ABOUT XIMENA AND SHIGE:
Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya are a Colombian and Japanese multidisciplinary artist duo. Their collaborative works manifest as live installations, dance and theater performances, operas, and sculptures that are presented in theaters, museums, galleries, and public spaces. Alongside their performative work, Ximena and Shige also invest their energy in critical research, printed and digital publications, and community projects. Shige and Ximena are the co-founders and artistic directors of LEIMAY and the LEIMAY Ensemble. Ximena and Shige work out of their home studio CAVE, which is located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Garnica and Moriya are Creative Capital, National Dance Project, National Endowment for the Arts and Café Royal Cultural Foundation Award recipients, and Watermill Center and Chelsea Factory Artists in Residence. Garnica received the Van Lier Fellowship for extraordinary stage directors and was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of California, Riverside. She is currently on the faculty of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Marymount Manhattan College and Sarah Lawrence College. Garnica and Moriya have been nominated for The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts and a United States Artists Fellowship. Her article ‘LEIMAY, CAVE, and the New York Butoh Festival’ was recently published in The Routledge Companion to Butoh Performance.
Ximena and Shige’s work is rooted in questions of being, perception, interdependency and coexistence. They look to expose the multiplicity of spatial and temporal intervals that exist within the body, between materials and environments. They are curious about what emerges when the stability of habits, affirmation of binaries, social norm expectations, and the crystallization of identity dissolve and expose the potentialities of being.
ABOUT LEIMAY:
LEIMAY is a grassroots artist-run organization and performing arts ensemble that exists out of a live/work space called CAVE in Williamsburg Brooklyn. LEIMAY is an entanglement of art and life. The word LEIMAY is a Japanese term symbolizing the changing moment between darkness and the light of dawn, or the transition from one era to the other. Initiated by Shige Moriya of Japan in 1996 and joined by Ximena Garnica of Colombia in 2001, LEIMAY holds a regular NYC home season, tours nationally and internationally, offers classes to the public, brings in guest artists for workshops, and collaborates with presenting/educational partners across NYC, in upstate NY, and beyond.
Since 1996, LEIMAY has created a plethora of programs that support artistic exploration, resource sharing, community development, collaboration, and professional development. LEIMAY currently operates the following community programs: INCUBATOR Program (10 artists/year who receive studio space, mentoring, and marketing); STUDIO SUBSIDY Program (30+ artists per year who receive free access to studio); LUDUS Training Programs (community classes/intensives taught by LEIMAY Ensemble members and guest artists); OUTSIGHT Presenting Series (performances by local and international theater, dance and performance artists through NYC Open Streets and/or in Community Gardens) and LEIMAY ARCHIVE (an ongoing effort to map the 27-year history of LEIMAY).
Furthering LEIMAY’s commitment to resource sharing, most recently, LEIMAY became the co-founder and lead organizer of the Cultural Solidarity Fund, a coalition program administered by IndieSpace that provides $500 relief microgrants to NYC artists and cultural workers. So far, the CSF has raised over $1M and supported 1800+ artists affected by COVID-19 (www.culturalsolidarity.org). LEIMAY’s past or on-hiatus programs include: conectom, an online publication (08-20); LEIMAY Garden Fellowship (08–19); SOAK Presenting Series (12-18); NY Butoh Kan Training Initiative (08-14); NY Butoh Festival (03-09); and Visual art gallery exhibitions at CAVE (96-06).
