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Tiaki Kerei (Jack Gray)
In residence: 2016
About the Artist
Tiaki Kerei (Jack Gray) (Ngati Porou, Ngapuhi, Te Rarawa, Ngati Kahungunu) is an acclaimed dancer, choreographer, and scholar. Born in Auckland, New Zealand, Gray first connected to his cultural roots through traditional Māori dance, Kapa Haka, and later discovered contemporary dance. In 2000, he founded the Atamira Dance Company, an all Māori contemporary dance theatre, which has since become one of the nation’s premiere dance companies. Most recently, Atamira premiered Mitimiti, a full-length performance work for which Gray conducted five years of research. It featured First Nation dancers from New Zealand, Australia, Guåhan (Guam), and the Kiowa People (Oklahoma). His previous performance highlights include: Ten Days on the Island (Australia), Festival of Pacific Arts (Solomon Islands), Asia-Pacific Dance Festival (Hawai‘i), and the San Francisco International Arts Festival.
Gray is committed to developing indigenous epistemologies as a crossover into mainstream practices of dance and theatre. Since 2012, he has fostered an intercultural network of communities in the United States, activating cultural awareness and promoting strategies for indigenous empowerment. He has collaborated with Dancing Earth Creations (New Mexico), Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum (Hawai‘i), University of California, Riverside, and University of California, Berkeley, among many organizations and institutions. He is the Spring 2016 Artist-in-Residence at the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU. In 2016, Gray was awarded membership to Toi Iho, a trademark that guarantees authenticity and quality for Māori artists.
Artist’s Statement
As a trained contemporary dance artist, choreographer, writer, teacher, and now facilitator, I fall into spaces of the in-between, circumnavigating linearity in favor of discovering the potential, intuitive, and liminal. The work is constantly shifting, expanding, and articulating embodied experiences of the environments we move through. Seen through the cultural lens of my genealogy as a New Zealand Māori, my history, present, and future identities swirl in my dance-making, while magnetizing the collective instincts of other people.
My facilitation work has been to gather people within institutions to provide new avenues for sharing—sharing as an exchange for knowledge and sharing as a human value for recognition. Since 2011, I have traveled back and forth between New Zealand and the US, collaborating with Native American, Hawaiian, Chamorro, Alaskan, and other indigenous peoples.
My return to the A/P/A Institute at NYU comes after a successful week of workshops, site visits, and roundtables called the Transformance Lab (Spring 2015). I am looking towards creating another provocative space to shift, shake, and stir things up. I am looking forward to seeing a new performance work emerge from this, and to embrace all that occurs in this particular moment in time.
I will create a forum for collaboration and present a performance work-in-progress, drawn from the real-life concerns, values, and expressions of the Lenni Lenape people of Mannahatta and beyond. This project will give new creative insight into how relational opportunities in indigenous spaces can progress ways of connecting to and with each other.
Jack Gray, Artist-in-Residence
Programs
Welcome Event for Jack Gray
Friday, February 5, 2016, 7:00–9:00 p.m.
Roundtable Session with Jack Gray
Wednesday, February 17, 2016, 6:00-8:00 p.m.
Traditional Songs Workshop
Monday, March 21, 6:00-8:00 p.m.
Exploring Lenapehoking Adventure
Sunday, March 27, 10 a.m.-3:00 p.m.
Indigenous Contemporary Dance Masterclasses
Monday, April 4–Friday, April 8, 2016, 2:00-4:00 p.m.
Indigenous Dance Forum
Thursday, April 21, 2016, 7:00–9:00 p.m.
