Bethany Arts Community is thrilled to welcome back the Praise! Project artists this spring for the world premiere of Praise!. Praise! is an original dance theater performance that opens the door into a conversation around sacred bodies, queerness, and coming in-to ourselves. As the performers crisscross memories and fantasies of divine encounters, the piece asks how we reconcile past experiences to make new meaning for the present.
At times during the performance, the audience will be welcomed into call and response movement, song, and facilitated dialogue. In this way Praise! is co-created, immersive, and always evolving.
Performances of Praise! at Bethany Arts Community will take place on Friday March 21 at 7pm and Saturday March 22 at 7pm. Tickets are $25 General Admission / $20 Student & Senior. Tickets can be purchased at the Bethany Arts Community website.
The performers of Praise! Project are asking themselves how they can encourage a full-hearted acceptance of their whole selves, and they invite you on the journey with them. Through the use of movement, music, memory, and imagination, a weave emerges between a sense of acceptance with a sense of the sacred.
On Tuesday March 18 from 6-8pm, join the Praise! Project creators for a special engagement before the premiere of Praise!. “Sacred Bodies” is a creative storytelling workshop in partnership with Grace Episcopal Church in Ossining and is offered free to the community. The workshop will explore facilitated dialogue and collective storytelling around themes from the performance. Registration is encouraged at the Bethany Arts Community website.
Sacred Bodies is meant to move us, inspire us, and bring us into meaningful dialogue with each other. The workshop will explore the following themes from the Praise!: Healing from past experiences; Coming into our full selves; Questioning what we once thought was true; The feeling of being under attack; Expanding family and creating community. If you have questions around these themes, want to gather in community, and/or want to explore your creative self, this workshop is right for you.
Praise! Project was created by Vincent E Thomas and Gabriel Thom Pasculli, and co-created, curated, and co-facilitated by Desiré Graham and Malia’Kekia Nicolini.
Vincent E Thomas is a Black gay man, a professional dancer, and a Professor of Dance at Towson University (MD). Vincent’s dance company, VTDance, recently celebrated its 22nd Anniversary in Baltimore. Vincent grew up in Edgefield, SC where he sang joyfully (and dutifully) in the choir at his Southern Baptist Church, and yet he felt as though he had to spend much of his adult life washing the church from his soul.
Gabriel Thom Pasculli is a queer, white-bodied, second-generation Italian-Irish-American, who has been working in Chicago and New England as an ensemble theater-maker and is now a Lecturer of Directing and Performance at Union College (NY). Gabriel Thom grew up in the Catholic Church in New Jersey and has spent his adult life seeking the mystical experience he failed to find in the religion of his childhood.
Both artists are returning to a time they thought they had left behind. They are returning to the tender questions they developed as young people, torn between their inner desires and the confounding morality of the communities in which they were raised. With great curiosity, intimacy, risk and availability, Praise! is asking how we reconcile those past experiences and conflicted parts of our younger selves to make new meaning in the present.
Praise! Project events are co-created, curated, and co-facilitated by Desiré Graham, a New Haven-based artist working in original theatre and musical performance, and Malia’Kekia Nicolini, a Massachuesettes-based dancer, actress, choreographer, artistic director, facilitator, and arts educator.
The lead artists have been developing this work over a series of workshops between 2019 and 2025. The first week-long workshop happened at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH in 2019, and four workshops took place at Art Omi in upstate NY between 2021 and 2025. A work-in-progress excerpt was shared in April of 2023 at Baltimore Theater Project as part of VTDance’s 20th Anniversary Concert. In 2024 The project had a two-week residency at Bethany Arts Community in Ossining NY in 2024 and will premiere at Bethany Arts Community in March 2025.
