Art Cake is pleased to present its second dance series and performance featuring work by Kristel Baldoz, Vinson Fraley, Morgan Griffin, Sayer Mansfield, Raymond Pinto, and Grace Yi-Li Tong. The 2022 series is organized by Marina Gluckman and Morgan Griffin and is fiscally sponsored by The Brooklyn Arts Council.
During the residency period, each dancer is provided a studio at Art Cake to develop a solo or duet. Inspired and informed by the space and each artists’ personal investigation at this moment in time, the solos and duets will be presented side-by-side in a culminating performance, OCT 20 - 21, 2022.
The program at Art Cake aims to highlight the importance of the dance community, and expand this community and audience in placing it in an alternative and new space based in Brooklyn's Sunset Park neighborhood. The goal of the series is to provide space, opportunity, and an expanded network to each participating dancer, as well as to bring dance to those who may have not experienced it before.
Please consider making a tax-deductible donation in support of the work by the talented New York-based artists!
View Art Cake Dance Series 2020
KRISTEL BALDOZ is a Filipina-American artist from Delano, California, home to the Table Grape Strike. Witnessing repetitive, monotonal labor from a young age informs her experimentation with movement—its racialized and feminized history. As a choreographer who works with ceramics, sculpture, film, and story-telling, she develops an aesthetic grounded in the textuality of objects, experimenting with how bodily movements translate into objects and how they become a conduit that materializes colonial relations.
Kristel was an EmergeNYC fellow at the Hemispheric Institute, artist-in-residence at Tisch/Danspace Residency and the Jonah Boaker Arts Foundation | Chez Bushwick, and a Brooklyn Art Exchange Space Grant Recipient. Recently, she was an artist-in-residence at Chautauqua Institution School of Visual Art and Motive Brooklyn. As a performer, she has worked with Reggie Wilson, Wilmer Wilson IV, and Alex Da Corte. She holds an MA in Arts Politics from New York University and a BA in Dance, Theater, and Performance Studies from UC Berkeley.
Photo by Justin Gotzis
VINSON FRALEY was born in Statesville, North Carolina and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. He began his formal training in voice and drama at DeKalb School of the Arts. He started dance at the age of 14 at DanceMakers of Atlanta. Fraley received his BFA in dance from NYU Tisch in 2015. During his final year of college he became a member of Kyle Abraham’s A.I.M (Abraham.In.Motion) and later joined the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company in 2017. Some of Vinson’s collaborators include Carrie Mae Weems, Sterling Ruby, Damien Jalet, Kohei Nawa, Bobbi Jene Smith, Holland Andrews, Sara Mearns, Terri Lynn Carrington, Boysnoize, Mario Sorrenti, Collier Schorr, Kenyon Victor Adams, Janet Biggs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The American Modern Opera Company, and Arts at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), and MIT.
He has had the opportunity to present works in the US, Germany, and France. Recently his work has been seen at The Joyce Theater, Lincoln Center, and The Water Mill Center. His movement direction has been seen in videos by Calvin Klein, Burberry, Serpentwithfeet, Vogue, Nike, and Pattern Beauty. Vinson contributed an original music composition for the Bill T. Jones/ Arnie Zane Company’s work titled Afterwardsness. He is signed to DNA Models.
His work has been written about and featured in various publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Interview Magazine, System Magazine, I-d Magazine, Highsnobiety, Document Journal, and Dance Magazine. He was photographed by Inez and Vinoodh for the cover of V Magazine and has appeared in a worldwide campaign for Calvin Klein.
MORGAN GRIFFIN is a dancer and choreographer originally from Connecticut, now based in New York. She received her BA in dance with minors in English and US Government from Connecticut College (2012), her MA from NYU Steinhardt (2022) in Dance Education and her MFA from NYU Tisch Dance (2022). She danced and performed with Adele Myers and Dancers in their tour of “Einstein’s Happiest Thought” as well as with bandPortier. She has also presented her own work across New York and Connecticut.
In 2017, Morgan moved to Italy for several years to pursue fashion and work in sales, marketing, and special projects, but has now turned to the pursuit of dance.
She is the dance series co-curator as well as artist in residence at Art Cake in New York. She has recently performed at the West End Theater, at the Art Cake 2020 Dance Series, at Vans CH66 with Daisies NYC, choreographed work for a Paco Rabanne and Noah NYC campaigns, and consistently teaches dance to a wide range of ages and abilities. She continues to create work and collaborate, combining her interests and expanding on the concepts of imagination, discovery, inspirations and curiosity.
SAYER MANSFIELD grew up in the woods of Massachusetts where she was raised part in the garden and part in her mother’s yoga studio. Movement has been the love language from the get go, that and any time spent outside. Sayer is dancer, performer, choreographer and teacher who has spent the past decade dancing with Pilobolus Dance Theater (NYC) and Compagnie Marie Chouinard (Montreal, QC.) She holds a BFA in Dance from NYU Tisch School of the Arts and furthered her studies abroad at Trinity Laban (UK) and The Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance (Austria.)
Sayer has deep love for teaching and has been an adjunct faculty member and guest artist at Jacob’s Pillow, Phillips Academy Andover and Roger Williams University. Sayer works extensively across mediums including film, music videos and print - most notably as a principal dancer in “Little Women” directed by Greta Gerwig. Sayer is currently working as a freelance artist based in NYC & the Berkshires. Diving into her next stage of artistic evolution, she has the desire to cultivate healing through collaborative and independent creations.
RAYMOND PINTO was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He studied dance and graduated from the Juilliard School in 2013. He was awarded a Princess Grace Foundation Award in 2012 for his achievement as a dancer and was a Young Arts Award winner in Modern Dance in 2009. He has worked with internationally touring dance companies, notable choreographers, and artists. As an artist and educator himself, Raymond has presented his own works at festivals, theaters, galleries, workshops, and conferences both locally and globally. Pinto has presented his work at the Judson Memorial Church, MoMA PS1, Cue Art Foundation, Architekturzentrum Wien, and the Venice Biennale di Danza.
He was an artist in residence at Movement Research and Art Omi. In addition to creating new performance art works, Raymond also holds a Master’s Degree with a focus in Performance Studies from New York University. Despite the precious conditions of today’s world, Raymond intends to continue to create new works that situate the African and Latinx diasporas as a contextual points of departure. While emphasizing the possibility of non-linearity as a method of aestheticizing realities, Raymond’s multidisciplinary practice makes way for the immaterial and residual to become resonate.
GRACE YI-LI TONG is an Asian-American movement and performance artist from the Pacific Northwest. Her work ridiculously collages “regular” events onstage to decontextualize bodily and social identity, lineage, fairytale, Mother Earth relationships, and comedy. In 2021, Grace graduated summa cum laude from NYU Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in Dance and a minor in Gender and Sexuality Studies.
Since graduating, Grace’s most recent work Garden Tongues– a re-appropriation of the figure of the Asian woman in the United States– has been performed at Arts on Site, the Emerging Choreographer Series 2022, Made by Women Festival 2021, The Craft NY 2021, and more. She has additionally been in process with Luis Lara Malvacias, Monica Bill Barnes, and Patricia Hoffbauer. Other credits include choreographic collaborations with Tod’s Shoes and Yayi Chen.
Grace is beyond excited to be in residence with Art Cake this year!