Event details
Saturday, September 23, 2023
2 pm 

Dia Beacon
3 Beekman Street
Beacon, New York

Free with museum admission, registration is required. Register for the event here.

A newly commissioned project by Paris-based, American multidisciplinary artist Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Filling Station (2023) comprises three dance performances sited across two locations, and an exhibition of a new series of paintings, archival materials, audiovisual elements, and ephemera by the artist at the Kitchen’s satellite loft space at Westbeth in the West Village.

For this project, Lutz-Kinoy reinterprets the one-act ballet Filling Station originally staged by the short-lived troupe Ballet Caravan (1936–1940)—initially co-founded by Lincoln Kirstein, George Balanchine, and Edward Warburg as the American Ballet and touted as the first professional ballet company in the United States—as part of a presentation titled A Sunday in Town, which debuted in Hartford, Connecticut, on January 6, 1938. The original performance featured music by composer Virgil Thomson, choreography by Lew Christensen (known for his direction of the San Francisco Ballet from 1952 to 1984), and costumes by artist Paul Cadmus. This ballet is credited as the first ballet directed by an American choreographer, danced by an American company, and based on an American theme, with music and designs by American artists. A response to—and refusal of—a Eurocentric canon of classical ballet, this work brought to the fore a group of collaborators that shone light on questions of American industry, capital, class, and gender roles. It also put new language to the idea of the “American pastoral,” a renegotiation of city and country in a period when much of the material of American suburbanism was in the process of being built, deeply defined by the mobility of Americans via car transport.

Lutz-Kinoy’s restaging of Filling Station views the 1938 work of American ballet through a contemporary lens, creating a dynamic, queered space for reflection on race, class, and gender. The project features new choreography by Niall Jones (lead) and Raymond Pinto (consulting); a score by musician James Ferraro; set design by Lutz-Kinoy; and costumes by Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta of fashion label Eckhaus Latta. The dance ensemble includes Bria Bacon, Ayano Elson, Maxfield Haynes, Niall Jones, Kris Lee, Niala, and Mina Nishimura.

Matthew Lutz-Kinoy was born in New York in 1984. He lives in Paris.

Embracing the spirit of collaboration as a means to expand knowledge, Lutz-Kinoy engages in a breadth of techniques and references that have resulted from many joint ventures. His ceramics are influenced by working with practitioners in Europe and Brazil, while his large-scale paintings—often installed like backdrops, tapestries, wall panels, or suspended ceilings—assert matters of pleasure, color, intimacy, and motion as fundamental. Lutz-Kinoy’s work looks through a history of representation, from the Rococo to Orientalism to Abstract Expressionism, and challenges what constitutes the inside or the outside of the arts, the social, and the self. At the core of the artist’s work is performance, informed by histories of queer and collaborative practices as well as his background in theater and choreography. His live work explores the interplay of narratives that are created and constructed between individuals and social spaces.

Recent solo shows include Sea Spray, De Vleeshal, Middelburg (2018); The Meadow, Centre d’Edition Contemporaine, Geneva (2018–19); Fooding, Fitzpatrick Gallery, Paris (2018); Southern Garden of the Château Bellevue, Le Consortium, Dijon (2018); Two Hands on Earth, Mendes Wood DM, Brussels (2019); Window to the Clouds, Salon Berlin, Museum Frieder Burda (2021); Plate is Bed Plate is Sun Plate is Circle Plate is Cycle, Kamel Mennour, Paris (2022); Manikin, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2022); and Link Room Project: Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Cranford Collection, London (2022–23) .

Recent performances include Rotting Wood, the Dripping Word: Shūji Terayama’s Kegawa no Marii, MoMA PS1, Queens (2016); Sharjah Biennial 14: Leaving the Echo Chamber by Isabel Lewis, Sharjah Art Foundation (2019); Screaming Compost with Jan Vorisek, Galerie Francesca Pia, Zurich (2019); Scalable Skeletal Escalator by Isabel Lewis, Kunsthalle Zürich (2020); and Soap Bubbles with Jan Vorisek, Parcours, Art Basel (2022).

James Ferraro is an American experimental musician, producer, composer, and artist. He has been credited as a pioneer of the 21st-century genres hypnagogic pop and vaporwave, with his work exploring themes related to hyperreality and consumer culture. His music has drawn on diverse styles such as 1980s electronic music, easy listening, drone, lo-fi, sound collage, and R&B. Ferraro began his career in the early 2000s as a member of the Californian noise duo The Skaters, after which he began recording solo work under his name and a wide variety of aliases. He released projects on labels such as Hippos in Tanks and New Age Tapes. Ferraro received wider recognition when his polarizing 2011 album Far Side Virtual was chosen as Album of the Year by The Wire.

Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta are the founders of Eckhaus Latta, a New York– and Los Angeles–based label that distinguishes itself from its peers with gender-neutral designs and has built a reputation for casting models of all genders, ages, shapes, and sizes in its runway shows and campaigns. Eckhaus and Latta met at Rhode Island School of Design, where Latta studied textile design and Eckhaus studied sculpture. After graduating in 2010, the duo cut their teeth working for a number of brands and institutions: Eckhaus worked as an accessories designer at Marc by Marc Jacobs, while Latta was a knitwear designer at Opening Ceremony and also ran a textile company that supplied fabric to Calvin Klein and Proenza Schouler. In 2011, the two came together to launch Eckhaus Latta and showed their first collection in New York for Spring/Summer 2013. The designers are also known for using unconventional fabrics like plastics and fishing lines. Eckhaus and Latta started working with European fabric mills for the first time in 2017, although the designers still use deadstock materials—a key element of their early collections. In 2016, the label opened its first store in front of its studio space in Los Angeles. The brand is stocked in 55 locations around the world, including Nordstrom, Ssense, and Opening Ceremony, and was one of the finalists for the LVMH Prize in 2018.

Niall Jones is an artist living in New York. Jones constructs, inhabits, and explores theater as a mode and location of instabilities. Working through his ongoing fascination with labor, temporality, and fantasy, Jones creates immersive, liminal sites for practicing incompleteness and refusal. Jones was nominated for the Bessie Award for Outstanding Emerging Choreographer in 2017 and received a 2021 Grants-To-Artists Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Art. Recent works include Splendor #3, Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, New York (2017); Sis Minor: The Preliminary Studies, Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin (2018); Sis Minor, in Fall, Abrons Arts Center, New York (2018); Fantasies in Low Fade, Chocolate Factory Theater, Queens (2019); and A Work for Others, the Kitchen OnScreen (2021). Jones received a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and a MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He teaches at the University of the Arts, School of Dance, Philadelphia, where he is also producer and co-curator of the School for Temporary Liveness.

Raymond Pinto is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice moves in and through performance, their process often leaning into the reconciliation of time as medium to situate experimental performance. Pinto’s work has been presented at Amsterdam Fringe Festival; Art Cake, Brooklyn; Chez Bushwick, Brooklyn; CUE Art Foundation, New York; Participant Inc., New York; and the Venice Biennale. They are inspired by the recovery of the arts and are looking forward to future opportunities to create experimental performances. They received a BFA in Dance from the Juilliard School, New York, and an MA in Performance Studies from New York University.

Dance ensemble 

Bria Bacon is a 20-something, queer performing artist. Predominantly trained in movement art (dance), she holds passions and gifts in writing, sound-making, and theater. Bacon has worked with Donna Uchizono Company, Kyle Marshall Choreography, Sally Silvers Dance, and Stephen Petronio Company, as well as with Beth Gill and Rachel Comey for New York Fashion Week. Her current collaborations include Company Christoph Winkler, Johnnie Cruise Mercer, Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group, and Stacy Spence. Originally from Munsee-Lenape lands in central New Jersey, Bacon currently occupies Munsee-Lenape land in Brooklyn and is growing relationships abroad.

Ayano Elson is an Okinawan-American choreographer and dancer based in New York. She was born in Okinawa, a small island colonized by Japan in 1879 and occupied by the United States from 1945 to 1972. Elson’s work investigates roles of labor and power in American contemporary art. Her choreography has been presented at AUNTS, Center for Performance Research, Chocolate Factory Theater, Gibney Dance, ISSUE Project Room, Knockdown Center, Movement Research, and Roulette, all in New York. Elson has received funding support from Dance/NYC, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and Mertz Gilmore Foundation. She has held residencies at Abrons Arts Center, ArtCake, Center for Performance Research, Gibney Dance, Lower Manhattan Cultural Center, and Movement Research’s Van Lier Emerging Artist of Color Fellowship. She has performed works by Laurie Berg, Kim Brandt, Jesi Cook, Milka Djordjevich, Simone Forti, Kyli Kleven, Abigail Levine, and Haegue Yang, at Danspace Project, New York; MoMA PS1, Queens; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Museum of Modern Art, New York; New Museum, New York; New York Live Arts, New York; Pioneer Works, Brooklyn; REDCAT, Los Angeles; Roulette, Brooklyn; SculptureCenter, Queens; the Shed, New York; and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Elson is working on a record with music collaborator Matt Evans and will present new choreography at PAGEANT, Brooklyn, in October 2023.  

Maxfield Haynes is a multidisciplinary artist, dancer, and teacher living in New York. They started their training at age 12 at the University of Louisville Dance Academy under Chuck Bronson and Cynthia Bronner, and continued their dance education with the Louisville Ballet, San Francisco Ballet School, Houston Ballet Academy, Dance Theatre of Harlem School, and the Music and Dance Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. Haynes received a BFA in Dance from New York University Tisch, School of the Arts, in 2018. They have toured extensively as a soloist with both Complexions Contemporary Ballet and Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. They frequently collaborate with Ballez, as well as with Dance Heginbotham and Isaac Mizrahi for their yearly productions of Peter and the Wolf and Third Bird presented at the Guggenheim’s Works and Process. In 2022, Haynes portrayed the White Bird in Julie Taymor’s The Magic Flute, breaking ground as the Metropolitan’s first nonbinary soloist ballerina. Their repertoire includes works by Peter Anastos, Tislarm Bouie, Mark Dendy, Raja Featherkelly, John Heginbotham, Abdurrahim Jackson, Bill T. Jones, Marius Petipa, Crystal Pite, Katy Pyle, Dwight Rhoden, Paul Taylor, and Durante Verzola. 

Kris Lee is a dancer, performer, and DJ based in New York. They received a BFA in Dance from University of the Arts, Philadelphia, in 2019. Kris has toured with nora chipaumire (2019–20) and was a member of the Stephen Petronio Company (2021–22). They co-created and performed in high noon (2022), an interdisciplinary performance produced by Ninth Planet. Recent projects include Remains Persist (2022) and Out of and Into: PLOT (2023) by Moriah Evans; Variations on Themes from Lost and Found: Scenes from a Life and Other Works by John Bernd (reprisal) by Ishmael Houston-Jones and Miguel Gutierrez (2023); and duel c by Andros Zins-Browne (2023).

Niala is a Harlem-based, Black, trans artist exploring the realms of music, movement, and acting. As a voguer in New York’s ballroom scene, she implements her style of dancing into performance spaces throughout the city. Niala’s recently danced for Honey Dijon at Ladyland Festival, and was commissioned to perform for the Shed’s second edition of Open Call as well as for the Studio Museum in Harlem’s Artist-in-Residence program. Her artistry aims to contextualize and expand upon the Black, trans experience, while carrying on the legacy of iconic, legendary trans pioneers that have come before her.

Mina Nishimura, originally from Tokyo, was introduced to butoh and improvisational dance through Kota Yamazaki and studied at Merce Cunningham Studio in New York. Informed by Buddhism-influenced philosophies, Nishimura attempts—across her somatic, performative, choreographic, and art practices—to make contact with invisible, marginalized, forgotten, abandoned, or otherwise unknown beings, senses, and realms. She has performed and collaborated with artists such as Yoshiko Chuma, DD Dorvillier, Ursula Eagly, Moriah Evans, Neil Greenburg, John Jasperse, Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener, Dean Moss, Cori Olinghouse, Vicky Shick, Nami Yamamoto, Kota Yamazaki, and Yasuko Yokoshi, as well as with SIA for her Saturday Night Live performances. Her work has been commissioned by New York University Jack H. Skirball Center for the Performing arts; Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Becket, Massachusetts; Danspace Project, New York; Gibney Dance, New York; Mount Tremper Arts Center, New York; Whitman College, Princeton, New Jersey; and Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York. Nishimura is a recipient of Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award 2019 and was a cover and featured artist in the May 2021 issue of Dance Magazine. Nishimura was the Renewal Residency Artist of 2021–22 at Danspace Project where her new work, Mapping a Forest while Searching for an Opposite Term of Exorcist, premiered in November 2022. In 2021, she completed the MFA Fellowship at Bennington College, where she currently teaches.

Matthew Lutz-Kinoy: Filling Station is commissioned by the Kitchen and organized by Legacy Russell, executive director and chief curator, and Angelique Rosales Salgado, curatorial assistant, the Kitchen.

The performance at Dia Beacon is co-presented by Dia Art Foundation and the Kitchen and organized by Legacy Russell, executive director and chief curator, the Kitchen; Angelique Rosales Salgado, curatorial assistant, the Kitchen; and Jordan Carter, curator, Dia Art Foundation.