the event, which will be documented and preserved in the Hemispheric Institute Digital Video Library (HIDVL).

This is an in-person event. RSVP is encouraged but not mandatory.

RSVP: https://bit.ly/3EtkpLl

Opening Reception: “Huracán Architectures” – A Photography Exhibition by Ruben Natal-San Miguel, Curated by Lisa Paravisini-Gebert

🗓️ Thursday, May 1, 2025
🕒 5:00 – 8:00 PM
📍 NYU Hemispheric Institute, 20 Cooper Square, 5th floor

We invite you to join us for the opening reception for “Huracán Architectures,” a new exhibition by Puerto Rican photographer Ruben Natal-San Miguel. For almost a decade, Natal-San Miguel has situated his practice at the intersection of the island’s devastating financial crisis and the deterioration and disappearance of its vernacular architecture as a result of neglect, mass migration, and the catastrophic weather events that define climate change in the region.

In “Huracán Architectures” Natal-San Miguel, a trained architect, captures this pivotal moment through images of the island’s vernacular architecture. These structures and their afterlives represent hallowed markers of nationhood. They also embody an amalgam of traditions brought together through adaptations to the island’s environment and weather. Puerto Rico's vulnerability to climate events—hurricanes, floods, landslides, and the encroaching rising seas—is captured by Natal-San Miguel, whose photographs document the devastating effects of a misplaced economic austerity that has subjected the Puerto Rican population and its built environment to acute dislocation and loss. His images juxtapose the island’s luminous beauty, exuberant nature, and riotous colors with a "hurricane architecture" that has been wrought by extreme weather and climate change.

This is an in-person event that requires registration. All non-NYU attendees must RSVP in advance. Video documentation will be made available on the Institute website following the event.

RSVP: https://bit.ly/42teVcH

Hurricane Worlds: Extinctions and Futures Symposium

🗓️ Thursday, May 1, 2025
🕒 10 am – 5 pm (EST)
📍 NYU Hemispheric Institute, 20 Cooper Square, 5th floor — Conference Space

Join us for “Hurricane Worlds: Extinctions and Futures,” a symposium convened by Professor Lisa Paravisini-Gebert, 2025 Scholar in Residence and NYU Visiting Scholar.

"Hurricane Worlds: Extinctions and Futures" will consider the forms of life that hurricanes decimate, what they inaugurate, the human and non-human displacements they produce, and how hurricane worlds augur the future of the planet. The symposium brings together artists, scholars, and scientists to meditate on threats and horizons, and invites the audience to know the work of Dhara Rivera, Deborah Jack, Joseph Wunderle, Yvan Satgé, Tamika Galanis, and Ruben Natal-San Miguel.

The event is part of “Hurricane Worlds,” a multi-year initiative led by Institute Director Ana Dopico that seeks to gather the epistemologies, world-making, and art-making of people who live and have lived in hurricane worlds. We look beyond environmental and climatological surveillance, state emergency management, and crisis capitalism to consider the ways of life and ways of knowing that hurricanes inaugurate. We consider how hurricane peoples build modes of sovereignty and care, and we seek to preserve the vernacular histories, artistry, and communal archives that survive in hurricane time.

This is an in-person event that requires registration. All non-NYU attendees must RSVP in advance. Video documentation will be made available on the Institute website following the event.

RSVP: https://bit.ly/3GdD1PW

Blackface in Conversation: Racial Geographies and Transatlantic Entanglements

🗓️ Tomorrow!
🕒 7 pm (EST)
📍 NYU Hemispheric Institute, 20 Cooper Square, 5th floor — Conference Space

Join us for a compelling evening that examines the persistence of blackface and racial impersonation across cultures and historical contexts. This event brings together prominent scholars and artists to discuss the enduring legacy of these practices and how they shape ideologies of race-making.

The discussion will explore themes central to Silva Albert Sopale’s critically acclaimed play “Blackface y otras vergüenzas,” which interrogates blackface in contemporary Spain and its global resonances. The conversation will situate these practices within broader historical and geographical frameworks, from early modern Europe to the contemporary Americas.

This is an in-person event that requires registration. All non-NYU attendees must RSVP in advance. Video documentation will be made available on the Institute website following the event.

RSVP: bit.ly/4l1pJpH

“Parranda con Paranda”: Women’s Voices from Puerto Rican and Garífuna Music Traditions

🗓️ Tomorrow!
🕒 6 pm (EST)
📍 Bronx Music Hall – 438 East 163rd Street, Bronx, NY

We invite you to see and listen to the next generation of musicians and dancers, both Puerto Rican and Garífuna, as they continue to influence each other and perform in each other’s ensembles. “Parranda con Paranda: Women’s Voices from Puerto Rican and Garífuna Music Traditions” takes its name from a program at the Bronx Music Heritage Center that has annually presented Puerto Rican and Garífuna musical and cultural traditions side by side, to highlight the vibrant rhythmic connections between these two communities.

This event is part of the Los Pleneros de la 21 oral history project as well as the Bronx Music Heritage Center’s collaboration with the Hemispheric Institute on the Abeimahani: Garífuna Women’s Voices project.

Organized in partnership with the Garífuna Coalition and the Bronx Music Hall.

This is a FREE event. Please RSVP to attend.

RSVP: https://bit.ly/4aj3RRq
More info: https://bit.ly/41UkHm6

“Parranda con Paranda”: Women’s Voices from Puerto Rican and Garífuna Music Traditions

🗓️ Wednesday, April 2, 2025
🕒 6 pm (EST)
📍 Bronx Music Hall – 438 East 163rd Street, Bronx, NY

We invite you to see and listen to the next generation of musicians and dancers, both Puerto Rican and Garífuna, as they continue to influence each other and perform in each other’s ensembles. “Parranda con Paranda: Women’s Voices from Puerto Rican and Garífuna Music Traditions” takes its name from a program at the Bronx Music Heritage Center that has annually presented Puerto Rican and Garífuna musical and cultural traditions side by side, to highlight the vibrant rhythmic connections between these two communities.

This event is part of the Los Pleneros de la 21 oral history project as well as the Bronx Music Heritage Center’s collaboration with the Hemispheric Institute on the Abeimahani: Garífuna Women’s Voices project.

Organized in partnership with the Garífuna Coalition and the Bronx Music Hall.

This is a FREE event. Please RSVP to attend.

RSVP: https://bit.ly/4aj3RRq
More info: https://bit.ly/41UkHm6

Movements for Reparations: Racial Justice, Climate Justice, and the Case of Haiti

🗓️ Today!
🕒 5:30 – 7:30 pm (EST)
📍 NYU School of Law, 40 Washington Square South – Snow Dining Room, Vanderbilt Hall

This year marks 200 years since France imposed an independence ransom on Haiti–which the country spent more than 100 years paying off–that has long grounded the country’s claim to reparations. At the same time, there is increasing recognition globally that colonialism and slavery have shaped the unequal, racist, and unjust impacts of the climate crisis in Haiti, the Caribbean, and around the world.

Speakers will address how the unjust impacts of climate change–as outlined in the Global Justice Clinic and The Promise Institute for Human Rights’ recent report, Bay Kou Bliye, Pote Mak Sonje: Climate Injustice in Haiti and the Case for Reparations–may connect to and reinforce demands for reparations for colonialism, slavery, and ongoing racial injustice. They will also examine the possibilities and limitations of international law to advance reparations claims.

This is an in-person event that requires registration. All non-NYU attendees must RSVP in advance.

RSVP: http://bit.ly/4hl8DQk

This event is organized by the Global Justice Clinic and the Institute for Human Rights at NYU School of Law, and co-sponsored by the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and the Initiative for Community Power at NYU Law, and by the Hemispheric Institute.

Women’s Voices in the NYC Afro-Puerto Rican Musical Renaissance

🗓️ Tomorrow!
🕒 6 pm (EST)
📍 NYU Hemispheric Institute, 20 Cooper Square, 5th floor — Conference Space

Join us for “Women’s Voices in the NYC Afro-Puerto Rican Musical Renaissance”! This event will feature women who were part of the early bomba and plena scene in New York City before the emergence of Los Pleneros de la 21, and women who were inspired by this East Harlem-based ensemble to form all-women groups. It is part of the Pleneros de la 21 Oral History Project, and is directed by Elena Martínez, 2025 Folklorist in Residence at the Hemispheric Institute.

This is an in-person event that requires registration. All non-NYU attendees must RSVP in advance. Video documentation will be made available on the Institute website following the event.

RSVP: https://bit.ly/4jaxc4C

Meet our 2025 fellows!

Hemi welcomes Elena Martinez, distinguished Folklorist of Latin American and Latinx music and cultural history. Martinez was co-producer of the award-winning documentary, From Mambo to Hip Hop: A South Bronx Tale (2006) and a producer of We Like It Like That: The Story of Latin Boogaloo. She is currently on the Advisory Boards for Casita Maria/Dancing in the Streets’ South Bronx Culture Trail, the Center for Puerto Rican Studies Archive at Hunter College, and Los Pleneros de la 21. As a 2025 Folklorist in Residence at the Institute, she will document the oral history of Los Pleneros de la 21.

To learn more about Martinez, visit: bit.ly/4gfuk4U

Women’s Voices in the NYC Afro-Puerto Rican Musical Renaissance

🗓️ Thursday, February 27, 2025
🕒 6 pm (EST)
📍 NYU Hemispheric Institute, 20 Cooper Square, 5th floor — Conference Space

Join us for “Women’s Voices in the NYC Afro-Puerto Rican Musical Renaissance”! This event will feature women who were part of the early bomba and plena scene in New York City before the emergence of Los Pleneros de la 21, and women who were inspired by this East Harlem-based ensemble to form all-women groups. It is part of the Pleneros de la 21 Oral History Project, and is directed by Elena Martínez, 2025 Folklorist in Residence at the Hemispheric Institute.

The event is co-sponsored by City Lore.

This is an in-person event that requires registration. All non-NYU attendees must RSVP in advance. Video documentation will be made available on the Institute website following the event.

RSVP: https://bit.ly/4jaxc4C

It’s About “The Movement,” Not Only The Steps: Honoring Sankofa in the Afrofuture

🗓️ Tomorrow!
🕒 6:00-8:30 pm (EST)
📍 NYU Hemispheric Institute, 20 Cooper Square, 5th floor — Conference Space

We invite you to join us for “It’s About ‘The Movement,’ Not Only The Steps: Honoring Sankofa in the Afrofuture.” This conversation will bring together key figures, trailblazers, and artists to take a deep dive into the origins, migrations, and evolution of African folkloric dance and music in the West. 2025 Mellon Folklorist in Residence, Aissatou Bey Bara, will lead us in a dialogue with elders through a Sankofa lens by honoring the past, celebrating the present, and mapping the future.

The event will be in English.

This is an in-person event that requires registration. All non-NYU attendees must RSVP in advance. Video documentation will be made available on the Institute website following the event.

RSVP: https://bit.ly/4hdnNHN
Register for Zoom: https://bit.ly/4ast3oL